My love.
Hesitating, I held the journal over the box.
I was basically handingmeover. Everything I’d ever felt for the last seventeen years was in this box. It was me, stripped bare.
Give her your trust, Theo had said.
Well, this was trust on a level I’d never given to anyone.
I dropped the journal into the box and strode into the kitchen to find packing tape.
Twenty-Six
ARIA
Spring was slow in awakening this year. The breeze skating over the North Sea still held a wintry chill, ruffling my hair and sprinkling goose bumps over my bare arms. It was May, but you wouldn’t know it.
The sun peeked through the gray clouds above, spilling pale gold rays across the sky and dappling the dark waters before me.
I stared unseeing, feeling my blouse billow, my hair blowing back from my face. A sudden urge to run into the water and just swim until I could do nothing but float away on the waves swept over me. Seagulls cried in the skies above as if they could sense how empty I felt. It was strange how painfulemptywas. By its very definition, emptiness should feel like nothing.
But the hollowness in my chest triggered soreness to radiate out to every part of me. Even my gums ached. My cheeks. My jaw. My whole body was tense because it was afraid I would shatter apart now that this void had opened inside me and weakened my foundations.
Ironically, missing North hurt worse than any of the horrible shit my exes had said and done to me.
“Ms. Howard!” I could hear a voice calling my name over the squawking of the birds overhead.
Turning, I looked toward the dunes that led onto the estate and back to the castle. Before North, I’d rarely ventured away from the castle without telling anyone where I was going. Every day since he’d left, if the weather permitted, I’d sneak out at lunchtime to be by myself on the private beach.
Sarah McCulloch stood in her housekeeping uniform at the top of a dune. She waved. “Ms. Hutchinson is looking for you, Ms. Howard!”
Back to work, then.
Hoping for a distraction, I nodded and headed up the beach. Sarah turned and left well before I could reach her. I didn’t take offense. Upon her return to work two weeks ago, I noted a marked difference in her. While still reserved, the shyness that caused her to blush like a schoolgirl seemed to have been stomped out by the brittleness of grief. I could see it in her eyes. The light there had dimmed.
But she’d insisted on coming back to work, so I had to let her do what she needed.
As soon as I hit the path again, I brushed as much sand off my feet as possible and slipped into my heels. It was a ten-minute walk back to the castle and in the flat shoes she wore, Sarah was way ahead of me. By the time I reached the entrance, Wakefield was there to hold the door open, and I entered the great hall to find it empty of members.
“Is there something wrong?” I asked the butler.
“I don’t believe so, Ms. Howard. A package has arrived for you. It’s in Mrs. Hutchinson’s office.”
“A package?”
“Yes, Ms. Howard.”
Agnes hopped to her feet a few minutes later when I knocked on her open office door. She rounded her desk and gestured tothe box sitting on it. “This arrived for you twenty minutes ago. It says it’s for theurgentattention of Ms. Aria Howard.”
Frowning, I crossed the room and looked down at the label.
It was handwritten.
And I knew the handwriting.
My pulse raced. “Who left this? When?”
“A courier. Twenty minutes ago,” she repeated, her brows drawn together. “Would you like security to open it fir—?”
