“No!” Eliza said. “No, cher. It wasn’t your fault. You’re only a child. Albert is going to be fine, do you hear?”
The little girl’s lip trembled. “His name’s Patrick, mum, not Albert.”
“Of course.” Eliza nodded. She saw now that he was a brunette, not a blond.Not Albert.It was too late for Albert. It always would be.And it would always be her fault. Her breath came in sharp, wheezing gasps, her throat closing like a vise. It was as if she were seeing the scene from above, hovering over everyone—the townspeople, Lydia wringing out her hair, the little boy coughing and groaning at her feet.
“Run along, Mary. Find your mama and I’ll send for the doctor.” Malcolm’s rich baritone suddenly sounded as if it were coming through a tin can. A high, intense whistling screeched behind Eliza’s eardrums. She was fading into the darkness again—a darkness she’d pushed aside and buried on a warm day in September, so many years ago. “Tell her mother it wasn’t her fault,” Eliza managed before the world went black, her voice falling to a whimper. “Please.”
CHAPTER 9
Eliza woke to a darkened room, her head throbbing so painfully it sickened her stomach. She pulled the chamber pot from beneath her bed and retched into it, then gagged again at the smell. Her eyes were swollen shut from crying, the flood of memories too raw and real to shove back into the locked box she’d constructed of her past.
Her guilt was a prison that would always follow her.
She pressed her thumb against her forehead to quell the sparking pain behind her brow and stumbled to the washbasin, wetting a cloth for her face. The cool water streamed down her heated cheeks and dripped from her chin onto her nightgown.
Eliza parted the drapes and peered out, looking toward the shadowy hulk of Havenwood Manor. A single light shone from one of the upstairs windows and slowly moved back and forth before blinking out. She imagined Malcolm inside, settling beneath his covers. Perhaps he was imagining her doing the same. But sleep would be as elusive as afeu follettonight.
Her own house was quiet, save for a familiar soft snapping coming from belowstairs. Eliza lit a hurricane lamp with trembling hands and went down, her knees weak.
Warm candlelight glowed from the dining room, silhouetting Lydia’s pert profile. “I thought you were still sleeping.” She was laying out a spread from Mimi Lisette’s old tarot deck, the cards well wornaround the edges but still vibrant. “Lord Havenwood helped me carry you up the stairs. Do you remember what happened today?”
“I remember,” Eliza said, sitting at the table and leaning her head on her hands. “I remember everything I’ve tried so hard not to.” The feel of Albert’s limp body in her arms as she dragged him from the water, her new dress clinging to her legs. Her mother’s soul-piercing wail. His tiny coffin and the noxious scent of white lilies that to this day turned her stomach. Yes. She remembered all of it.
“I wondered how long you’d push it back.” Lydia gave a sad smile. “It wasn’t your fault, Liza. But I can tell you that until we’re both streaked with gray and it won’t matter one bit until you forgive yourself.”
Eliza squeezed her eyes shut as a jolt of pain jumped across her eyebrows and tightened her scalp. “Is the boy going to be all right?”
“Clarence says he’ll make a full recovery.”
The room was suddenly so cold. Eliza gathered her dressing gown around her shoulders. “How is your reading?” she asked, motioning to Lydia’s cards.
“This is the third spread. Same results.”
“Good news, I hope?”
Lydia shrugged. “I suppose it depends on how you view it, doesn’t it?”
Eliza glanced over the cross made of cards. Death. The Three of Swords, the Empress, and the Queen of Cups.
“Do mine, will you?”
Lydia paused, her hand hovering over the cards. “You should wait—it’s been a day.”
“Yes, but I need a distraction. You know I don’t take it as seriously as you.”
“Youshouldtake it seriously, but all right.” Lydia sighed and swept her spread back into the deck, then shuffled the cards deftly, her delicate fingers fanning them out in an arc before Eliza. “Think on what you want most before you draw.”
Eliza quickly chose three cards.
Lydia raised a dark eyebrow in question. “Would you like me to read for the past, present, future?”
“Yes.”
Lydia flipped over the first card, representing the past. Death’s skeletal face stared up at them. “The same card was in your spread,” Eliza said.
“In the same position.”
“It makes sense, then, doesn’t it?”
