Chapter 4 - THE GALLERY OF DEAD WOMEN
The west gallery had been closed for years.
That was what Mrs. Wren said when Lucien demanded the master keys.
No guests used it. No staff cleaned it without permission. It held portraits, old furniture, and family objects no one wanted displayed in the modern rooms of the mansion.
Edwin Arden, however, had asked for that key twice in the past month.
That was enough for Lucien.
The door opened with a groan.
Dust and cold air drifted out.
The room beyond was long and dim, lined with oil portraits of Blackwood women from a century and a half of wealth, scandal, widowhood, and survival. Their painted faces watched in silence.
At the far end stood another mirror.
Older than the one in Celeste’s bedroom.
Taller.
Its frame was black wood carved with twisting vines and sleeping birds.
Mara stopped in front of it and felt the back of Celeste’s neck prickle.
Lucien noticed.
“You’ve seen it before?”
“Not with my eyes,” she whispered.
Memories stirred again—Celeste standing here alone at night, fingers on the frame, whispering words Mara could not fully hear.
Mrs. Wren crossed herself softly.
“Miss Celeste’s grandmother used to say the Blackwood women left memory in the glass,” she murmured. “I told her such stories were sinful nonsense. But Miss Celeste listened.”
Lucien looked at the mirror.
“You’re telling me my wife believed this thing was magic?”
Mrs. Wren looked at him with weary old eyes.
“I’m telling you your wife believed the women in her family sometimes knew things death should have buried.”
Mara stepped closer.
A carved panel beneath the mirror stood slightly uneven, almost invisible beneath the dark woodwork.
She touched it.
A flash tore through her.
Celeste in this room.
Tears on her face.
Her hand pressing a ring-shaped seal into warm wax over a letter.
Her whisper: If Mara dies with me, let her wake where the truth still lives.
Mara gasped and staggered back.
Lucien caught her before she fell.
“What happened?”
“She knew,” Mara breathed. “Celeste knew something like this could happen.”
Lucien’s grip tightened.
“What kind of ‘something’?”
Mara pressed one hand to her head.
“She believed the mirror… not exactly swapped us. More like… carried what was unfinished.” She looked up at the painted women staring down. “She thought if one woman died with truth no one would hear, another could bear it.”
Lucien stared.
“You’re asking me to accept a ghost story.”
“I’m asking you to explain why your wife left instructions for a dead journalist.”
He had no answer.
Mara knelt and opened the carved panel.
Inside lay a bundle wrapped in black cloth.
A ring.
A small ledger.
And three sealed letters.
One addressed to Lucien.
One to Mara Ellison.
And one to Whichever of us survives.
Mara’s hands shook as Lucien broke his own seal first.
He read in silence.
The blood drained from his face.
“What is it?”
He swallowed once before answering.
“She thought Edwin arranged my brother’s death too.”
Mara went still.
Lucien’s older brother, Adrian Graves, had drowned four years earlier after a boating accident tied to Arden business holdings. Society pages had called it tragic bad weather.
Lucien stared at the letter.
“Celeste wrote that Adrian planned to challenge Edwin’s control over some international trust holdings. Two weeks later he was dead.” He looked up slowly. “She found transaction records proving Edwin profited afterward.”
Mrs. Wren made a broken sound under her breath.
Mara opened the letter addressed to her.
It was short.
Mara, if this reached you, I was too late. I asked for your help because you still believe truth matters even when it costs you. If you are somehow reading this from the side of death I fear we both crossed, then I need one final kindness: do not let Lucien become what grief makes men like Edwin. Finish it cleanly.
Tears burned behind Mara’s eyes.
She opened the last letter.
Lucien stepped beside her as she read aloud.
If one of us survives in the wrong life, remember this: Edwin wants the board to sign away the western trusts before New Year. The original ledgers are hidden beneath Helena Blackwood’s portrait. She is the only woman in this house he never dares touch, because she wrote the clause that can destroy him.
Mara turned toward the portrait nearest the end of the gallery.
A severe dark-eyed woman in mourning black looked down from a gilt frame.
Lucien lifted the painting carefully.
Behind it was a wall safe.
Edwin had wanted the west gallery key because the proof was here.
Lucien worked the old mechanism while Mara held her breath.
When the lock finally clicked open, the safe revealed thick original ledgers, trust deeds, and one flash drive hidden inside a velvet pouch.
Lucien stared at the contents.
“This is enough to destroy him.”
“Then why didn’t Celeste go straight to the police?” Mara asked.
Lucien’s face darkened.
“Because Edwin has sat on the Blackwood hospital board, the state arts council, and half the charity commissions in this city for twenty years. He would have buried it unless she had everything.”
Mara looked down at the proof.
Everything.
And they almost both died gathering it.
A sudden noise cut through the room.
Footsteps.
Quick.
Approaching.
Lucien looked up instantly.
Mrs. Wren blanched.
“No one should know we’re here.”
The footsteps stopped outside the gallery door.
Then the handle began to turn.
Lucien shut the safe with one motion and pushed the bundle into Mara’s arms.
His voice dropped low.
“If it’s Edwin, don’t say a word unless I ask you.”
The door opened slowly.
A young maid stood there, pale and breathless.
“Mr. Graves,” she whispered, “Mr. Arden is in the study.”
Lucien’s face hardened.
“He came back?”
The maid nodded.
“He brought a lawyer.”
Mara felt cold slide through her.
A lawyer meant paper.
Paper meant signatures.
And if Edwin believed Celeste’s mind was damaged, he could try to move now—before Lucien had time to use the proof.
Lucien looked at Mara.
For the first time, there was no distance in his eyes at all.
Only urgency.
“He thinks you’re weak enough to control.”
Mara clutched the letters tighter.
“Then let him think that.”
Because if Edwin Arden had returned with legal papers, he wasn’t merely afraid that Celeste remembered.
He was desperate.
May you like
And desperate men made mistakes.
The question was whether Mara could survive pretending to be his niece long enough to make him make one.
