Page 33 of An Honorable Deception
“Wake now, sweet one,” the voice crooned. “You are safe. It is just a dream, yes?”
The nightmare never wanted to release her, but it always did. Alethia opened her eyes with a gasp, trying to bolt upright but then falling back again at the pain the effort caused.
Zelda shushed, smoothed, soothed. And though late-morning light spilled through the window, her dark eyes were darker still with worry.
Why?Alethia frowned and dragged in a shaking breath.“What day is it? Am I feverish? Infection?” It had felt like that simple, familiar nightmare, but why would that light such concern in the older woman’s eyes? Especially if her famous honey-lavender ointment was helping the wounds heal as fast as she’d claimed yesterday?
Zelda shook her head, confusion joining the concern. “It is Saturday. Master Yates will be home. You are well. But ... you are not well.” Her fingers still traced and retraced their path, from the apex of Alethia’s forehead, along her cheek, down to her chin. “What demons chase you, child?”
The very word made Alethia’s nostrils flare. In England, it was only ever used metaphorically, she’d learned. In India, they knew that demons were real, and they were given names, and they were worshipped.
That was the explanation Samira had given—and it had been too true to Alethia’s experience to ever question it. When you had monsters in your house, how could you doubt they prowled the rest of the world too?
Zelda’s eyes went soft. “My family—my Franco, his brother, their sister—they are good people. The best people. Fifty years now I have traveled with them, part of their family. But my own family—the ones who raised me in the catacombs of Paris, who taught me to steal from foreigners, who sold me when I was twelve years old . . . fifty years is not enough to erase them.”
Strange how Alethia’s throat could go tight, even while the knots in her stomach loosened. “Samira was a child bride, married as soon as her cycles began. Only fourteen when her infant son and her husband both died. Her husband’s family didn’t want her, so they returned her to her father, but he had no use for her either. I don’t how she ended up with us—her father had connections, who in turn had connections to the viceroy’s office. I don’t remember much frombefore she came. A few glimpses of England, the confusion of arriving in India. We were only there a month before she joined us, became my ayah. I was six.”
Zelda nodded. “She is your sister, as Drina is mine. Of heart. Of choice.”
Alethia’s fingers dug into the mattress, twisted in the sheets. “She is the only one in my life who ever protected me.”
“Not the only one. Not anymore.” Zelda leaned over and feathered a kiss over her forehead, like Mama used to do before she said good night and left her in Samira’s care while she went off to whatever dinner or dance or event was scheduled for that night. “Tell them, sweet one. Tell Marigold and Yates. Tell Lavinia. They protect you, too, now. You can trust them.” She held her gaze, steady and strong. “Tell them. Let them in. It is the only way they can help you. Help Samira.”
Her throat closed off again, so suddenly that she couldn’t draw breath, that her vision blurred.
“Say a word, and I’ll kill you.”
“Quiet, my sweetling. Be quiet, or he’ll know where you are.”
“No one will believe you.”
“Don’t scream—whatever you do, don’t scream.”
“This is our secret. And don’t you know what happens to little girls who tell secrets? The monsters come for them.”
Zelda sang again, that familiar tune with words that weren’t quite right. Her strong fingers wove through Alethia’s. And the song turned into a prayer.
Her vision returned. Her breath. “Will you help me up?” She had to get out of this bed, damp with the sweat of her nightmare. “Please?”
Zelda nodded decisively. “Sunshine. Fresh air. Perhaps a visit from Penelope?”
A smile won her lips despite it all. She gripped Zelda’s iron-hard arm and let the woman’s strength lift her up. “Mama hated the monkeys—I loved them. There was one that would come to my balcony every day.”
Zelda chuckled. “Because you fed it?”
“I called him Prince. No others came, like Mama said they would. Just him, every morning. He’d talk to me while I shared my breakfast with him.”
“If he was anything like our Penelope, he told you the most amazing stories, too, no?” Zelda grinned and helped her situate herself on the side of the bed.
Alethia dragged in a long breath and wondered at how this manor house on the North Sea that belonged to veritable strangers could feel so much like home. “They were magical.” She would tell them to Samira, those stories she imagined as the monkey chattered and hooted. And Samira would add her own.
“Perhaps later today, if you feel up to the walk, you can meet the rest of the menagerie. We have no tiger anymore—which may be a relief to one from India, no? But our lion will win your heart.”
She’d heard his roar yesterday and managed to walk to the side of the house that overlooked the courtyard. Lady Marigold had been there with the tawny beast, frolicking and laughing and playing with the big cat as if he were an ordinary barn tom. Alethia had never seen the like. Zelda was right about the innate fear of such animals for those from India. When tigers prowled among men, it meant death and destruction. Not a circus act.
But she wasn’t in India. And apparently in England, the king of the jungle could be a pet—at least for the odd collection of wonderful people who called Fairfax Tower home. “I would love to meet the rest of the animals.” And she wasfeeling better each day. Notgood, not normal by any stretch of the imagination. But she could walk a little farther, sit up longer without the agony, and had only taken two naps yesterday. Five days after being shot three times, that seemed like a victory.
Zelda helped her dress and tidy her hair, but before she offered her capable arm for the walk to the balcony on which she’d been breakfasting, the woman paused and met her gaze. “Whoever has told you never to speak of it—you let them win when you obey. Know that, sweet one. Don’t let them win.”
