Chapter 11 - hidden signet
The heavy velvet curtains in the grand drawing room of Blackwood Manor swayed gently as the wet autumn wind rattled the high leaded windows. I stood frozen beside the marble fireplace, my eyes glued to the small gold ring resting in the palm of Elspeth, our quiet household maid of six years. The ring was forged from heavy rose gold, its surface worn smooth by decades of friction, but there was no mistaking the intricate engraving on the crest: a striking falcon holding a broken key beneath a three-pointed crown.
It was the lost signet of the Vance-Blackwood bloodline—the ring my late mother wore the day she vanished during the coastal storm twenty years ago.
Across the room, my sister-in-law Isabella took two frantic steps backward, her face drained of every drop of color, her hand clutching the pearl necklace around her throat so tightly the string snapped, sending small white beads clattering across the dark oak floorboards.
"Where... where did you get that?" Isabella’s voice cracked, losing every trace of the haughty, polished composure she had maintained since marrying my elder brother, Arthur, five years ago. "You’re a hired servant! You have no right to possess family heirlooms!"
Elspeth did not flinch. She pulled off her worn leather work glove entirely, revealing a deep, silver surgical scar that ran from her wrist down to the base of her ring finger.
"I didn't steal it, Isabella," Elspeth said, her tone carrying a quiet, resonant authority that I had never heard from her during her six years of scrubbing our floors. "Your father gave this to my mother thirty years ago when he signed the trust agreement that you spent the last decade trying to burn."
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I turned to Elspeth, my heart hammering like a trapped bird behind my ribs. "Elspeth... who are you?"
"My name isn't Elspeth," she whispered, looking straight into my eyes with a gaze so strikingly similar to my mother's that my breath caught in my throat. "I am Catherine Vance. I am your elder sister."
