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which to force his hand. Lucy therefore went to the widower of her mother’s sister, Uncle Lowell in Nottingham, and Buckles magnanimously granted her an annuity of thirty pounds per annum.
    Now, more than three years later, she held this will in her hands, feeling her anger build. If these pages had been written by her father, then either he had established monstrous debts in the last few months of his life, or Lucy and Martha had been horribly cheated. Instead of living in misery and want, she ought to be a free gentlewoman of independent means. Her share of the fortune, five thousand pounds, was hardly a staggering sum, but it was enough to establish a comfortable and independent life. It ought to have been hers. It
was
hers, and someone had conspired to steal it away.
    Lucy tried to imagine who that someone might be. Perhaps her Uncle Lowell, who valued money so highly, but that hardly made sense. He certainly did not want for money, and prized his quiet even more than his wealth. An extra ten thousand pounds would not significantly improve his lot, but a dependent niece had clearly altered it for the worse.
    Also a suspect was Mr. Buckles, but, again, the fact that he was in a position to manipulate her did not mean he possessed motivation to do so. Papa’s death meant that Mr. Buckles came into a comfortable and well-established estate that provided him with a healthy income from rents. If the new will were to be believed, Mr. Derrick had raised threedaughters, set a handsome table, and stuffed a library full of books while managing to save ten thousand pounds. Surely the property itself was valuable enough to dissuade any man of some intelligence from such extremes. Beyond that, Mr. Buckles had the patronage of Lady Harriett, so if he had any serious wants, surely that lady would offer such assistance as he required. And above all else, forgery was a crime that carried the penalty of hanging with little chance of reprieve. No sane man would risk these consequences without a desperate motivation.
    What of the solicitor Mr. Clencher? He would have been in an excellent position to deceive the courts, but Papa would never have done business with someone of so little integrity. If none of these men, then who? Perhaps some villain Lucy did not know. Of course, there remained yet another possibility—that the will she now held was the forgery—but who stood to gain from the creation of such a document? Lucy had nothing of her own to pay in the search for the truth, so this new will could hardly be part of a confidence game played upon her. More than that, the will
felt
right, just as the old one, she now understood, felt wrong.
    All of which begged the question of what to do next. Lucy could not ask her uncle or brother-in-law for help because, though their guilt was certainly unlikely, they had nevertheless been the first two people she suspected. Similarly she could not ask Martha, since it would be wrong to set her upon a quest she must conceal from her odious husband and which, though it was but a remote possibility, might lead to her husband’s execution. She supposed she might ask Lord Byron, and the idea was not without its attractions. Unfortunately, Lord Byron had a reputation for rakishness and distraction, and these were not the traits a vulnerable young woman sought in a legal adviser. Moreover, in light of her near elopement with Jonas Morrison four years earlier, arranging clandestine meetings with Lord Byron was altogether too dangerous.
    There was but one person Lucy could think of—Mary Crawford. Though their acquaintance was new, Lucy believed she could trust Miss Crawford. She had to trust someone, and a charming and independent lady of fashion, one whom Lucy had managed to impress, seemed to herthe best possible choice. She hated to impose upon a stranger with something of this nature, but there was more in the balance here than mere money. Her father had wanted Lucy to have something, and an unknown