She pressed her fists to her eyes, shoving back the tears that burned, but they slipped through anyway. She just couldn’t contain it anymore.
“You ruined everything!” she rasped. “I hate you! Do you hear me?” She lifted her face and howled at the mouldy ceiling. “I hate you!”
She froze, stunned by her own venomous words, unsure if she were crying out to her dead father or to God.
“Shut yer yappin’!” Jackie barked from down the line.
She barely heard the man’s voice over the rush of blood in her ears and the echo of her own wicked confession. Is that what she’d become? A hater of man and God? Trapped in a snare of her own making?
Shaking started in the pit of her belly and spread, so violently she grasped the edges of the wooden cot and held on for dear life. She had to, or she would break.
But it was too late.
She slumped over, unable to bear the weight of her own deception any longer, pushed down by a truth so heavy it was impossible to raise her head. She had never truly hated her father. Not really. She’d merely wanted him to love her as a father should, to care for her more than himself, and when he hadn’t, when he’d rotted in that gaol cell unrepentant towards both God and her to the very end, she’d clung to bitterness instead of that painful truth.
Still, was she not following in his footsteps? She’d ruined herself as thoroughly as he had. No, worse. He’d never blamed her for his sins, yet here she was accounting to him all her woes.
She bit her bottom lip until she tasted the salt of blood. Jonah had given in to God and gone to Nineveh. Jesus—despite shouldering the sins of the world—had submitted to His Father’s will. And here she sat in a damp prison, clutching an anger she never should have clung to in the first place. What a fool.
Her head hung even lower. “I—”
The whisper stuck in her throat like a hot coal, one she would either have to swallow forever or spit out and be rid of for good.
Perspiration prickled cold on her brow, and she tried again. “I forgive you, Father. Do you hear me, God?” She lifted her face, tears burning her cheeks. “I forgive him. I forgive all of it. The betrayal. The lies. Everything. He was a broken man, as misguided as I have been. Oh, Lord, pardon my own transgressions.”
For a long time, she sat there. An eternity, it seemed. The air just as damp and reeking of unwashed bodies. The chill seeping through the fabric of her gown and pores of her skin. The door did not magically swing open to offer her a way out.
But despite all that, ever so slowly—yet steadily—the tightness in her chest loosened, enough so she could breathe again. Then more. Something much more. A strange lightness, long forgotten, replaced the strangling tide she’d swum in for so long.
Peace.
Delicate and fragile but growing with every breath she took.
Straightening, she wiped her eyes, bewildered by the profound change. Not a blessed thing was different behind these bars of steel and hard rock walls, but inside … she gasped. The hollow in her heart that’d whistled with nothing but cold air now pulsed with warmth.
She collapsed against the wall, face to the heavens, a bittersweet smile lifting her lips. Why had she not done this long ago?
Screeching hinges barged into her holy moment, followed by the clap of boots against stone. The turnkey—a burly fellow with a pockmarked face—stopped in front of her cell. “Look lively, Miss Finch. You’ve got a visitor.” He turned his face back towards the door he’d come through, gesturing with a wiggle of his podgy fingers. “Come along. No one here’s going to bite ye.”
“Hear that, boys!” Juliet’s neighbour on the other side of the wall squealed. “Queenie’s got herself a caller.”
“Hope he brought flowers,” Jackie hollered back. “Might knock down some o’ yer stink.”
A foul curse ripped the air. “I’m a bucket o’ posies compared to yer reekin’ carcass.”
The turnkey grabbed his club. “Quiet down, or I’ll have you all muzzled like the pack of yapping curs you are.” He stomped down the row, banging the bars with his bludgeon.
Juliet rose, tentatively peering as far as she could into the corridor. Had Henry recanted his doubt and come to release her? Or maybe by some great miracle Aunt Margaret had rallied to plead for her discharge?
The crisp cadence of expensive shoes clipped along the passageway. Long legs encased in finely pressed trousers entered her view, topped off by a lean torso and the unmistakable shape of a horse face. The man’s spectacles reflected hellish glimmers from the wall torches.
Her brows rose. She never expected this. “Mr. Scather?”
The apothecary stopped in front of her door, head dipping in a curt nod. “Miss Finch.”
This made no sense whatsoever. Surely he didn’t think she was peddling her aunt’s tonics in here. And even if he did, what could he possibly do about it? She was already in gaol!
She pursed her lips, thoroughly confused. “But … why have you come?”
