Even Thalia could not have known what those raised, sniping voices would do. One moment, she was holding her palms to her temples to try and ease the pressure that pulsed within; the next, her mind exploded with visions, playing out like fragmented scenes of a theatrical.
She saw her brother, red-faced and wild-eyed, jabbing an accusatory finger in her face. The surroundings seemed to suggest he was in the drawing room of Holdridge Court, though she could not focus on the wallpaper or the furnishings to be certain when Kenneth looked so… twisted and frightening in the glimpse of memory.
“You think yourself above me! You think you are somehow superior because you married into a fortune!”his voice snarled, spittle flying.“You will learn, sister… You will not rest easy after this!”
His words and expressions jumped in a jarring patchwork of fractured memory, roughly stitched together. She was aware that parts were missing, and she was almost glad of it, for she could not imagine that anything her brother had to say in this memory was pleasanter than this.
She put a hand to her heart and rubbed slow circles, as if that might ease the sudden ache that twinged there. A pain of… what? Betrayal? Hurt? Fear? She did not know, her feelings as disjointed as the fleeting return of those memories.
We fought. I do not know when, but we fought.A gasp slipped from her throat as she realized that what Henry had alluded to might be true, after all.
“The last time you saw him, Thalia, he swore he would have vengeance on you. You have not seen him for two years, for good reason… And you did promise you would make hersuffer.”That is what Henry had said, and her memory seemed to support it.
Yet, the Kenneth standing at her side, staring at her with the most intense concern in his hazel eyes was not the one screaming at her in her recollection. The Kenneth who settled his hand on her shoulder and whispered urgently, “Are you well? Can I fetch you anything? Truly, I think I must take you upstairs to your old room, where you can rest,” was not even an echo of that howling, threatening terror in her mind.
Andhehad said that he was not the same man he was two years ago.
Is that when we fought? What did we fight about?
She could not coax the question into spoken words, her throat so dry and tight it was a wonder she could breathe.
“I swear to you, Thalia, I would never do anything to harm you,” Kenneth said, his voice cracking. “I know you do not remember, but I have been so ashamed of how we parted ways. Please, Thalia. Stay.”
She scrunched her eyes shut. She did not know what or who to believe anymore. Even Dorothy was not much comfort, as Thalia’s brain fought to weave together the thirteen-year-old girl that she had known and the seventeen-year-old woman trying to help.
“You are every bit your father’s son,” she heard Henry hiss at Kenneth, the two of them shooting daggers at one another.
My fatherisselfish, but what reason could he have to want me dead? He has everything he wanted, does he not?Nausea crept up Thalia’s throat, and she rose sharply from her chair with her hand to her stomach.
Maybe, she muttered an apology. Maybe, she did not. All she knew was that she needed to get out of there as swiftly as possible before she keeled over or worse. How was she supposed to recover or hope to focus on getting better when she now had to worry about whether or not her family had attempted to have her killed?
It was all absurd and terrifying and she could not endure it anymore.
Struggling for breath, she ran for the carriage.
She was not aware that anyone had followed her until a hand reached past her shoulder and grabbed the handle of the carriage door, opening it wide for her.
“Thalia, I—” Henry began to say, but she waved his words away, turning with blurry eyes to stare at him.
“I just want to sleep,” she said crisply. “I want to rest.”
She headed into the peace of the carriage, able to take her first full, deep breath as the door quietly closed and Henry moved out of sight.
Would my father or Kenneth really try to kill me?was her only thought as the carriage pulled away from the only home she could remember; a place that no longer felt like sanctuary, but a place of knotted mysteries that she did not yet have the strength to unravel.
CHAPTER 13
Should I go to her?
Henry eyed the words he had subconsciously written on a piece of paper that wassupposedto be a letter to one of his business associates.
He grabbed the paper and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it toward the fireplace. It landed in the flickering flames and though he had a mountain of work to be getting on with, he paused and watched as the paper curled and blackened, run through with veins of glowing red, before it became ash and crumbled away.
“This is bloody hopeless,” he muttered and sat back in his writing desk chair.
Closing his eyes and expelling a strained breath, he ran his hands through his hair and listened to the irksome ticking of the clock on his bureau. It was almost midnight.
After returning from Farhampton, Thalia had gone up to her chambers without a word to him, escorted by Mrs. Fisher. Seeking distraction,hehad come to his study to try and make a dent in the correspondence and contracts that were stacking up with each passing day, but his thoughts had not received the same instruction. For hours, he had put quill to paper and written nothing, his mind wandering constantly to his wife upstairs.
