She didn’t register the name Mrs. Winlock until she unfolded the letter and saw the signature at the bottom: “Ever yours, Pris.”
Her heart stuttered to a stop in her chest.
She shouldn’t read it. She already knew it would be painful, and she had no right. It was one thing to protect Lucy from the insults of sneering strangers; it was quite another to open her more private correspondence.
But then again: the letter was already opened.
Catherine had to know.
Hesitantly, as if the words had been written in gunpowder and gall, she went over them, line by line.
Dearest Lucy,
It was so good to see you in Lyme. So much has happened since we parted! This letter, I hope, finds you well. I write to tell you that I am in the city for a few days, and to ask if you would like to meet for tea tomorrow or the next day. Lyme in winter is decidedly dull and quiet, and I would like one last outing before settling in for the cold. Last Thursday’s conversation was very interesting. Let’s not let another six months pass before we see one another! Or else my winter months will be even duller and more dismal again by half. Very soon my husband and I travel north to visit my family, so I beg you to hurry and accept my offer.
Ever yours,
Pris
Catherine couldn’t return to her embroidery after reading such a note—her hands trembled too violently. She set the note on her desk and wondered what on earth she was going to say to Lucy.
Every phrase that sprang to her chilled lips—Don’t meet her, What did you talk about, Was it me?—seemed both inadequate and too revealing, too much and too little at once. There was nothingwrongin the note itself, nothing anyone in the polite world could possibly object to. Who would be hurt if one old friend wanted to take tea with another? Hadn’t they all had a cordial time at dinner? If Harry Winlock didn’t object, with all a husband’s right of suspicion and priority, then what claim could Catherine make in answer to this?
The serpent’s fangs bit deep, and Catherine could feel her heart’s blood running out and leaving her body hollow and cold, chiming beneath the little blows like a church bell in a hailstorm.
Lucy arrived home and came straight to the parlor. “Mr. Frampton said to tell you—” she began, but stopped at the look on Catherine’s face. She hurried over, sinking onto the sofa beside Catherine. “What is wrong?”
The words that hadn’t come before seemed to all rush upon her now, each one sharp and stinging. “A letter came for you,” were the first ones out. “I wouldn’t have opened it if I’d realized.” She handed over the paper, and watched Lucy turn pale as she saw who it was from.
Gray eyes pierced Catherine where she sat. “You wouldn’t have opened it, but since it was opened already—you did read it?”
“I did,” Catherine confessed softly. The pain of admission was perversely welcome—it was better than numbness and nothingness. If she hurt, she was still here, still in touch with the world.
Lucy nodded once, a sharp jerk of her head.
“It was a perfectly ordinary note,” Catherine said. “That’s no justification, though. I’m sorry.”
Lucy was still frozen, and Catherine’s panic redoubled—she could understand pain, or anger, or recriminations, but this long, chilly quiet made her nearly go out of her skin with dread.
Finally, Lucy turned her eyes toward the letter.
Catherine waited, still marshaling and dismissing arguments for any and all eventualities.
She was prepared for some reaction on Lucy’s part—but she was not prepared for the sudden burst of violence when Lucy cried out, crumpled the letter into a ball, and hurled it across the room toward the fireplace. It missed; Lucy leaped up from the sofa and began pacing the room, cursing in a low, furious tone.
“How dare she?” were the first words Catherine was able to decipher. “How dare she, damn her!”
It was a response entirely out of proportion to the cause. Catherine froze as realization hit her: this was not the reaction of a heart fully healed from love’s wound. If Lucy was this enflamed by such a tepid letter, there was still fuel to burn.
So much for fossils. Something here still lived.
Catherine’s chest creaked like a glacier under strain, her tongue stiff as an icicle behind the wall of her clenched teeth. She managed only a blunt reply: “I could not see where she erred.”
She could feel it, though, plunged like a poisoned arrow into her breast. Every instinct told her that Priscilla Winlock meant no good by this.
“Oh, she’s too careful for that.” Lucy whirled round, unearthly fast. Catherine could almost see the sparks flying off her—or maybe that was simply the gown, which had a border of small comets Madame Tabot had patterned off the stellarium shawl. They spun and circled at her ankles as she strode back across the room. “You were meant to be fooled. Pris’s parents always read her correspondence, you see—they were strict that way. She knew anything she wrote would have to pass beneath unfriendly eyes. So she wrote in code.” She uncrumpled the letter halfway and flung it down onto the sofa beside Catherine. “Her real message is there, in the first letters of every sentence.”
Catherine picked up the much-abused paper as Lucy resumed pacing, stopping every now and again to stomp with extra force on some thicker part of the carpet. The answer to the riddle was there in plain sight after all: I STILL LOVE.
