Page 27 of An Honorable Deception
Alethia smiled, too, but it faded, and her eyes went even more contemplative. “You ... your name was paired with Lord Xavier’s last year, wasn’t it?”
Lavinia straightened again. She hadn’t given Xavier much thought in recent months, other than when their paths crossed thanks to her best friend being married to his—which wasn’t as often as one might expect, given his bursting social schedule and her reticence to fill her own this year. But now that his name was spoken, she recalled that his name had been paired with Alethia’s once or twice in Gemma’s columns in recent months.
It wasn’t saying much. “Lord X” was a favorite of the gossip columnists, and there had been speculation about him and no fewer than two dozen young ladies over the last several years. But perhaps in Alethia’s eyes, it had been serious?
In response to the question, Lavinia lifted a shoulder. “He called on me for a few months. Mostly when he was here with Sir Merritt, I being the only convenient company around.”
It was a deliberate downplay of what she had wanted to want but never quite had. Lord Xavier was a perfectly wonderful man. Even handsomer than Yates—if not so statuesque—friendly, kind, a man of faith. And he had liked her.
But that was the problem. He likedeveryone—and preferred no one. He would have been a convenient match, all the more so when Sir Merritt and Marigold paired up.
Alethia lifted her brows. “You needn’t be humble with me. His mother and mine are friends—I heard her say she was surprised he hadn’t proposed to you. That it’s more serious than any other attention he’s paid anyone else.”
Lavinia had to swallow past the lump in her throat. “He ... it wasn’t a good time. He was here when we learned everything about my mother, when...” She had to pause, squeeze her eyes shut.
She oughtn’t speak true words about this to a veritable stranger. But she’d already told her parts, to inspire her to trust them. “She threatened to kill me. That was how she meant to manipulate my father. She sent me off to a masquerade, along with her maid and Lord Xavier, when she meant to set her plan in motion. I had a bad feeling and wanted to leave early, to go home. When I told him, he said, ‘Must you? You’ll be missed.’ But he didn’t offer to cut his trip short. His family was there, and ... he didn’t know what was about to happen. He couldn’t have. But when he finally returned after she’d died, I couldn’t even look at him. I was so irrationally angry at him for letting me come home with only my chaperone and walk right into my mother holding a gun on Yates. I wanted nothing to do with him.”
Alethia’s brows had knit, which Lavinia saw when she finally pried her eyes open again to see her response. “And he left it at that? He ... abandoned you in your hour of need?”
That was putting it a bit harshly, and the year’s distance allowed her to admit it. “I ordered the servants to bar him from the house and wrote him a letter saying I was in no place for a courtship, given the circumstances. I’m certain he thought he was respecting my wishes and giving me the space I needed to grieve.”
Alethia wrapped her arms around Penelope when the monkey sat down and leaned against her. “Did he never try again?”
Lavinia shrugged. “He dropped by once, in March. We had a perfectly civil conversation. We laughed together at how happy Sir Merritt and Marigold are. We talked of his family and how my father was doing. And ... that was all there was to say. It seems we’re not suited for anything more.”
The ache sent a root down to her stomach.Shewas the one not suited for anything more. Not with anyone, it seemed. Even her best friend saw that she was only capable of causing pain.
Alethia, however, blinked rapidly enough to draw Lavinia’s attention, and she saw tears in this stranger’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, and Lavinia knew she wasn’t apologizing for the display. She didn’t even reach to wipe away the droplets that fell onto her cheeks. “No one should have to live with that pain. No one should have to face such monsters in their own families. It isn’t how God meant humanity to be.”
It wasn’t. But it was too often how theywere. “What monsters are in your family, Alethia?” She said it softly, but still she expected her to startle, to shut off, to deny there were any.
Instead, Alethia closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the sun. “You don’t want to know.”
The words rang of truth. The kind she knew too well and wished she didn’t. “Even so. You can tell me, when you need to. I am no stranger to the realm of monsters.”
“I hope you’re a stranger to this one.” Finally, she lifted one hand and dashed it over each cheek. “It was Samira who bore the brunt of it. Samira who protected me as best she could. I...” She paused, shuddered. Her voice, when it emerged again, came out a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know what would have happened to me had she not been there to protect me. I think, sometimes, I would have died. And they would have blamed it on a local or said I was struck by a tropical disease. I would have been one more English child who died to India, and everyone would have pitied my parents, the poor viceroy and his perfect wife, and no one ever would have suspected.”
It should have been hatred that curled around her syllables, by rights. The words were dark enough to lay claim to it. But it wasn’t. It was sorrow. And, somehow, it was strength.
That was what made something new surge up in Lavinia, something she couldn’t name. “What did they do?” She barely murmured the words.
Alethia kept her gaze straight ahead. “Nothing. They did absolutely nothing.”
It wasn’t a deflection. It was a statement—that somehow, thenothingwas the betrayal. Thenothingwas the crime.
She wanted to press, to sort out what thisnothingwas in response to. But a shift in Alethia’s posture said she wouldn’t say more, not now. That the words she’d already spoken had cost her too much.
Lavinia understood that. Better to focus on a different part. “You don’t hate them.” She knew her amazement came through.
Alethia’s lips curled into something too sad to be a smile. “Do you hate your mother?”
“Yes. And no. And everything in between.” There weredays when she hated her with more ferocity than she’d thought a human heart could hold. Days she missed her just as fiercely. And countless days in between when she was so angry because she wanted to grieve but didn’t know how, because Mother didn’tdeserveher grief. She’d robbed her even of that.
Alethia nodded. “I hated them, too, for a while. All of them. Everyone. Everyone but Samira. She was the only person in the world who loved me like family should. And one day, I asked her why she did, and she ... she said it was because that was how Christ loved her. She said that every bit of pain she bore drew her closer to Him. That the worse we hurt, the closer He holds us. The weaker we were, the more strength He’d give, if we opened our hearts to let Him in.”
Lavinia let her eyes slide shut as the words called up a memory of other words, similar words that she’d read before. “Have you ever readStory of a Soul?”
“It doesn’t sound familiar.”
