“You are angry at all of them. The people tonight. The ones who whispered.”
“Yes, I am angry. They are prattling gossipmongers who are more interested in keeping an innocent man in scandal than admitting the truth.”
“Maybe they believe it.”
“Believe what?”
“That he killed her. My mother. And the watch fob—”
“What are you saying?” Impatience rolled into a pierce of anger. “Come, Eliza. What are you saying?”
“Promise you will not be—”
“Tell me!”
“He was there.” Breathless. Half sob. “He was there, Felton. I remembered as soon as I saw him. He climbed through my nursery window. He told me not to scream. He made me put my arms around his neck when he climbed back out and he kept telling me over and over not to scr—”
“Enough.” Everything blurred. Her face. Her eyes. He scooted to the edge of the carriage seat and smacked his fist into the door, until the window glass rattled. A knot swelled in his throat and he could not look at her. “You lied to me about Lord Gillingham, and now you are lying to me about my father.”
“I am not lying, Felton, I—”
“You were wrong. I believed you, and you were wrong.” He raked a vicious hand through his hair. “Think not that I will believe this too.”
“It is true.”
“My father killed no one.”
“But he was there—”
“No, Eliza, he wasnotthere.” He faced her and grabbed her shoulders. “You must stop this. Stop it, I say. I will not have you bring this hurt on my family. I will not have more lies. I will not have more accusations just because you…because you …”
“Because I what?”
“Because you want to end the danger so badly your mind will tell you anything.”
“It is not true, Felton.” More tears. They wracked the shoulders he clung to. “I remembered before the nightmare. I remembered his voice. I remembered what he said to me. Ask him. Ask him if he took me. Ask him, Felton, please—”
“My father is not a murderer.” He grasped her face, pulled her close enough he felt her uneven gasps of air chill his cheeks. “Eliza.” Choked words. Shaking words. “Eliza, you do not know what you are doing. You are wrong. Just like you were wrong about Lord Gillingham—only worse.”
“I am sorry.”
Sorry.The word pulverized him. She was destroying them. Destroying Mamma for the second time. Destroying Papa after all these years of pretending the accusations didn’t exist and hiding from them.
Destroying Felton. His name. Any pride he had left. What would happen when she told? Would it all start over again? Everything they’d barely lived through the first time?
And she was sorry.
He pulled away from her and groped in the darkness for the carriage door. He flung it open. Thick fog swirled in. “Driver, stop!”
“What are you doing?” She snatched his arm, but he jerked from her touch. “Felton, please—”
He leaped out when the carriage was still moving and shouted the driver on. Moist wind slashed through him, cold and biting from the earlier rain, and the carriage door flapped back and forth as the vehicle picked up speed again.
Eliza must have stilled the carriage door and leaned out herself, because his name rent the air. The sound faded, drowned out by the wheels churning mud and despair ringing his ears, until finally he heard no voice at all.
Except the one in his head.
He was there.Her weeping lie devoured him as quickly as the fog.I remember. He was there.
