“Actually, thanks,” she said, and Harding poured her a generous, overgenerous, measure, and pushed the tumbler across the table to her.

He refilled his brothers’ glasses at the same time and then raised his own.

“A toast,” he said, meeting Harriet’s eyes. “A toast to . . .” He paused, and then gave a short laugh. “To family.”

Hal’s stomach tightened, but she was saved from answering by Ezra’s derisive snort. He shook his head.

“I’m not bloody drinking to that. To freedom.”

Abel gave a chuckle and picked up his own tumbler. “Freedom seems a little harsh. I’ll drink to . . .” He raised his glass, thinking. “To closure. To seeing Mr. Treswick tomorrow and getting home to Edward ASAP. Hal?”

The acrid smell of the whiskey stung her nostrils, and she swirled it, looking down into the tawny, glinting depths.

“I’ll drink to . . .” Words crowded in—unsayable words. Truth. Lies. Secrets. Her throat tightened. There was only one toast that she could find in her heart, the crowding, painful truth, waiting to be blurted out. “To my mother,” she said huskily.

There was a long pause. The whiskey in Hal’s glass trembled as she looked around the circle of faces. Harding’s mustache quivered as he raised his glass.

“To Maud,” he said, his voice harsh with suppressed emotion. The whiskey caught the light, winking solemnly.

Abel swallowed hard, and raised his own tumbler.

“To Maud,” he said, very softly, his voice so low Hal would not have been sure of the word if she had not known what it was already.

Ezra said nothing, but he raised his glass, and his dark eyes were bright with a grief Hal found almost too painful to look at.

For a moment they sat, all four of them, glasses raised in silent remembrance, and then all of a sudden, Hal could bear it no longer. In one movement, she threw back her head and gulped the whiskey down in three long swallows.

There was a short silence, and then Harding burst out with a kind of shakily relieved laughter, and Ezra clapped a slow round of applause.

“Well done, Harriet!” Abel said drily. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, you little mouse.”

There it was again. Little mousy Harriet. But it was not true. It had never been true. After her mother’s death, she had made herself small and insignificant, but the façade that she showed to the world was not the truth of her.

Inside there was an iron strength—the same strength, Hal realized, that had enabled her mother to escape Trepassen, start again in a strange town, pregnant and alone, and build a life for her baby daughter. At the heart of Hal, beneath the unassuming layers and drab clothes, was a deep, resilient core that would keep fighting, and fighting, and fighting. Mice hid and scuttled. They froze in the face of danger. They allowed themselves to be made prey.

Whatever Hal was, she was not a mouse.

And she would not be anybody’s prey.

Uncle Harding, I’m not who you think I am.

When she put the glass down, it rattled against the tray, and she cleared her throat, her cheeks burning with the consciousness of what she was about to do. She remembered Mrs. Warren’s look that first night . . . the look of someone watching a flock of pigeons, who sees a cat suddenly creeping from the shadows of a nearby tree. The look of someone who stands back . . . and waits.

“Well—” Harding began, but Hal interrupted him, knowing that if she did not do this now, she might never do it.

“Wait, I—I have something to say.”

Harding blinked, slightly put out, and the corner of Ezra’s mouth quirked as if he was amused to see his brother discomfited.

“Oh, well, please.” Harding waved a hand. “Be my guest.”

“I—” Hal bit her lip. She had been turning this moment over and over in her mind ever since she left Cliff Cottages, but the right words had not come, and suddenly she knew that it was because there were no right words, there was nothing she could say that would make this okay. “I have something to tell you,” she said again, and then she stood up, not quite knowing why, but feeling unable to stay slack and safe in the corner of the sofa. She felt like she was about to fight, to defend herself from attack. The muscles in her neck and shoulders hurt with tension.

“I found out something when I was back in Brighton. I hadn’t been sure before, but I went through my mother’s papers and I found out—”

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, wishing she had not drained the whiskey so fast, but had saved a sip for now. Harding was frowning; Abel was suddenly tense, leaning forwards in his chair, his expression full of a kind of apprehension. Only Ezra looked unconcerned. He had folded his arms and was regarding her with interest, like someone watching an experiment play out.

“Well?” Harding said, with a little impatience in his voice. “What did you find? Spit it out, Harriet.”

“Margarida Westaway—your sister—she was not my mother,” Hal said.

She felt a great weight roll off her, but there was no relief in its passing, only an aching pain, and a kind of dread as she waited for the crash as it dropped.

There was a long silence.

“I—what?” Harding said at last. He was staring at Hal, his plump, ruddy face scarlet with the heat of the fire, or with shock at Hal’s speech, she was not sure which. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not your niece,” Hal said. She swallowed again. There were tears coming up from somewhere deep inside, and it would have been so easy to let them out—play for their sympathy—but the knowledge made her force them back down. She would not play the victim here. She was done with dissembling.

“I should have realized before—there were . . . things . . . they didn’t add up. But it was only when I went home, I looked in my mother’s papers to try to get to the bottom of it, and I found . . . I found diaries . . . letters . . . making it clear there had been a terrible mix-up. My mother wasn’t your sister. She was Maggie.”

“Oh my God.” It was Abel who spoke, his voice flat and blank with shock. He put his head in his hands, as if to try to contain thoughts that threatened to burst out. “Oh my God. Hal—but this is—this is—” He stopped, shaking his head like someone punch-drunk, trying to shrug off blows. “Why didn’t we see?”

“But—but wait, this means the will is invalid,” Harding burst out.

“For God’s sake!” Ezra said. He gave a derisive laugh. “Money! Is that all you can think of? The will is hardly the most important thing.”

“It’s what brought Harriet here in the first place, so I would say it’s quite important, yes!” Harding shot back. “And the money isn’t the point at all. I deeply resent what you’re implying there, Ezra. It’s about—it’s about—oh dear God, just when we were beginning to get the whole benighted situation sorted out—what in hell’s name was Mother thinking?”

“A good question,” Abel said in a low voice. He was slumped in his seat, his head still in his hands.

“But—but your name was in the will,” Harding said slowly. He had the air of someone whose first shock was beginning to wear off, who was retracing his footsteps . . . trying to piece things together. “Or—wait, are you telling us—are you not Harriet Westaway at all? Who are you really?”

“No!” Hal said quickly. “No, no, I am Harriet. I promise you. And my mother really is Margarida Westaway. But I think your mother must have asked Mr. Treswick to trace her daughter.” Hal’s face felt stiff, and her fingers cold, in spite of the fire. “And somehow the threads became crossed, and he found my mother instead, without realizing the mix-up. I think he must have reported back to your mother that he had found your sister and that she had died, but that she’d had a daughter. And so she put my name in the will—not realizing that I wasn’t her granddaughter at all.”

“How did you not realize?” Abel said, but there was no anger in his voice, only bewilderment. He looked up at Hal, his eyes full of a puzzled pain that she didn’t fully understand. “Surely there were things that didn’t add up—things that made you think—”