Today's Reading
Why on earth would someone decorate the inside of a clock?
I peered deeper. There was something jammed into the topmost gears. I loosened a few screws, shifted things, until orange fluff suddenly obscured my view.
"What do you think, my Micah Bear?" I whispered into my orange kitty's fur as he shoved his face before mine with a rumbling purr, and my troubled heart calmed. I could not remain unsettled when Micah came and found me, tugging at my attention.
My heart melted as I met my cat's dignified gaze. He was one of a kind. His crooked little stub tail. His terrible howl from across the house when he decided he was lonely. The large, pitiable eyes, and the way he hovered. My annoying guardian angel. A castoff like me...who had found love and a home. Also like me.
I didn't need more than what I had right here in this shop. I didn't.
He paused with a look of expectation on his face, ears perked. "I suppose you'd rather I stay, selfish thing that you are." Another affectionate rub with my free hand, and he leaned in harder, tucking his head beneath my chin and vibrating with contentment. How I'd miss this boy if I left. Miss the life that had formed around me here.
Leaving had never occurred to me. Not once. Not until today.
I stared at that brilliantly complex clock and again caught a whiff, wild and windblown, of Blakely House.
A taste. An invitation.
A leap off a cliff.
I threaded a pair of tweezers deep within the clock to retrieve that cloth and nudged the tiny bird etching by accident. It activated like a small button, and when I stood the clock up, a tiny compartment on the bottom opened and something fell out and hit the glass counter.
Tink.
I lifted the tiny golden circle to the light. An engagement ring! A stunning opal that shone like the moon was settled neatly inside a love knot on a band of gold. I turned it over in my hand, holding my breath. Inside, an inscription—For my Sophie. Deepest love, Emmett.
Emmett. Emmett Sinclair, the great-uncle who had supposedly left me his fortune. And the ring was here, in this clock. Not on this Sophie's finger.
The deceased had no immediate family to inherit his holdings... That part of the letter sprang back with the pang of loneliness I'd felt upon skimming it days ago. No family. No one to inherit, except a relation he'd never met.
Laid out before me, the clock, the key, and the ring gave a tiny glimpse of Blakely House, like three pieces to an intriguing puzzle. Even when I tried to focus on Mr. Morgan's Regulator, taking apart the pieces and laying them in perfect order on the counter, my gaze drifted to those three objects.
They called to me in a way nothing in this stale little hamlet did.
Finally, with a quick glance about, I slid open the money drawer and poked inside. Blakely House should be only a train ride away. Might as well keep the coins on me, just in case. Then I could flee in a moment, if that door opened to another of Mum's bitter lovers. But inside I found only worn felt lining the drawer.
Nothing. Truly, nothing? I pulled the drawer open, and it was true. The tax payment and the month's notes had taken everything.
Except...
I shoved a stool over to the shelves on the back wall and climbed up, reaching for a jar on the very top, just out of view. Mad money, Aunt Lottie had called it, and this was a moment of madness. A mere handful of coins jingled as I brought it down, which meant she'd dipped into these too. Quite a bit, actually. A breathless shock filled me with dread. Punctured my security.
I dumped out the meager stores. Sixpence for third-class train travel to Northumberland, a few shillings for a hackney from the station...nothing for food.
And absolutely nothing to leave Aunt Lottie.
When I arrived, if the letter was true, there would be money to repay her, and extra besides. If nothing else, I could sell the seaside cottage called Blakely for a tidy sum, and the profits would more than replace the mad money.
Yet if I didn't take the risk, nothing more was likely to appear in the drawer. At least, not for quite some time. The notes we owed piled up beside the ones still owed to us.
It was only practical that I go. Wise and forward-thinking, just as Aunt Lottie always pushed me to be.
But it meant leaving. And it meant not changing my mind. There would be no scurrying back if anything was amiss. And wiring Aunt Lottie to rescue me wouldn't work, for I'd leave her with nothing with which to come fetch me.
Stay or go.
This excerpt ends on page 22 of the paperback edition.
Monday we begin the book The Voice We Find by Nicole Deese.
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