“Yes?” Mary stopped on the threshold.
“How well did you know Mr. Treadway?”
Mary looked back at her with that scrutinizing stare and a forced smile. “I didn’t.”
The door clicked closed again. It took longer than Mira expected to calm down while she dressed. She kept losing focus, and her hands were still shaky. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as if this was her first time discovering a body.
She hoped it was the last.
As she came down the stairs, Mary’s voice echoed up from the lower landing. She pressed herself against the wall, hoping to avoid another confrontation. Unfortunately, what she heard was worse.
“She is wild, has no sense of propriety, and no understanding of what it means to be gentry,” Mary said. “Honestly, I don’t know what Ambrose is thinking. Do you think it is some residual effect of his accident? Some abnormality of the brain?”
Mira’s chest tightened. How dare she say such things about her own brother?
“He has always been headstrong,” Mrs. Sherard said. “The accident didn’t change that.”
“Yes, but remember when she walked into his rooms at Palace Court? Bedraggled, hair loose, shouting out his name as if she were calling for a dog. And my impression of her hasn’t improved on further study. Tripping over corpses and rushing about in the cold. You should have seen her in there just now.”
Mrs. Sherard hummed.
Tears burned in the corners of Mira’s eyes. She could barely breathe.
Mary kept talking. “Surely, he can’t be in love with a woman like that. Does he feel some sense of duty because she helped him with his memory troubles?”
“It seems to me that the very reasons why you dislike her are the reasons he likes her so much.”
“We cannot allow this to continue, Mamma. She will only bring him and the Sherard name down.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Mrs. Sherard said. “By the way, the Risewells have agreed to let us borrow their carriage to return to Bath. Benson will stay here to receive the wheelwright ...”
Their voices petered out as they moved away. Mira swallowed, throat thick. She closed her eyes, one hand clutching her mother’s cameo.
Since she was little, she had dreamt about what it would be like to marry into a large family. She could never replace her parents, but she thought that, perhaps, her husband’s parents would accept her as their own. Her husband’s siblings would become hers.
She had her brother for a sibling, but she always wanted a sister. Back in December, she rejoiced to have a sister in Emilie. Someone to confide in. But now Emilie was dead. She had her Uncle Cyrus and Landon as father figures. Once, she counted Professor Burke as family as well, though the man he was when she was a child was long dead.
What she never had was a mother. She longed for a woman who could offer a mother’s love, show her maternal care once more. And while Loretta might someday fill that space, she was rightfully occupied with her own children.
Tears were falling now and she couldn’t stop them. Her body shook with anger, shock, and grief. There was too much to feel. A sob wracked through her and she muffled it with the back of her hand.
Someone cleared his throat and Mira jolted, openingher eyes. Castel Sherard stood on the landing above her, presumably coming from his own room.
“Are you quite well, Miss Blayse?” He arched one eyebrow.
She stood there, unable to speak, unable to move. Yet another strike against her. Yet another improper display of feeling on her part. She wiped her eyes and looked desperately for a place to hide away.
“You’re shaking,” he said in a matter-of-fact sort of way. “I think you ought to sit down.”
“I—”
Castel moved down the stairs and took her arm. She let herself be led, like a lamb to slaughter, into the unoccupied library.
He helped her to a chair. The fire crackled. She managed to hold her tears at bay, but she couldn’t stop herself from shaking.
“I would think by this point you would be used to this sort of thing,” Castel said.
Her jaw tightened. “What sort of thing?”
