Once her hands were free, he carefully moved his grip to her upper arms, shaking her just a little.
“Thalia?” He heard his voice grow more urgent. “Thalia, come to me. Wake up. Come to me. Please, Thalia, if you can hear me, then come to me.”
Her eyes flew open, wide to the whites, her hands shooting up to cover her ears as she stared at him. Not seeing him but staring straight through him as her tears persisted, great gasping sobs wracking her chest as she lay there, seemingly stillpartway between the realm of her nightmare and the land of the conscious.
Unable to think of anything to comfort her, Henry did the only thing he could do; he scooped his arms beneath her and pulled her into his chest, cradling her there in his embrace with all the softness he possessed.
“Hush, my wife,” he murmured, rocking her slightly. “Hush now. You are safe in your library. You are surrounded by the books you love so much. You are awake and alive and safe among their stories. Can you not smell their pages? You cherish the scent.”
Her nostrils flared for a moment, and a shaky breath left her lips. “I… do like that scent.” Her throat bobbed and she inhaled again. “I must have… fallen asleep.”
It was only then that Henry noticed the open book lying beside her, half hidden among the twisted blanket. He could not see the spine to note the title. but it appeared that she was almost halfway through it, an impossible feat to achieve in so few hours.
Did she pick up where she left off? Does she remember?
“I remember,” she whispered thickly, as if reading his mind. “Oh, Henry, I remember.”
CHAPTER 14
“You do?” Henry’s heart lurched in his chest, anxious to know how much his wife recalled, while simultaneously hoping she did not remember much at all.
Thalia shifted in his arms but did not attempt to pull away. “I remember the fight.”
“What fight?”
“I fought with my brother,” she replied haltingly. “I… began to remember at Farhampton, but it was… so fragmented. Snippets, really. But I dreamed of it, of what happened.”
Oh… that is all.A guilty rush of relief swept through his chest, for though hedidhope there would be a day when she remembered everything again, he did not want it to be now. She would pull away from him, she would remove herself fromhis arms, and he was just beginning to get used to the pleasant feeling.
Henry gently brushed a lock of sweat-dampened hair out of her face. “Tell me.”
He already knew most of the details of the argument that had kept Kenneth away from Holdridge for two years, but he did not want to stifle her progress by speaking of it himself. He wanted to hear for himself just how much her injured brain had recalled.
“Kenneth had a secret,” Thalia said quietly. “Only I knew about it. He told me at Christmas. He was here, I think. Said he had been gambling for a while and had lost a great deal. I gave him money—your money, I suppose—and thought that would be that.”
Henry nodded along with her words, encouraging her without saying anything.
“It was not the last time, though,” she added with a frown, as if she were trying to keep hold of the memory. “I gave him money five times to repay debts he had acquired by gambling. The fifth time, I… told him I would not help him anymore. I gave him less than before. It was… not enough, I do not think, but I… would not be swayed. I was insistent that he would receive nothing more from me.
“He screamed at me. He… said such unkind things. He became a version of himself that I had never seen before,” she continued, her voice beginning to shake. “But… I know that he was scared,too. Terrified of what the debt collectors would do, what they would take. Terrified of what it would do to our family if he could not pay it back. I assume he did, but… oh, what a terrible sister I was, to refuse him.”
Henry could not be silent at that. “No, you did the right thing,” he insisted. “I had heard of your brother’s debts. More to the point, I have encountered many a gambler in my life and the best thing onecando is to refuse assistance. Otherwise, they have no reason to remedy the issue themselves.”
“But he is my brother and he needed me,” she rasped. “I abandoned him when he needed me the most. I could have helped once more. I could have… covered that last debt at least. He did not visit me again because… I refused to be a good sister.”
Henry held her a little tighter. “He did not visit because he was ashamed, as he should have been. Youdiddo the right thing, Thalia. I will not have you believing otherwise.”
She sobbed quietly in his embrace, fresh tears making tracks down her beautiful face, those striking green eyes awash with her heartbreak. As he watched her, Henry wished he was better at this, wished he knew what to say and what to do to take the pain from her. But softness had never come easily to him, for it had not been permitted in his formative years.
I studied so many things, learned so much, yet never how to be gentler, how to be tender.
He considered what Luke had told him to do, and gingerly raised his hand to Thalia’s face, his thumb carefully brushing away the tears that fell.
Her eyes widened at the touch, her lips parting as if she might say something, but then her mouth closed again.
A short while later, she sat up, removing herself from his arms entirely… and he was surprised to find that he did not like the sudden emptiness. Somehow, she had fitted in his embrace. Comfortable.
“Even with these memories,” she said, drawing the blanket up over her bent knees, “I do not believe and shall never believe that my brother would go as far as to hurt me for financial gain. Indeed, if I was the one helping him previously, whatwouldhe gain from harming me? He would be even less likely to receive monetary help.”
