Daphne stood in the doorway with her arms full of parcels, her cheeks pink from the cold. Her grin faded the instant she saw Nell’s face.
“What happened?” She dumped the parcels on the nearest table and crossed to the counter in three quick strides. “You are shaking. You are white as death. What has happened?”
“Gabriel.” The name scraped out. Nell pressed both hands flat on the counter to stop their trembling. “Gabriel is alive.”
Daphne went very still, the colour draining from her face. “What?”
“He was here.” The words tumbled over each other. “Just now. He is alive, Daphne. He didn’t die in the fire. He faked it, put someone else’s body in the house, and he has been alive this whole time. His face… half of it’s ruined. He blames me. He knows about Dominic, and he wants money or he will destroy everything.”
“Breathe.” Daphne grabbed her hands, gripping them tight enough to hurt. “Slow down. Tell me everything.”
So Nell did. She recounted every horrible word, the threats, the blackmail, and the marriage certificate.
When she finished, Daphne’s face had gone hard as iron. Her jaw set tight enough to crack her teeth. “That bastard.” The words came out quiet and deadly. Her fingers tightened on Nell’s until the bones creaked. “That festering, worthless piece of filth.”
“What am I going to do?” Nell’s voice cracked, and she felt the hot pressure of tears building behind her eyes. “I cannot marry Dominic. Not legally. Not while Gabriel is alive. And if I don’t pay, he will ruin me.” She pressed her fists against her eyes, trying to hold back the flood.
“We need to think. We need a plan.” Daphne said.
“There is no plan.” Nell dropped her hands, her fingers numb and clumsy as she gripped the edge of the counter. “He has the marriage certificate. He has nine years of silence on his side. The law will call me a bigamist and him a wronged husband, and there is nothing?—”
“You have Dominic.” Daphne set both palms flat on the counter and leaned forward, her dark eyes fierce. “He has solicitors. He has magistrates who owe him favours. He has a title and money and the kind of influence that makes problems disappear. But he cannot help you if he does not know.”
The words sat between them, heavy and undeniable.
Nell stared at the ring on her finger. The ruby caught the last of the afternoon light, winking like a secret. One week. Shehad one week before she was supposed to stand in a church and promise herself to a man she had been lying to since the day they met.
Not lying. Surviving. But it would feel the same to him.
“I have to tell him.” The decision settled into her chest like a stone finding the riverbed. Not because Daphne had pushed her there. Because it was the only road left that did not lead back into the dark.
“Yes.” Daphne straightened, her jaw still tight. “You do.”
“Stay here.” Nell pulled the shawl around her shoulders and knotted it at her chest, her fingers fumbling with the wool. “The children will be back from their lessons within the hour.”
“Are you going alone?” Daphne caught her arm near the elbow, her grip hard with worry.
“I have to.” Nell covered Daphne’s hand with her own, then gently removed it. “This is mine to tell. He deserves to hear it from me, and I need to be the one brave enough to say it.”
Daphne looked into her eyes for a long moment, something shifting behind her eyes—respect, maybe, or grief for the girl Nell had been before Gabriel Hyde had taught her that love could be a weapon.
She walked out of the bakery. The bell jangled behind her, and the cold hit her like a wall.
Twenty-Six
The walk to Bramwell Park took twenty minutes. Every one of them was a war.
Nell’s boots crunched on the frost-hardened path, her breath rising in thin white ribbons that dissolved the instant they left her mouth. The cold gnawed through her shawl and into her bones, but she barely felt it. Her mind was loud with the words she would have to say, and none of them sounded right.
I lied to you. Not on purpose. I thought he was dead—everyone thought he was dead. But he is alive, and his face is burned, and he hates me, and I am still his wife, and I cannot marry you.
The hedgerows along the lane were bare and skeletal, their branches scratching at the grey sky like fingers clawing for purchase. A crow lifted from a fencepost as she passed, its wings beating the silence apart. Somewhere behind her, the village carried on with its Tuesday afternoon—bread bought, fires stoked, children called in from the cold. None of them knew that the baker on Mill Street had just watched a ghost walk into her shop and demand ten thousand pounds.
The gates of Bramwell Park rose before her, wrought iron twisted into elegant patterns of leaves and scrollwork. Beyondthem the great house loomed, stone and glass and centuries of history. She had stood inside that house a week ago while a modiste jabbed pins into silk and Dominic kissed her in front of everyone. She had been happy. The memory felt like something that had happened to a different woman in a different life.
Nell’s steps faltered at the gate. Her hand found the iron latch. The metal bit cold through her glove. She pushed.
The gravel drive crunched beneath her feet, each step louder than the last. Past the dormant gardens, brown and sleeping beneath the winter sky. Up the wide stone steps to the front door. She knocked before her courage could bleed away.
