Page 13 of This Haunted Heart

She seemed younger there, hunched over the dark tobacco, breathing deeply of the woodsy scent, desperate for comfort. Rynn was so eager to give me her trust that a pinch of guilt scratched at me, but I shoved it down and readied the pipe. When it was lit, I pretended to smoke while she breathed in long drags. Snuggled close, we took turns reading from her new book as a gray fog gathered above our heads.

Prior to moving in to serve my adoptive family, Rynn had received a poor home school education from her nearly illiterate parents. When we were twelve, she’d begged me to teach her to read properly. Father had insisted an education would do a serving girl like Rynn no good. I loved stories and didn’t believe him, but then Mother claimed reading too much could turn a woman’s mind. Not knowing better, I’d worried for her.

Rynn had eventually persuaded me to teach her with kisses. She was quick and had a horse sense for people and for words. She’d spoken easily with the Dutch workers Father employed. With little direction, she’d picked up their language just by listening to them communicate around the house. Teaching her letters had been simple.

As she read to me now fromThe Adventures of Captain Van Draak, the sitting room disappeared from around us in my mind’s eye. The gaslight dimmed to a weak candle flame in the creaky old attic room where she had been forced to sleep despite the house having plenty of other beds. Rynn was twelve—not thirty-eight. Her raven curls were messy and falling in her face, not pinned up tight.

I was prone on my stomach because Father had taken a riding crop to my back and thighs. Standing was most tolerable but wasn’t an option with the way the roof gabled above us. Even the weight of my nightshirt was too much against the sting of torn flesh. The dusty smell of old things crowded us. Rynn’s head bobbed, too exhausted to read more.

I begged her to please carry on a little bit longer—just one more chapter—and she did.

I’d hurt all over, but my nightingale’s voice was lovely, and the story made our troubles seem far away.

“I’m sorry I’m so tired,” Rynn said, jerking me from my memories. She yawned. “Don’t know what’s come over me. I’m being a dreadful bore . . .”

I’d added an excessive amount of weaver-wood to the tobacco mixture. It turned the smoke sweet and dark. When ingested, it made the body weary.

Curled up in my lap, listening to me take my turn reading, she fell into a deep slumber. When I was certain she wasunconscious, I held the pipe between my teeth, balanced the book on the arm of the sofa, and laid her out across the cushions, careful of her injured arm. I needed to make use of heavier tools if I was going to crack the safe in her bedroom, and I didn’t want her waking during the process.

I opened the window and allowed the smoke to waft out on the breeze to prevent it from putting me in a stupor alongside her. Sitting so close, I’d gotten enough in my system that my limbs felt heavy, but the cool spring air renewed me.

I turned out the pipe and sat against the sill a moment, gathering myself. Unable to resist, I watched her sleep. Her chest rose and fell, her breathing deep and slow. Moonlight gave her skin a serene glow. I’d thought about this moment, this piece of my revenge, so often that it was hard to believe that the girl I loved to loathe was finally really right here, within my reach.

A curiosity overtook me then. Instead of leaving to retrieve my tools, I slipped through the archway to her bedroom and removed the painting of the ship at sea, setting it on the floor. The thought trapped in my head was the most ridiculous romantic notion. A fool’s errand.

I shouldn’t even bother.

Fingers trembling, I used my own birthdate as the combination. The heavy lock clicked as I spun the large dial to the final number, the year of my birth. I brought the handle down, and it turned easily, metal scraping against metal as the big door swung open.

Mybirthdate.

Rynn was a wealthy woman now. She kept a sizable fortune in her safe. I searched its contents for the precious thing she had stolen from me, but it wasn’t there. It didn’t surprise methat she hadn’t kept it after all this time. Had she done so, that would have meant something I couldn’t ignore. That would have knocked me off my path and forced me to change course.

But it wasmybirthdate.

Pulse thundering in my ears, I went lightheaded. It felt like I was trying to swallow around my own heart. My vision blurred at the edges. I leaned against the wall, hands balling into fists. It was several long minutes before I’d regained my composure enough to stand on steady legs.

I stalked back into the sitting room. Towering behind the sofa, I bent over the vexing woman’s sleeping form.

“When did our love stop being real to you, Rynn?” I demanded, knowing she could not answer me, my voice gone hoarse. My eyes stung. I blinked rapidly to clear them. “When did I become another mark to you instead of the man you wanted to marry?”

I was desperate to know the answer to that question. Here lay the girl who’d sung to me when life was cruel. The girl I’d cared for when she was sick. The girl who’d endured the hell at home by my side.

The girl who’d snuck into my bed every night for a week and cried because she’d readRomeo and Juliet, even though I’d warned her not to. My instruction had only made her more determined. She’d been so devastated by the tragic ending that I’d wondered if her sorrow wasn’t a symptom of a turned mind. Holding her while she shook with tears, I’d made a silent commitment to care for her when she no longer could. It was my burden to bear because I’d been the one to teach her to read.

She’d recovered, but my love for her had not. At eighteen, I asked her to marry me . . . and then it had all gone to hell. Icould dwell on it no longer.

My throat burned. The threat of tears turned my next breath into a wheeze. It had been my birthday that she used to seal away everything that she now cherished. To some degree, I haunted her, too.

Cradling her shoulders and the back of her knees, I lifted her into my arms. Her head lolled. With intent, I could wake her. I could shake her and shout the truth at her, tell her who I was, make her look at the scars she’d created, remove my shirt and force her to count all of my wounds. I could demand answers from her.

She’d loved me once. I knew that to be true, had felt it in a way no falsehood could make a mockery of.

Why did she stop? Why had she betrayed me so?

If there was anything other than pain and darkness left inside my flesh, I’d have woken her right then. I would have let go of my vengeance and started down a new road. But my soul was a dry and shriveled husk of a thing. Too much had happened to rip the pieces of me apart like kindling.

Ruthlessly, she’d burned me to ash.

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