Page 62 of The Pureblood Daughter
“Don’teverspeak that name to me again. That girl is gone.” Nadia lowers the blade and returns it to her boot, then glances at the doors Lady Gray left through. “You will fix this,” she snaps. “I am no longer your daughter, but she will always be my mother. For her sake,fix this.”
Lord Gray hunches over the dining table, still shaking with tears, as Nadia turns and sweeps from the room in search of her mother.
She finds Lady Gray collapsed on a settee in the drawing room and hurries into the sunlit space. Nadia sinks to her knees beside the settee and takes her mother’s hands in her own.
“It’s okay, Mama. Everything is just fine.”
“I knew nothing of it,” Lady Gray says, her cheeks flushed and eyes rimmed in red. “Y-your father told me there was a carriage accident, and... and...”
“Mama, I know.” Nadia kisses the back of her mother’s hand, and it trembles beneath her lips. “There have been many lies told, but you, too, were innocent in all of this. I only wish it hadn’t hurt you like it hurt me.”
“Adelina—”
“It’s Nadia now, Mama.”
This brings a fresh wave of tears to Lady Gray’s eyes, and Nadia chides herself for the unnecessary correction.
“I need you to listen to me,” Nadia says, squeezing her mother’s hands to get her attention. When her mother stops crying for long enough to listen, she continues. “I am going away with the Rosettis for the winter. To avoid scandal, we will tell everyone I retired early to the countryside for health reasons. We will take this a step at a time, and all will be well, just as I am now.”
Lady Gray sits up on the settee. “You’re not coming home?” she asks, her brown eyes wide and glassy.
Nadia stands, her heart heavy, and gives a gentle shake of her head. “This may have once been my home, but it isn’t any longer. I’ll send someone to retrieve my things and will write to you soon. Please, Mama, don’t cry.”
But no matter what she says, she can’t slow her mother’s tears, and they wrench her heart until she can stand it no longer.
“I love you,” she whispers, then presses a kiss to the top of her mother’s golden head. “I love you so,somuch.”
The skirt she wears swishes about her feet as she flees from the room before she can lose the composure she’s been so fighting to maintain.
Lady Gray’s wails grow ever louder as Nadia hurries toward the stairs, then climbs them swiftly, heading for her bedroom.
The lock has been removed from the outside of her door, but the wooden frame is still marked with nail holes that tell the truth of what once happened here. Seeing it from this side makes her stomach twist in sickening knots, and she turns her eyes away.
She opens the door and casts her gaze about the room, trying to take it all in: the sheer curtains over the big windows, the desk at which she wrote countless letters, the armoire overflowing with garments handpicked by her mother. As expected, memories wash over her, but they’re all tainted by that fateful night when she had no choice but to flee out the window, to fall into the waiting arms of the man destined to change her life forever.
Dashing tears from her cheeks, Nadia goes to her vanity. Her silver necklace still sits atop it, and now, with her heightened senses, she very nearly reels back from the scent. It’s a miracle Theodore could stand to be in her presence when she was wearing the thing, overpowering as it is.
She leaves it where it lies, then takes one final moment to trail her fingertips across her writing desk and peek out the window at the garden below, where she spent many summers painting in the shade. The view brings fresh tears to her eyes. It’ll take some time to find joy in such memories without being plagued by the pain.
As she stands there, a strange scent—garlic and hawthorn—catches her attention, and she’s reminded of the shattered porcelain and the shard she tucked into the top drawer of her writing desk. When she fled her bedroom, she’d not thought to bring it along.
Yanking the drawer open, she finds the shard waiting for her, the tonic dried to its otherwise-shiny surface.
She thinks of Theodore’s father and his interest in the tonic, and though she knows not whether it will be of help to him, she scoops the broken porcelain up and slips it into a discreet pocket sewn into her shawl. Perhaps the remnants of the tonic will allow them to discern what vile concoction she drank for so long.
After closing the drawer quietly, she crosses the room to the door. “Goodbye,” she whispers, then reaches for the doorknob one last time.
Nadia leaves her bedroom and hurries down the stairs, wanting to be free of this place and all the sadness it holds. The seventh stair creaks lovingly beneath her foot, and then she’s in the foyer, almost out the door.
“Adelina?”
Nadia freezes, her heart swelling. She turns to find Rose standing in the hallway, an odd expression upon her face. Her eyebrows are drawn down over concerned hazel eyes, and her mouth is puckered in surprise.
Despite Rose’s disloyalty, Nadia still looks upon her fondly and counts her as one of her few friends. In this tumultuous time, she could use a friend.
“Rose, I’m so glad to see you.” Nadia crosses the foyer and reaches to take Rose’s hands. “Come with me.”
“Come with you? Where?”
