He knew she was keeping something from him. Of course he did. They always knew such things. To keep anything from him felt ugly, and she knew it was a rot that might run out of control, threatening everything they had together. It was time—past time—to explain.
Only perhaps not when they were so tired that she might say the wrong thing, or not give him the support he needed. Not when he was so tired that he would make wrong judgments and equivalences.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I think we must know. There are still a few loose ends, to be sure—Jacintha St. John’s maid at the time of her elopement, the arrest of Veronique and Kenny…”
He said nothing. Physically, they were just as close as the moment before. And yet the chasm opened between them, black, threatening, and terrifying.
“Solomon—”
“We’re home.”
Their marital home was in darkness, apart from the one lamp in the hall turned down low. Consideration kept them as silent as possible as they removed hats and coats and made their way upstairs to the bedchamber she had designed for them both.
They undressed in silence, put out the last light, and all but fell into bed. They lay side by side, without touching, until she took his hand. He did not pull away. His fingers even curled lightly around hers. Yet the hurt rolled off him in waves.
This was worse pain. The truth, as she believed it, would have to be now.
So she told him.
Chapter Seventeen
Jacintha St. Johnhad not slept well since her husband’s death. Which was foolish beyond belief. Infuriating, disappointing, and cold as he was, she had never expected tomisshim.
She had been lying awake for hours as light slowly penetrated the curtains and proclaimed the new day. Terrence was buried. They had said goodbye for the last time, and now the children—whom he had loved despite everything—would have to face life without him.
Jacintha was afraid Bella was rushing into marriage with Han Cordell. It was a good match, and Han was a good man from an excellent family, though he had some odd ideas. Jacintha liked him, one of few people she and Terrence had agreed on. It was just that Bella was so young, as young as Jacintha had been when she met Jason Madly…
She shuddered. Jason had been wild, exciting, reckless, like no one she had ever met before or since. But love would never have saved her from the horror of marriage with him—turbulence, faithlessness, vile behavior, and viler friends she would no doubt have been expected to tolerate or even entertain. She had long ago accepted that would never have worked. Marriage with Jason Madly would have driven her to an early grave.
Twenty years as Terrence’s wife. Almost a whole lifetime of lies and disgust that had in many ways passed her by. All thoseyears of hurt and disappointment had never turned her inside out as Jason had.
Just as well. I could not have survived it again.
Now she was free. She spread her arms out like wings across the bed that Terrence had not shared with her for many years, free and still vaguely discontented. She had grown used to his presence in the house, in the thousand little things that made up marriage and family. No, she had never expected to miss him.
It was time to clear out the rest, burn the guilt.
She rose, washed, and dressed without summoning her maid, seized the reticule in which she kept the key, and went downstairs to Terrence’s study. She delved into the reticule, but it was empty. The key was not there.
It must have fallen out in the bedroom. Brunton would have put it in a drawer. But before she went back to look, some impulse made her turn the handle of the door.
It opened at once, and Jacintha walked in.
Bella sat at her father’s desk, his letters open in front of her. She had been weeping. She looked up and met her mother’s gaze.
Oh God, I should have burned everything when I had the chance…
“He kept my letters,” Bella whispered.
Jacintha’s throat closed up. “Of course he did. You were the apple of his eye. You and Anthony. He loved you.”But he never loved me…
She moved to put her arm around her daughter, and Bella clung to her. Horror and guilt swamped Jacintha. It was a secret she could never be free of, but her children could never know what she had done. Or why.
The sins of the parents…
*
The sound ofher voice almost surprised Solomon.
