“No,” she whispered.
“Don’t you understand?” The words tore from his mouth. “Everything! This infernal responsibility. Now the fire. You. You deserve so much better. I am too bloody damaged for this. I am a broken man. I will drag you down into my personal hell. I’ve already done so. I have no right to do this. No right at all. I should never have told you all this. Now you are in danger—” He choked. Then he stood up with determination, a hard look in his eye. “I can’t be the person you expect me to be. I am sorry.”
With that, he walked out of the room.
Birdie remained sitting in her chair, frozen, feeling like she had entered her very own Waterloo.
After what feltlike hours of endless crying, Birdie got up, dried her eyes, and concluded that Gabriel simply didn’t love her. He didn’t want her. There was nothing to be done. No amount of crying was going to change that fact.
Why should that be such a surprise? It was a discovery that fit neatly into everything else that life had taught her so far. She’d tried, throughout her entire life, to earn other people’s affection. Starting from her family, her parents, her siblings, her teachers, yes, even her friends. She’d attempted to do so by being the perfect daughter, the perfect pupil, the perfect friend. Even now—the perfect wife. One who cleaned, cooked, and managed everything. If she tried hard enough, she reasoned, people would like and accept her. She’d sacrificed everything, her own dreams, her own self. For what? For love? For one kind word?
What had she received in return? She’d been taken for granted by all and sundry.
And Gabriel?
She knew in her heart that the man was capable of great loyalty and love. There was a tenderness, kindness, and decency in him that made her heart hammer. The way his eyes lit up unexpectedly when he smiled one of his rare smiles. Or when he looked at her with a wry smile, like he really saw and understood her. With Gabriel, she felt she could be herself. Ironic, given that he believed her to be someone else entirely.
She’d grasped the opportunity to marry Gabriel with both hands. Yet the entire situation was based on deception. The biggest deception, however, had been towards herself. She’d begun the same game she’d played before: if she tried hard enough, he would see value in her and love her.
Well, things didn’t work like that. Love didn’t work like that. She wasn’t about to beg or grovel for his love. She could not fix whatever was broken in him.
It was not her responsibility to do that.
With sudden clarity she realised that, maybe, it had never been her responsibility to fix anyone in her life: her mother after her father died, her sisters, her brother. Maybe, deep down, she’d believed she was responsible for her father’s death. She stared blindly at the dark blue bed curtains.
“I am not,” she said out loud. “I was never responsible for any of it.”
The hard knot inside her she’d carried around for years loosened. Tears washed it away, and she felt a release.
For the sake of her conscience, she needed to come clean about her deception. She’d tell Gabriel about the real Cecily Banks. Then she’d pack her things and leave.
Resigned,Birdie went down to the library. She collected her things with tired movements, placing the books that she’d used to teach the children on a shelf. She picked up a piece of chalk from the floor.
And froze.
Once more, she bent down to the floor.
There it was again. The cold stream of draughty air did not come from the window, for the window was shut and the curtains were drawn. The door was on the left. This cold stream of air came from the other side.
She followed it to the bookshelf. She remembered how, on the first day after her arrival here, she’d felt that there was something odd about this library. She’d found it strange that half of the bookshelf was dusty, almost white with dust, whereas the other half wasn’t. When she followed that cold stream of air, it led straight to that ever-clean bookshelf.
Her fingers touched the shelves, tracing the wooden board, the bookends, and found that they felt strange. They weren’t leather. She knocked on a book spine. It was wood. An entire row of books consisted of a hard wooden façade of bookends that blended in perfectly with the rest. She pulled on it and heard a mechanism rumble.
The bookshelf slid open without a sound.
Birdie held her breath as she looked down a dark passage. She quickly fetched her candle. The musty, cold, wet smell that wafted up told her that this must be the entrance to the dungeons. Common sense told her it would be a better idea to wait until the morning. But Birdie was in a peckish mood and decided that common sense, or her interpretation thereof, had led her exactly nowhere in her life. Neither had her desire for adventure, but she would not philosophise about this. When a girl was in a medieval castle and had the opportunity to explore a dungeon at midnight, alone in a nightgown, with naught but a candle, naturally she had to precisely do that.
She followed the cold stone steps that wound themselves deeper and deeper underground. Where were they leading? What daredevilry egged her on? She followed a path that seemed endless. Soon, she was in a cellar; to the left and right were vaults with further corridors leading into what seemed a labyrinth of dungeons, but the main stairs twisted further down. Perhaps they led to a torture chamber or oubliette. There would be a dead-end eventually, with maybe a skeleton. Or two.
Her hands reached out to touch the wet stone walls for support as she stepped down. There was a familiar smell in the air. How can it be, Birdie wondered, that I smell the sea? She imagined that she even heard water lapping, but how was that possible? She was inside a building.
She slipped on the stairs, fell, grappled herself upwards, and clung to the slippery wall as she edged her way down. She saw a vague glimmer of light on the bottom.
Her curiosity grew.
She heard voices. Thumping and scraping. Footsteps. The same sounds she’d heard the first two nights in the castle, and then never again.
Birdie gasped when she realised she found herself not in the dungeons, but in a cave of some sort, filled with crates, boxes, and barrels. The ocean water lapped against the shallow shore, and boats were docked on what appeared to be a tiny indoor harbour. Was this still in the castle? Or were they outside?
