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Clarimonde’s mother was alive, Elias told her, and now married to a clerk from the Imperial Civil Service. Elias had asked her several times if she would take her daughter back—but each year that he visited in order to make the request, Clarimonde’s mother still declined. Neither money nor promises of other, more fantastical support would move her.

“If I am generous,” he said, “then she is too ashamed of having left you for so long, and now she cannot bring herself to amend the matter. But I am not a generous man, and I cannot reconcile her decision. You deserve a better mother—but I failed to deliver her to you, and I failed to offer you the truth, and I am sorry for both of those things.”

Apologies did not amend the matter, after all. Each time that Clarimonde had insisted that her mother would come back for her now loomed within her mind. Each time, there had been pitying looks, and each time, she had told herself they were misguided. I am silly, she thought. And perhaps that is why I am unwanted, after all.

The pain was terrible enough that only opium would dull it. But soon, there was little left of her except the opium, and her bed, and the sight of the ceiling above it. If time had passed, she did not know it.

It was very obvious, when her adoptive sister Bellamira arrived, that others had decided upon her as their messenger—for Bellamira had been dying since she was a child, and no one could ever be short with her without a great deal of guilt. But Bellamira did not speak immediately of the matter; instead, she came by every day to make a pot of tea and sat herself next to Clarimonde to discuss the day’s events. And when she noticed that the clock beside Clarimonde’s bed was not ticking, she began to wind it up each day when she arrived.

But though Clarimonde was secretly grateful for Bellamira’s presence, she found that it was also somehow difficult to bear. “Why are you here?” she finally asked. “I do not want you here.”

“But I want to be here,” Bellamira replied carelessly. “Why else would I come? We all have only so much time, Clarimonde; I know that better than anyone. I have chosen to spend my time on you and Hugh and Winnie, because you are important to me. If this is what you want to do with your time, then I will not judge you for it. But I would like to ask, just to be sure… is this how you wish to spend your time?”

It was not how Clarimonde wished to spend her time. But what she truly wished for would never actually materialise.

“You should know, regardless,” Bellamira told her. “Elias is terribly worried for you. He will not visit, for he thinks you do not want him. But he will ask me how you are as soon as I have left. Hugh will ask if you require a physician. And oh, dear Winnie…” She sighed. “She paid a visit to your mother. I am not supposed to tell you. Winnie told her every awful thing that happened in the workhouse, and then she…” Bellamira coughed politely. “Well. I suppose you do not wish to know about that.”

Clarimonde sat up in bed for the first time that she could remember. “You know very well that I wish to know about it!” she accused her. “Tell me, Bellamira.”

Bellamira smiled evenly. “Winnie was in one of her cold and terrible moods, I fear,” she said. “You know how she can be. She did the cruellest thing she knows; she told your mother of her future.”

It was indeed a terrible thing—and Clarimonde knew very well that Winifred had planned her cruelty carefully, as she did nothing without careful planning. Perhaps this should have been upsetting… and it was, at least a little bit. But it was a feeling, and it was a feeling other than guilt or helplessness or self-loathing, and it was enough to make her think that there might be other feelings waiting for her if she decided to let herself have them.

The next day, Clarimonde took one less pill—and one less on the next. And finally, as Bellamira wound the clock beside her bed, Clarimonde said: “I want to see Elias.”

He was not far. He never had been, she was certain. But though his first impulse was another clumsy apology, Clarimonde stopped him.

“This was not your lie to bear,” she told him. “It was forced upon you, and I will not blame you for it any more. What little home I have, what little family I have, are things that you have given me. But you must swear to me that you will never lie to me again; I cannot bear the thought of it. The truth is easier if it is earlier—and I must have it now, regardless of the cost.”

Elias embraced her then, and she felt another feeling, somewhere underneath the opium.

“Here is the truth,” he whispered. “I love you dearly, Clarimonde. And I will never lie to you again, regardless of the cost.”

And never did he lie to her again. Nor, in fact, did any of the rest of her adoptive family—not even cunning, clever Winnie, who lied to every other person as easily as she breathed. But while Clarimonde could have taken on the surname ‘Wilder’—it was offered—she decided to remain a Betony.

For though it was a hard and heavy name, it was the truth—and it was therefore valuable to her. And finally, she had managed to survive it.

CHAPTER 19

“I would ask you to be kind to yourself, but perhaps that is not your way. Be good to yourself then, Clarimonde—whatever that may look like to the rest of us.”

LORD ELIAS WILDER TO MISS CLARIMONDE BETONY, AGE 18

Clarimonde knew better than to imagine that she had the power to wake Elias. She tried, of course; she emptied every perfume from her pocket, every herb that she had taken from Mother Barclay’s kitchen garden. But whatever power it was that kept the old Lord Sorcier dreaming, it was nothing that an hour of casual, haphazard magic could possibly fix.

It was the Daghda’s harp she needed. Winnie had told her that, and she had believed it. But now, she knew with bone-deep certainty that it was necessary.

The very idea of stepping away from that bier was an agony. How could she leave him here in this awful place, surrounded by the lurid evidence of Tertia’s casual cruelties? But how could she move him without dooming them both entirely? There were other half-painted canvasses discarded in the corner; it was clear that Tertia came to visit him quite often, in order to pour out her woes to someone who could never interrupt her.

“I must go,” Clarimonde whispered to Elias. “I have no choice.” She was nearly certain that he could not hear her and would never know that she had been there—but she could not bring herself to leave him silently. “I will be back for you,” she promised, with a wavering voice. “I will not leave you here for long. You know I would not lie to you.”

Elias slept on, blissfully unaware of her presence. Clarimonde kissed his forehead before pulling back reluctantly. Each step she took felt like a fresh abandonment.

He is not dead, Clarimonde told herself forcefully. And neither is Bellamira. I have so much left to save… if I can only find a way to save it.

Though Clarimonde searched every inch of the other house, the harp was nowhere to be found. In retrospect, this should not have surprised her; almost everything in that house seemed to be something which Tertia had discarded. Even the bier upon which Elias slept was what remained of Tertia’s own uncomfortable slumber.

By the time Clarimonde returned to the Hollow House proper, she had little concept of the time in England, and even less impetus to search out the hour. Her bedroom was cold and dark and empty; Lord Foxglove had not yet returned.