I will see you again, Jenny.
Your loving Papa
The letter crumpled in her hands as she pressed her face to Kendrick’s shoulder and cried.
Through bloody tears, Genevieve reread the words in her father’s hand again.
And again.
And again.
The most amazing, unlooked-for Christmas gift, full of hope that one day she would read these words. Even as they smote her heart, they found all the hopes smashed by Laurent and Cuthbert and twenty years of darkness and held them up to the light.
This night had begun to put all her broken pieces back together.
And Kendrick had done this for her?
“How did you know where to go?” she asked, pulling off her gloves and wiping her face with them.
“Elspeth told me your address.”
“And you saw Hetty? You really went all that way?”
“I did. She misses you. Maybe at some point, we can go and see her again in a way that won’t jeopardize the Ossuary’s secrets.”
Genevieve pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. “But you couldn’t have known…”
“No, I didn’t, but I hoped there would be something left behind I could bring back to you.”
“Why?” she whispered, looking up at him through the blood crusting on her lashes.
He reached out and wiped the tears away with his thumbs. “I wanted you to have a good Christmas.”
Genevieve ran her bare fingers over the letter, straightening out the crease she’d made in the paper. She carefully slipped it into the book.Her voice cracked. “How can I ever repay you for this?”
Kendrick frowned in confusion. “There is no ledger between you and me. You are my wife, Jenny. If I was able, why shouldn’t I have done it? What is too much for the woman to whom I have pledged myself?”
I do not deserve this man who gives me so much, she thought. The events of the night felt as though they had cracked her heart right open, freeing all that she had been holding on to for twenty years. She reached up to touch his face. “No one has ever loved me like this.”
Kendrick went still under her hand.
“You don’t think the word fits?” she asked, throat suddenly tight.
“No, it does fit.” He clasped her hands and kissed them. “You woke me up, Genevieve, when I didn’t even know I was walking through this world asleep. You are my wife. My home. My only love. But I declared myself through actions rather than words because of your hurts—your fears.”
All the worries and fears she had stored up inside melted away under the joy of his declaration. She recalled what he had said in the weeks before, about standing before a window on a dark street, watching those inside participate in the rhythms of life. And she had wondered how she could usher him in.
The answer had been before her all the time. “For the first time in twenty years, I’m not scared anymore. Because I love you.” She opened her arms to him. “I love you. Come in from the cold, Kendrick.”
He dipped his head and kissed her, and Genevieve was finally home.
ChapterThirty-Eight
Rats. He could hear rats in the walls.
Laurent’s lip curled in a sneer as he woke in the rundown accommodations by the water. He could hear their squeaking and their feet scurrying. He could picture their beady, little eyes, their disagreeable expressions as they filched what they could from a larder.
It made him sick to think he had fallen so low.
