“For a front-row seat at your tragedy, I’d let them collar me in broad fucking daylight,” he ripostes, dry enough to cut, and itdoes.
The confessionruinsme, for he’s named something I’ve tried to keep unnamed for fifteen years. He’s gone and said it aloud, branding the words across every inch of me.Tragedy. For just one breath, I’m ancient—mythic even—and there’s no pity in Eric’s voice, just fascination.
Quietly, sensing my complete and utter surrender, he steps back and offers his hand, reminding me that the real duchess awaits.
Stupidly, I stare at it. Ancestral judgement prickles my scalp as I consider taking this Atherbourne’s hand. They aren’t exactly angry, merely… alert. Their chill shadows me, wanting to see what I’ll do with a man like this. A man akin to those they’ve no doubt buried before. They whisper that it shouldn’t feel like anything, but when our palms meet—separated only by thin lace—and his fingers curl over mine, they melt to mist beneath his warmth.
The ease with which they give up frightens me.
We walk. Each step is heavy with promise, echoed in the way his thumb maps a vow against my pulse. I wonder if he reads the single question it beats:Is this rescue or retribution?Because if Godwyn left my lungs working after the lake, after Gabriel, surely he did it to watch me drown in what comes next.
In Eric.
Across the threshold, the air tastes sweeter, and Gran sits in front of an array of cakes, her gaze drawn away from them. She’s already watching us, enemy and heir, fingers interlaced beneath ancestral eyes, imparting warmth to centuries-old grief. She doesn’t see the ruin cradled in the middle, the potential devastation of trusting a name in the house our ancestors built to keep out. But perhaps this is what fate demands: for me to spend the coin that not even Redford’s ferryman can touch.
25
REMNANTS OF THE LAKE
FRANCESCA
If I had to use just one of Lydia’s infamous idioms to describe these past few days, it would be‘Jy het jou mond verby gepraat’?1. Why? Because three days ago, I told Percy that I haven’t dreamt of the man in the lake. And now, almost religiously, he has been showing up in every dream, rising from the waters as soon as my eyes shut, hands gripping my throat until I have to force myself into consciousness.
I feel kind of like Eric, all freaked out and wondering where the mouldy aroma is coming from. Except, I’d take Tommy any day over the rotting sweetness of pomegranate clinging to my sense of smell. I walk without really looking where I’m going, rather watching each of Percy’s messages ping through. The screen lights up again as I take the stairs to the second floor.
Percy
okay im currently on section 15 of ‘castle redford: private observations and accounts’
Chess
isn’t that the sixth journal bertie gave you??
Percy
yes and i left my kindle at your fucking place, so this is what im reading
now listen. ive just learnt that g-spot and adelina were basically feral for each other at some point
it’s their honeymoon chapter and i wanna die. nanna says g-spot was leaving her notes in the chapel omg
and adelina would rub POMEGRANATE OIL on her wax seals
im gonna vomit?????
nanna’s being SO detailed with these memories im cryingggggg
nada on cilly-boy
Chess
huh, you just might’ve given me smth. gimme five minutes.
Percy
WHAT?
WHAT DID I GIVE YOU?
