Alice, wordlessly, stepped forward and gave her an efficient, abrupt hug.
Elin fingered her dress self-consciously, but accepted their welcome, returned the smiles.
“You are all right, then?” Mathilde asked, and Elin nodded.
“Lucy?” I turned to Alice. She gave a quick shake of her head. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had expected it, but the confirmation still gutted me. I could not think of Lucy out there, alone. Trapped in a bush by her leathers. To have loved a thing for so long and then to be the reason for its downfall.
Opening my eyes, I tried to take solace in the tableau in front of me. My motley family, crying their relieved tears. Framed by Bramley, my fallen-down castle. We were missing a roof. But I was home. And I was certain that we were beating toward some kind of resolution.
Otto left quickly, telling me: “I am going to try to get back before Simeon. Try to talk some sense into Sigrid.”
“She is not a little scrap that goes in whatever direction the wind blows.” I frowned in the direction of the palace and then turned back to look at Otto. He had been so helpful to me—at a disadvantage, a danger, even, to his own self.
Reading something on my face, he promised: “I’ll be careful.”
I didn’t know that I would need to be, too.
Inside, Alice recounted the past four days of hunting for Lucy: She’d gone around and through as many trees as she could in the area, waving a lure with fresh meat. She’d asked the neighboring farmers to keep an eye out. She’d walked eight miles downwind from our house, and walked more fields, every day. She had spotted Lucy once—or a bird she thought was Lucy—but the hawk had been too far away to know for sure.
“Take some hope,” Alice reassured me, with a light pat on my arm. Her version of an embrace. “She will not be far. Trained hawks don’t wander.”
“But they lose their training quickly,” I muttered, sinking my head into my hands.
The adventure—the fear, the uncertainty, the final triumph—of the past few days had staved off a deep upset. I had held on to a hope, even, that Lucy would be safely secure when I returned. How many times had she gone up a tree only to return to us once more? But something deep inside of me knew that this time was different, that I had not kept up her carriage, her training, in a consistent enough way to guarantee her return to me. And every hour she had spent alone that week made her recovery less likely. After four days, seeing her again was nearly an impossibility. She had had a taste of the wild and would have lost her trust of man.
A part of me could not blame her. But I could not shake the thought of her getting trapped by her jesses.
Elin and I ate together—Rosie insisting on brushing the dirt from our clothing and Wenthelen shoving more and more food in front of us—and then collapsed in the drawing room. I felt settled, for the moment at least. Listening to the contented bickering of my daughters. Watching the firelight dance on all their faces. The world held at bay.
Elin, still, looked a little shell-shocked. Bits of red rimmed her eyes, though I had seen her shed no further tears since we returned home. It was Rosie who finally addressed it.
“You will move on soon,” she assured her. “Because imagine the alternative.”
“That is the problem,” Elin protested. “I am imagining it! Poor Hemma.” She turned to me. “What will become of her?”
But I wasn’t ready to give my concern to Hemma. I still had not yet determined what would become of us. Sigrid—and Simeon—had promised ruin. But we were already ruined. I had been trying to scrabble our way out of ruin for years. The benefit was that I had no further to fall. I was left only with the same set of problems I had faced in the first place—though now with the added problem of the hole in the roof. And potential banishment from all of society.
“Hemma will be fine,” I reassured her. But what I really meant was that Hemma would be as fine as someone with wealth and power could be. That life was filled with unkindness and so you had to meter out your sympathy. I was rationing mine, saving it for the people under my spotty roof. There was only so much rescuing one woman could undertake.
The evening brought a strange storm. Lashing wind and sheets of water did not discourage the moonlight from shining through the windows and covering the room. Long after everyone went to bed, I stayed by the fire, staring at the embers and letting my thoughts twirl through those dark places. Listening to rain pelt the windows.
I had wanted so much for my daughters, for so long. Had worked so hard and had pushed them harder. I had told Otto, just a few days before, that contentedness was only recognized once it was gone. Was that this very situation? Had I been striving for years, wanting, aching for more, more, more, unable to recognize the value of what was in front of me?
I was startled by a noise outside, which at first I took as part of the storm. But, as it grew louder, the noise of horse hooves on wet gravel drew me to my feet. I thought Otto had returned and went to the window. But it was not Otto.
I do not know why it hadn’t occurred to us that he would come. Hubris, perhaps, or some stupid idea of victory’s finality. The coach was mud-spattered. Curtains flapped through open windows. The sides had been hideously hacked apart—splinters of wood and peels of leather. The horses had uneven gaits and I knew if I were closer, I would heartheir labored breathing, see blood in their saliva. And there, at the helm, drenched by rain, was a lone man. The driver.
“Simeon,” I said, out loud. As if the name itself were a curse.
Our door was locked when we went out, not when we stayed in. And I did not think I could move quickly enough to bar him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I ran through the rooms and down the steps, stumbling, for I did not carry a candle. But my haste made no difference: By the time I reached the entryway, the front door had banged open, and Simeon stood in the frame, silhouetted by the rough weather and night behind him.
He looked wild. His hair mussed. He was in the same clothes as two days before. There was a high redness to his cheeks and a slackness at his jaw. I hoped he was drunk, for it might offer me an advantage.
“The door boasts a serviceable knocker,” I told him, from the bottom stair.
