Darius slowly lowered the Elmsworth Deed, his gaze fixed intently on Elenora. She was clutching the silver locket tightly, the metal cool against her palm, her breathing ragged from the adrenaline of the fight. The immediate danger was past, but the small, dusty archive room was now thick with a heavy, vulnerable tension.
"What is it, Duchess? Does the prize suddenly feel less valuable?" Darius's voice was softer than she had ever heard it, stripped of its usual abrasive command.
Elenora didn't look up, instead tracing the elegant, worn edges of the locket. "This locket… it is identical to one my mother gave me. She said it was a symbol for 'belonging,' but mine was lost years ago, or so I believed." The quiet confession felt immense in the confined space.
She flipped the locket open. Inside, nestled where a miniature portrait should have been, was a tiny, intricately folded slip of yellowed paper. She carefully extracted it.
Darius immediately stepped closer, his shadow falling over her shoulder, a presence both intimidating and unexpectedly protective. The paper was clearly a coded message, written in faded, elegant script.
"That script," Elenora said, tracing the loops with a shaky finger. "It's my father's handwriting, but it's a cipher. A private code he used only for highly sensitive, personal matters."
"And the locket connects him not just to this archive, but perhaps to the Elmsworth family itself," Darius concluded, his mind already racing ahead. He set the Deed aside and retrieved the heavy, iron-bound ledger Elenora had used so effectively as a weapon.
"We need to know what this code says, and what this ledger contains," he tapped the cover. "If your father orchestrated this entire chain of clues, this isn't a depot; it's his final, desperate confession, hidden from the world."
The realization of the complexity of her father's actions hit Elenora like a physical blow. She looked from the code to Darius, whose focused intensity offered the only grounding presence.
* * *
They knelt together near the strongbox, side-by-side. Their movements were precise, a synchronized effort born only of necessity.
Darius quickly examined the Elmsworth Deed. It wasn't the original grant of land ownership, but a legally notarized declaration stating that the lands were held in trust, pending the outcome of a separate and secret civil suit—a suit now decades past its due date.
"This document essentially confirms the Elmsworth lands are in legal limbo," Darius summarized, his expression grim. "It neither belongs to Warwick, nor fully to the Crown. More importantly, it confirms that Elmsworth was murdered before he could complete the transaction to truly secure the Warwick funds. Someone wanted that trust to remain unclaimed."
"And the locket is a clue to who that someone is," Elenora whispered, already pouring over the substitution code.
* * *
They turned their attention to the ledger. It was not a financial document at all, but a dense, meticulously kept journal by Elenora's father, detailing his political and private movements during the period surrounding the Elmsworth murder.
Darius quickly flipped through the brittle pages, his eyes scanning names, dates, and locations, using his sharp political knowledge to contextualize the movements. Elenora, meanwhile, focused solely on the small coded slip from the locket, her brilliant mind already mapping the cipher against her memory of the family's ancient history books.
Suddenly, Darius stopped. His fingers pressed hard against a specific entry dated just two days before the Elmsworth incident. The entry was written in her father's hand, clear and terrified:
"...Visited the warehouse outside the Winter Garden. Met with M. He assures me the matter is contained, but the risk to the family's name is catastrophic. I cannot allow this ledger to fall into the Crown's hands. The truth must die with me, if necessary. For Elenora's future."
"M?" Elenora lifted her gaze, a profound coldness spreading across her features. "Who is M, Darius? He sounds like an accomplice."
Darius closed the ledger with a soft thud. His voice was laced with bitter certainty. "Montclair. Lord Montclair, the current Minister of the Admiralty. Your father's trusted associate, and the man who pushed your family toward debt relief. He was the one who authorized the acquisition of the first 'agricultural' plot here years ago."
"A trusted ally, now the likely architect of our downfall," Elenora murmured. Her usual icy composure finally shattered, replaced by an expression of searing, absolute betrayal. "He played us all."
* * *
"The time for righteous anger will come later, Duchess," Darius said, his tone regaining its sharp edge. He tapped the locket code. "We now know who the player is, but we need the weapon to take him down. The ledger names the perpetrator, but the locket code will tell us where the final evidence is hidden."
Elenora nodded, her mind snapping back to the task. She had the key. The cipher was a substitution code based on the first edition of the Warwick Family Chronology—a massive, forgotten book only she knew by heart.
She began translating the cramped script aloud, her voice clear and precise despite the adrenaline:
"The truth lies with the Swan's Silent Captain. Beneath the gaze of the Weeping Angel."
Darius jumped up, sweeping the lantern closer to the strongbox. "The Swan's Silent Captain... the Silent Swan vessel," he concluded, his gray eyes blazing with intensity. "The phantom ship we've been hunting. But what is the Weeping Angel?"
Elenora pushed herself up, her knees aching. She closed her eyes, picturing the vast, ancient Warwick estates, the old family history, the forgotten statues and monuments that marked their legacy.
"It's a monument," she breathed, opening her eyes. "In the family mausoleum, Minister. A specific, enormous marble statue of a veiled figure that marks the resting place of the first Duchess of Warwick. It's where our family traditionally hid their most secret—and most dangerous—secrets."
She met Darius's intense gaze across the dust and shadows. "My father didn't hide the truth in this archive. He hid the final evidence in the most obvious place of all: in the tomb."