Close enough. James forced his fingers to loosen their death grip on the letter, holding it out toward his brother. “Rose just told me something. About Mother.”
Enoch took the paper, his expression shifting from concern to wariness. “What about Mother?”
“Vincent Dunhill killed her.” The words came out flat, emotionless, like he was reporting the weather instead of confessing the worst truth he’d ever spoken. “Rose says he poisoned her. Then threatened to say her mother did it if she and Rose didn’t sing in his theater.”
His brother went completely still, his gaze dropping to the paper.
Shock radiated between them, battering James’s chest, while Enoch stared at the folded letter in his hand.
Enoch’s fingers tightened on the note until the edges crumpled. The muscles in his jaw worked, and something dark flickered across his face—something James recognized from the rare times his brother let his composure slip.
“Read it.” James’s voice came out hoarse. “It’s a letter Vincent wrote to blackmail Rose’s mother, if she ever tried to leave him.”
He unfolded the letter, slow and careful, as though the paper itself might bite. Quiet pounded hard around them while Enoch’s eyes moved across the page.
He studied his brother’s face, searching for…what? Shock? Rage? Some mirror of the numbness that had settled in his own chest like frost creeping across a windowpane?
But Enoch’s expression didn’t change, except for a tightening at the corners of his eyes. A storm gathering. When he finally looked up, his blue gaze held a coldness James had rarely seen.
“He deserves to hang.” Enoch’s words came out low, measured, but underneath them ran something as lethal as lightning. “I’m not sure if he actually poisoned Mother. I remember her being sick, and the doctor never questioned her illness. But Vincent Dunhill deserves to hang for what he’s done to Rose and her mother all these years.”
The coldness in his voice matched the ice spreading through James’s veins. His brother—steady, controlled Enoch who rarely let emotion override reason—was talking about hanging a man.
And James understood the feeling.
Under his own frozen horror, a fire had caught—a coiling, bitter smoke in his belly, anger sharp as ice.
Vincent had been in their home. Had played the courteous guest and lied with every word. All the while, he’d been killing their mother. Bit by bit. Slow, deliberate poison.
“Rose thinks it’s her fault.” The words scraped out of him. “Because her mother brought Vincent here. Because?—”
“That’s ridiculous.” Enoch’s tone sharpened. “Rose was a child. Her mother was a victim.”
That was true. Of course it was. Rose bore no blame for Vincent’s evil.
But the look on her face when she’d spoken haunted him—the way guilt and fear had stripped her raw, like she could never believe herself innocent.
He’d stood there, wordless, while she apologized for what she could never have caused, while her eyes flicked up at him, braced for his judgment. Braced for him to condemn her for her mother’s choices. For Vincent’s crimes.
His chest tightened. He had to go after her. Had to tell her?—
“Where is she now?” Enoch’s question pulled James back.
“She ran out.” He grabbed for his walking sticks, pain crackling up his bad leg. “I need to find her. I need to tell her?—”
“Tell her what?” Enoch’s hand closed around James’s arm. “James, look at me.”
He forced himself to meet his brother’s gaze, though everything in him screamed to go after Rose. To find her before she convinced herself that he blamed her.
“What are you going to say to her?” Enoch’s voice carried that particular tone he used when he was trying to talk James down from something reckless. “Have you thought this through?”
Thought it through? His mother had been murdered. Maybe. Rose had been living with that knowledge for years, trapped by Vincent’s threats. And he’d just stood there, more lifeless than one of his carvings, while she apologized for something that wasn’t her fault.
“I need to tell her it’s not her fault.” The words came out rough, desperate. “I need to tell her I don’t blame her, or her mother, for what Vincent did.”
Enoch gave a single nod. “Good. Tell her I don’t either. None of us would possibly think that.”
Something in James eased—a brittle knot inside him loosening enough to let him breathe. “Thank you.”
