THE HEIRESS THEY BURRIED
The room fell into an uneasy quiet, everyone weighing the same impossible math, the danger of moving forward against the danger of standing still while Edmund moved without them.
It was Isaac who broke the silence, hunched over Isabella's journal at the study table, angling a small desk lamp across its pages at a low, careful slant.
"The ink's gone," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "But paper remembers pressure, even after the ink fades."
He retrieved a soft pencil from a drawer and, with the patience of a man who'd spent a lifetime coaxing secrets out of old documents, laid a sheet of thin paper over the inside back cover and began rubbing graphite gently across its surface.