I sighed. “Hello, Mama.” I placed the pewter stick back into the basket and rose to my feet. When I smoothed out the fabric of my dress, the crimson hue danced with the flames catching the small droplets of chains from the waist chain around the corset.
“You look well. I’m surprised nevertheless. Have you come back to save your family—the ones that you abandoned in their time of need?” Mama twisted her lips, the light in gray-blue eyes ignited furiously. “Miriam is beside herself and too delicate to understand what it means for our family. The kind of vultures that’d eat us up if word was to spill. I was lucky enough to be able to sell the last of the household goods that had any value. With you here, we can resume things as normal, and we can—”
“No.”
Mama pursed herlips together.
I fiddled with my ring—the one Silas presented me many moons ago in the same sanctuary I now stood in.
The church was the same, the red carpet pleated by sunlight streaming through colored glass. At the altar was the podium carved into the base of the stand. The depiction of the gods I so long ago had felt were lost.
“What do you mean, ‘No?’” Mama sneered.
I squared my shoulders. “I mean no. I came back, not for you. I came back for Miriam. I came back to say goodbye.”
“Do you not realize what Miriam had to suffer through while you were gone! I had to offer her hand to William lest he spilled what had happened in the church the night the beast took you away from us.” She pulled me in tight, bony fingers digging into the soft felt of my cloak. “Are you so heartless to condemn your own flesh and blood?”
I gripped her hands, biting my tongue at the worst of the curses I wish I’d uttered every day of my life. Since Father, it had been nothing more than how to save the family from ruin. I had been used as a pawn designed by Mama to escape the fate that was helplessly bestowed onto us from a dead man. There had been other ways, I am sure. Ways that would have not guaranteed us to stay in the limelight of society but ways nevertheless ensured that Mama’s own daughters still had choices they could make.
Instead, she had led one daughter to the wolves to be swallowed whole without a second thought allfor a name that would never deign the legacy she so claimed it ought to.
Mama’s wrinkled face showed much in the months I have been gone, worried over such trivial matters of a broken name, withering away as I had made me second-guess if she had succumbed to my illness. With Silas’s blessing, I offered one kindness left to the woman who was no longer my mother, not in the ways that truly mattered.
“If you thought I was here for you or the family, you are sorely mistaken. Meet me at the Tearoom at sunset. Tell Miriam as well. You will do this for me, or so help me God, Mama, I will tear you down with me,” I growled. Before she could utter a word, I spun on my heels and left the church.
Twenty-Seven
Outside of the Tearoom, trepidation thundered in my chest as my fist clenched at my side. I fiddled with Silas’s heavy ring, the metal cutting into my finger. I drew the umbrella down, the sun kissing my brow, took a breath in, and opened the door to the shop.
It was as I remembered, tables clustered in the shop with ladies engaged in chatting, enveloping the space in cacophony. Steam rose from hot cups of tea nestled in fine china. Waves of lavender, rose hips, hibiscus, and earthly roots crashed into one another, turning about the establishment as spirits. There were earnest looks as I entered from the women sitting at the packed tables. It was not that long ago I was one of them, listening to gossip and converging with themasses for the simple hope of what every young lady in high society wanted, a love match. That had been off the table for quite some time during these meetings.
I glided to an open table, and a cup was turned over.
A lady rushed over, her service uniform a mess of wet stains all in variance of hues. “Apologies, ma’am. Hope I was not keeping you long. What can I get you?” She clasped her hands in front of her, wryly wringing them.
Her shoulders were pensive as she bit her lips, waiting for a lurid of harsh words to be hurled at her again.
I inclined my head toward the tea bar as glittering bottles and jars beckoned from their glass case. When I spied a bottle of green, a smile crept upon my lips. “Tell your barman that I’d like la fée verte.”
The server’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, ma’am, we do not serve that sort of drink here. I do not know where you are from, but liquor, especially la fée verte, has been banned for quite some time.”
I leaned closely, dropping my voice. “I think you’d make an exception for me. After all, to any untrained eye, they might be a well-disguised jar but dangerous to one that knows.” I pulled a coin from the pouch, sweet elation pulsing. “Here is something to sweeten the deal. Tell your man there is one with his name if he were to look the other way.” The server frowned to where I pulled another coin from my satchel. “Some advice is to make the bottles indiscreet by puttingthem in brown bottles and out of the limelight. Would be ashamed if this place were to close due to a little issue such as that.”
The server took the coin and flipped it over to examine its validity, then deposited it into her pocket before striding to the bar with her mission.
I leaned back and watched the exchange between her and the bartender. The man’s gaze flickered toward me, brow raised as he argued with the woman. He did not appear to believe her until she pulled out the lone coin. He glanced back, and this time, I smiled and waved. The man quickly worked, pouring the green drink into a glass. Setting a sugar cube upon a silver spoon, he dripped water onto it and into the aphrodisiac, spiriting the glass body until I was face to face with its shape.
I placed the other silver coin into the palm of the server. She only nodded before slipping back to the bar.
I sipped the absinthe, the taste of black licorice and anise dancing upon my lips. I tried to push the thought of the possibility of Silas being here, sipping the delightfully banned drink alongside me. The ache clung to my heart and my empty left hand.
I swirled the green around the glass, watching the door for Miriam. I had not the slightest clue what I was to say, and in the months I had been away, there had been many things to say. She did not have to worry about my health or my safety, the books I had read, the lessons I had learned under Ayla and Silas’s instructions had filled my days in ways that mattered.Delightful ways I had often yearned for more so than for any man. I was a corpse when I left, and upon returning, I was alive again.
For so long, I had been made to be someone I was not. That I had to be for the sake of Miriam and the fate of our family in the wake of Father’s death. I had to take the role of the older sister and take the brunt. Feed the ostentatious lies Mama had hoped would save our family.
Now, the person that sat in the tea shop sipping absinthe was no longer the same quiet girl.
This woman had venom.
