MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 55 - Fifty-Five: The Weight of Secrets

//CLARA//

I woke to an empty bed and the faint scent of him still pressed into the pillow beside me.

The morning light was pale and thin, barely past dawn. He had left sometime before the servants began stirring, slipping away like a ghost through the terrace doors or perhaps through the main door like he had every right to be there.

I did not know which. I only knew that when I reached across the mattress, the sheets beside me were cold.

The man slipped through my bed at midnight and left before dawn like some Gilded Age booty call.

I laughed into the pillow, muffling the sound against the linen. I have officially lost all sense of self-preservation. Did I even have one to begin with?

Well, it did not matter. I felt like an idiot. Good to know.

The morning passed in a blur of small duties and larger distractions.

Hattie brought breakfast. I ate without tasting it. She asked if I had slept well, and I told her I had, which was not entirely a lie. I had slept. Just not alone.

Casimir was gone by the time I descended the stairs. Higgins informed me that the master had gone into the city to attend to business. Something about railway contracts and a meeting with his lawyers. He would return before dinner.

I nodded as if I cared about railway contracts. As if I had not spent the night wrapped around him like ivy on a wall.

The afternoon was interminable.

I tried to read. The words blurred. I tried to embroider, a skill Eleanor apparently possessed but I had absolutely not inherited. After stabbing my finger for the third time, I threw the hoop across the room and watched it bounce off the chaise lounge.

Hattie did not even blink. She simply retrieved it and set it quietly on the dressing table.

A letter arrived just past two o’clock. Oliver’s handwriting, the ink smudged in places where his excitement had outpaced the nib.

Eleanor,

Mr. Chamberlain has called for an expansion. He wants to discuss mass production—scaling up, moving beyond the prototype, getting machines into the hands of every printing house that wants one. Printing companies across the city are already asking about purchasing their own Linotype units. We are going to need a proper factory. A real one, not just a warehouse. I have sketches. I need your eyes on them.

Write back soon.

— O

I read the letter twice, then a third time. A factory for mass production. The Linotype was no longer a dream. It was becoming something real, something that would outlast all of us.

I pulled a sheet of paper from the desk drawer and dipped my pen in the inkwell.

Oliver,

A factory means more than just a building. It means a supply chain. Raw materials. Skilled labor. A system for training new operators. We need to think bigger than Mr. Chamberlain’s initial vision.

How many machines can we produce in a month? What is the cost per unit? Who are our competitors, and how fast can they copy what we have built?

I want to see your sketches. But I also want to see numbers.

— E

I set the pen down and stared at the words. Then I folded the letter and sealed it with wax. Tomorrow, it would go to Oliver. Tomorrow, we would begin planning the next phase of what was already becoming a very profitable business.

For now, I sat alone in my room and watched the light fade.

Casimir returned just before dinner.

I heard the front door open, heard the low rumble of his voice as he spoke to Higgins, heard his footsteps on the marble floor. He sounded tired. Whatever business had taken him to the city had not been kind.

I waited a few minutes, long enough to seem like I had not been watching the clock, then descended the stairs toward his study.

The door was slightly ajar. I heard voices before I reached it—two of them.

I braced myself for Aunt Cornelia’s shrill pitch, for another round of her scheming, for the inevitable lecture about Adelaide Chase and duty and what a proper wife should be. But the voice that came through the crack in the door was not hers.

It was male, a voice I did not recognize. And it was talking about something entirely different.

I stopped at the edge of the corridor, pressed my back against the wall, and listened.

Again. I was beginning to think his study had a revolving door.

I did not choose to become a professional eavesdropper. Yet here I was, stumbling over conversations I had not intended to hear. Eleanor would have been scandalized. But confidential information kept finding me. I could turn around and go back to my room. But where was the fun in that?

"The axle was cut," the unfamiliar voice said. "We confirmed it. Someone wanted you in that ditch, Mr. Guggenheim."

The axle. The crash. The night at the Gnarled Oak.

I had not forgotten about it. I had simply buried it under more pressing matters. Like my business. Like Bartholomew and Aunt Cornelia’s schemes. Like a certain guardian who apparently had no concept of personal space.

"Do you have a name?" Casimir’s voice was flat.

"Thurston Holdings. We suspect one of the major shareholders. His father—" The voice hesitated. "His father took his own life after the bankruptcy. The son blames you."

I pressed my hand over my mouth.

He drove a man to suicide.

The thought landed like a stone in my chest. I had known Casimir was ruthless. I had watched him dismantle Bartholomew with a few cold words, had seen him threaten Aunt Cornelia with an asylum, had heard him talk about destroying competitors the way other men talked about the weather.

But I had never felt it. Not like this. Not with a dead man’s name hanging in the air between us.

A man who had lost everything. A man who had stood where Casimir stood, who had built something, who had watched it crumble. And his son was out there somewhere, carrying that grief like a blade, waiting for the moment to strike.

I pressed my palm flat against the wall, steadying myself.

Someone had wanted him dead. I had been in that carriage too. I could have been the casualty. Or we both could have been.

I should have been frightened. I should have been horrified. I was both.

And he had not told me.

"We do not have enough for an arrest," the voice continued. "Not yet. But we have a direction. We will keep digging."

"Do that," Casimir said. "And keep this between us. I do not want anyone to know. Especially Eleanor. She was with me when the incident happened. I will not have her dragged into this."

Too late, I thought. You beautiful, infuriating idiot. Too late.

All these months, he had let me move on while he hunted the man who tried to kill us. And now he wanted to keep it from me. Again.

Anger and worry twisted in my chest, tangled so tightly I could not separate them. He was trying to protect me. Of course he was. He always would. That was who he was. But protecting me did not mean shutting me out. It did not mean carrying this alone while I sat in ignorance, believing the crash was finally behind us.

I had been in that carriage too. This danger was not his to carry by himself. It was ours.

I wanted to push open the door. I wanted to walk into that room and tell him exactly what I thought of his noble, infuriating silence. I wanted to shake him and hold him all at once.

But I did not move.

If I confronted him now, he would only tighten his grip. He would watch me closer, guard me harder, lock me away from the truth he thought I could not handle.

I pressed my back against the wall, forced myself to breathe, and made a decision.

I slipped back up the stairs before they could finish.

My heart was pounding. My palms were damp. I pressed them against my skirts and slammed the door closed behind me.

I would not sit in ignorance. I would learn. I would watch. I would wait.