Chapter 12: Aldous Fenwick

She told the household she was visiting a modiste about alterations to her dinner gowns, a lie plausible enough that no one questioned it, and had the driver drop her three streets from the address Mrs. Pryce had given her, exactly as instructed. The rest of the way she walked, a plain shawl pulled up over her hair, feeling considerably more like a woman in a mystery novel than she was entirely comfortable with.

Fenwick's office occupied the ground floor of an unassuming building tucked between a bookshop and a tailor's, nothing about the modest brass plaque beside the door suggesting the weight of what might be waiting inside. She knocked, gave her name to the clerk who answered, and waited in a small outer room lined with legal volumes until a voice from within called her forward.

The walk had given her time to rehearse what she meant to say, what she meant to ask, how much of the truth she was prepared to admit to a stranger who might, for all she knew, be exactly the kind of person her mother's letter had warned her against. She abandoned most of the rehearsal the moment she stepped through the door, some instinct telling her that whatever careful performance had served her well enough in her father's house wouldn't survive contact with a man who'd apparently known her mother better than anyone else still living.

Aldous Fenwick was older than she'd expected, silver-haired and precise in his movements, the sort of man who'd clearly spent a lifetime being careful with other people's secrets. He rose when she entered, studied her for a long moment with an intensity that made her distinctly aware of every detail that might mark her as different from the young woman he'd presumably met before, and gestured her toward the chair across from his desk.

"You have her eyes," he said finally, sitting back down. "Your mother's, I mean. I confess I wasn't certain, when Mrs. Pryce's note arrived, whether you'd actually come."

"You were expecting me?"

"I was hoping to be expecting you, eventually. There's a difference." He folded his hands on the desk, regarding her with an expression that mixed caution and something almost like relief. "Forgive me for saying this directly, Miss Amber, but you're behaving rather differently than I anticipated, based on what little I've heard of you over the years. More like your mother than I expected anyone in that house to allow you to become."

"A great many things have changed recently." She kept the answer deliberately vague, unwilling to explain a truth he'd never believe regardless. "I read her letter. I found the documents in the cabinet. I understand there's more you might be able to tell me."

"Some." Fenwick opened a drawer, retrieving a slim folder he set on the desk between them without yet opening it. "Understand first that I'm bound by certain obligations your mother established before her death, obligations that limit precisely how much I'm permitted to share, and under what circumstances. I won't insult you by pretending otherwise."

"Then tell me what you can."

He opened the folder, sliding a single document across the desk toward her. "The Ashworth succession has remained formally unresolved since your mother's departure from that family, for reasons that predate even her own choices. There are conditions attached to your claim on it, conditions I'm not currently at liberty to explain in full, though I can tell you they involve a formal acknowledgment your family, or you personally, would need to make before certain parties who might otherwise consider it their business to interfere."

"What kind of parties?"

"Relations. Rivals within the wider Ashworth structure who've spent years assuming the succession question would simply resolve itself in their favor, given that your mother's line appeared, to all outward appearances, to have abandoned any claim to it entirely." His expression sharpened slightly. "Your continued existence complicates matters for a number of people who've grown comfortable assuming it wouldn't."

"Why has it been left unresolved for so long? Surely someone could have forced the issue years ago, one way or another."

"Because unresolved questions are considerably more useful than answered ones, to the right sort of person." Fenwick's expression carried the particular weariness of someone who'd watched this pattern repeat itself many times over a long career. "As long as the succession remains open, no one has to publicly commit to a position that might later prove inconvenient. Your father can quietly benefit from an Ashworth connection without ever having to defend it. Whoever else has a claim, or hopes to eventually manufacture one, can continue maneuvering without tipping their hand. Certainty, Miss Amber, is often the enemy of people who profit from ambiguity."

Chloe absorbed this slowly, a colder understanding settling over her. "That's why the succession's been left open. Someone's been benefiting from the uncertainty."

"Several someones, likely, though I don't know all of them by name, and I wouldn't share the names I do know without considerably more certainty about who I was sharing them with." Fenwick studied her again, weighing something behind his careful eyes. "I will tell you this much, because I believe your mother would have wanted you to have it. Someone recently made inquiries with my office, within the past several months, asking questions about the succession's current status, and about whether Elena Ashworth's daughter was likely to ever learn enough to press a claim."

Her pulse quickened. "Who?"

"The inquiry was made through an intermediary. I wasn't given a name, and I didn't press for one, given how the request was framed. But it came from someone with resources enough to make discreet legal inquiries, and enough interest in the outcome to bother making them at all." He closed the folder again, apparently unwilling to let her examine its remaining contents just yet. "I'd advise considerable caution, Miss Amber. Whoever's asking, they're asking because the answer matters to them a great deal."

"Is my father capable of something like that?"

Fenwick's silence was answer enough, though he softened it slightly before she could draw too firm a conclusion from it alone. "Your father isn't the only person with reason to want the succession question left exactly as it stands. I'd caution you against assuming you already know the shape of everyone working against your interests. That kind of certainty tends to make a person considerably easier to mislead."

He rose, indicating, gently but firmly, that the meeting was drawing to its natural end. "Come back when you're able, and when you've had time to consider carefully who around you can actually be trusted with what you've learned today. I'll tell you more as I'm able. For now, take this."

He pressed a small brass token into her palm, worn smooth with age, engraved with a partial crest she recognized instantly from the photograph she'd found her first morning in this body.

"What is it?"

"A token belonging to your mother's branch of the family, carried by her mother before her, and by her mother before that, as far back as anyone still bothers keeping proper record of." He nodded toward the partial crest worn into its surface. "It won't open any doors on its own. But there are people, if you ever find yourself standing in front of the right ones, who'll recognize it, and who'll understand what your carrying it means, without you having to explain a single word of the rest. A means of proving who you are, should you ever need to, to people who'd otherwise have no reason to believe you."

"Why give it to me now, rather than waiting until you're certain I can be trusted with it?"

"Because I've spent twenty years waiting for certainty, Miss Amber, and it's cost your mother's memory a great deal more than I'm comfortable admitting." Something old and regretful moved behind his composed expression. "I'd rather take the smaller risk of trusting you too soon than repeat the larger mistake of trusting no one at all, the way I have for far too long already."

He walked her to the door himself, the clerk nowhere in sight, the office gone quiet around them in a way that felt, for a brief unsettled moment, almost deliberate.

"Keep it somewhere safe. And Miss Amber—" he paused at the door, something almost gentle crossing his composed features, "—your mother loved you a great deal more than the silence around her memory has ever suggested. Whatever else you learn in the coming months, I'd ask you to hold onto that much, regardless."

She walked back through the unfamiliar streets afterward with the token pressed tight in her closed fist, the weight of everything she'd just learned settling slowly over her like a fog she couldn't yet see clearly through. Rivals within the family itself. A recent inquiry from someone unnamed, someone with resources and patience enough to ask careful questions through intermediaries rather than simply asking outright. Her father, perhaps, or perhaps someone she hadn't even considered yet, someone whose interest in her existence predated her arrival in this body by years she couldn't account for.

She was so occupied turning the pieces over, testing how they might or might not fit together, that she didn't notice, until she was nearly back to where the driver waited, the unfamiliar figure who'd been keeping careful, unhurried pace half a block behind her the entire way.