Millstone of Doubt by Erica Vetsch

Author:Erica Vetsch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

JULIETTE BLOTTED THE LAST PAGE, careful not to smear the ink on the black-edged paper. She had spent time with Agatha over the past two days, helping her with the correspondence surrounding her father’s death and filling in time.

“So you’ll go with me?” Agatha asked.

“Of course.” Juliette was glad to have something to do for her friend, an errand that would get them out of the house this Monday afternoon.

“And you don’t mind?”

“No. Now is a perfect time. We can arrive well before they close.”

“Thank you. I didn’t want to go on my own, but I didn’t want to take Mr. Earnshaw. He offered to accompany me, or even go in my stead if I would write a letter of permission. He insisted that, as Father’s accountant, he already knows all of Father’s business, but what if the bank is holding something personal for my father? It could be anything. Father visited the bank all the time. I think he was there more often than at his club.”

Before continuing, Agatha rang for the maid and asked her to fetch their bonnets and cloaks.

“I knew so little about my father that if something personal is in the vault, I don’t want to share it with anyone else just yet. Is that odd?”

“I don’t think that’s odd at all.” And she didn’t. Her own relationship with her parents was complicated, and she could understand Agatha wanting at least a glimpse into her father’s mind and heart. She had felt the same when her parents had gone missing, and she’d been thrown into an entirely different world than what she had thought awaited her after boarding school.

Later, as they neared the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street, Agatha clutched the papers and the key to her father’s security vault, as if they might try to escape. “I don’t know why this task seems so difficult. Perhaps it is because every time I do something like this, it drives home the point that my father is truly dead. He never would have allowed me, his daughter and a mere woman, access to his personal vault at the Bank of England. But here I am about to invade his privacy, and there is nothing he can do to stop me.”

Agatha’s maid sat quietly in the corner of the carriage, ignoring them as she had been trained to do. It still seemed wrong to Juliette to behave as if servants were not present, and she wanted to guard her tongue lest she give the woman fodder for gossip. Not that she knew the maid would natter about her mistress to the other servants, but it was always a possibility.

“I don’t think your feelings are wrong. Everyone’s grief is different. Don’t think of this as an invasion of his privacy. Think of it as taking responsibility for the business empire he built.”

“I do not think he intended me to take over his business empire. I think he intended me to marry a man who would take over for me.

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