He did not want to see it, even as his feet, as heavy as iron weights, began moving toward that door.
Images rose in his mind. Violent images. Images that didn’t belong to his dream.
The singing woman was screaming at him.Run. Don’t let him catch you.
And yet Gwendolyn was in there.
He put a hand on the doorframe. Common sense told him that all was fine, and yet tension was winding inside of him, tighter and tighter.He used to go in and out of this room, using the windows along the far wall as doors if he so chose. He’d been small enough to climb through them easily—
“I could spend my life in this room,” Gwendolyn said, her words cutting through his growing panic. She stood by a pianoforte, basking inthe scene out those windows. A sliver of the river could be seen through the far corner. The rest of the view was of the surrounding forest.
Gwendolyn smiled over at him. “It is all lovely and peaceful.”
Was it? Beck wasn’t certain. He leaned against the doorframe bombarded by doubts and unnamed fears. Details were emerging—but not from his dreams. No, these were memories.Hismemories. It became hard to breathe as he recalled foraging among the leaves, sticks, and pine needles in the woods, creating buildings and even people out of them while she worked on her music. He could see her there now, bent over the pianoforte. She spent hours writing and practicing. Day after day. His world had been the wind in the trees and the melodies, the notes, the rhythms, the sound of her soft laugh of approval when she thought she’d had it right.
When he discovered something truly special, Beck would bring it to her—acorn caps, snails, a chewed-off rabbit leg, all things he’d scavenged from the forest. She’d made him throw out the bit of rabbit and then had kissed his forehead because he was so like his father, she’d said, curious and fascinated by everything.
So like your father.
“Are you feeling well?” Gwendolyn asked. She moved toward him, and she walkedthroughthe pianoforte, and that was when Beck realized he was imagining it, although it seemed real and solid.
He thought of the black leather folios in the small library, the ones Gwendolyn had noticed.That had beenhermusic,hersongs. She’d written them... in this room—she had died in this room.
Suddenly, and with startling clarity, Beck remembered everything.
“The man, he came through the door.” He moved into the room, following the path of the intruder. His body no longer held him back, but he felt as if he was not himself. He was that small boy who busied himself while his mother worked.
“What man?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Olin Winstead. The marquess’s man.” Yes, it had been Winstead. Beck could see him now. Huge and hulking. Beck hadn’t been afraid. “I knew him. I liked him. I was playing by the front of the cottage. He picked me up and carried me into the room with him.”
“You?” She frowned as if she couldn’t picture it.
Beck shook his head. He didn’t have time to explain. The tightness was leaving his chest as what seemed like doors in his mind sprang open.
“He held me. Mother was at the pianoforte right here.” He framed the space with his hands for Gwendolyn. “She knew something was wrong. She told him to put me down. She spoke sharply. She could be that way. Not with me but with others. She wanted to know what Winstead was doing here. She didn’t like him. I could feel her anger. I—I didn’t understand why she was upset. It was just Winstead.”
Beck walked a pace to the left, then two to the right. He searched the stone floor as if it would help him understand everything.
“What happened next?” Gwendolyn asked.
“He gave me to her. She wrapped her arms around me, but then he put his hands around her throat and began choking her. I thought he was playing at first, and then I realized she was upset. So I yelled for him to let her go. I hit him. I slapped his face. I had to be—what? Four, maybe?” He looked to Gwendolyn. “I have no idea how old I am now, let alone then—but I remember what he did. Gwendolyn, Iremember. This is what the dreams were trying to tell me.”
“This doesn’t sound like a dream, Beck. This sounds as if it happened.”
“It did.”He stared at the window and then said, “When I hit him, Winstead looked down at me. I told him to leave my mother be. I was angry. He had loosened his hold. My actions gave her a chance to bite him so she could break free. I was surprised because one shouldn’t bite. I had bitten my cousin—” He paused in surprised realization. “I bit Ellisfield and had been punished for it.”
He moved around to the door, seeing it as it was years ago. His mother had raced to the shelves and started throwing anything she could get her hands on at Winstead. “She shouted at me to run, to go find help. I didn’t run to the door but out one of the windows. They were all open. Winstead was a big man. He couldn’t follow me, but he didn’t want me. I heard mother scream.” His muscles tightened up and down his back. “I should have helped her.” He felt the horror of what he’d failed to do. Tears welled in his eyes. “Or I should have found someone who could have come to her aid, but I was afraid.”
“What did you do?”
“I hid. I didn’t go for help. He was murdering Mother, and I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered.” He flinched at the realization, even as he could remember fear paralyzing him. “She was fighting for her life...”
“You were a child,” Gwendolyn said crisply, as if brooking no nonsense.
Beck frowned, puzzled by another hard realization. “I didn’t recognize Winstead when he came to the brothel for me. I didn’t recall him at all. I feared him, but only because he was big and angry. Gwendolyn, I’ve had no memory of any of this”—he raised a hand to the right side of his head, to the scar hidden by his hair right above his ear—“until I was wounded.” Carefully he lowered his hand. “This happened, Gwendolyn. I remember it all now. But how could I have ever forgotten?”
She crossed to him, her voice gentle. “Maybe you didn’twishto remember it? You werea child.” She said this last as if wishing to impress the knowledge on him. “You didn’t know how to handle it.”
