Too Late to Beg the Heiress

Edith is the true heir of the Ashford family. Camilla, who has passed herself off as the real daughter, arranges for their grandmother to fall down a staircase and lets Edith take the blame. Edith's parents and her brother Adrian believe Camilla's version and send Edith to a convent. Inside, the nuns and staff beat and neglect her until her left leg is permanently damaged. When she is allowed to leave, she comes home to a house that treats her as an outsider. Meals are served without her, guests are told nothing good about her, and she is reminded often that she is not wanted. She keeps insisting she never touched her grandmother, though no one listens. At a Christmas dinner years later, her father Edmund knocks against her and breaks her prosthetic leg. In the confusion of that evening, details of what actually happened start to surface, first as rumors among the staff, then as questions Adrian cannot let go of. Their grandmother, who has been unconscious since the fall, wakes up. Adrian begins looking into the convent records and the night of the accident on his own, tracking down a groundskeeper and an old ledger that do not match the story the family was told. Piece by piece, the abuse Edith suffered and the real cause of her injury come out. Edmund and the rest of the family are left facing what they did to her, and they try, clumsily and too late, to make amends. Camilla, watching her arrangement come apart, starts destroying papers and paying off the people who could still talk, working to keep the truth from going any further than it already has.