Page 62 of An Honorable Deception
Mama shook her head. “Your father was gone, too, on another of his trips. It had already been planned, but the timing looked right for him to have moved her when he left. The investigator is checking the train schedules—the car is still there.”
Alethia pivoted, not caring that everyone was staring at her. Not caring what they thought. She moved to the closest chair in the drawing room and sat before she fell. Herfather.
“I’m sorry.” Lavinia was the first to reach her. She crouched at her side and took her hand. “It isn’t over, not by a long shot. But I know that’s little comfort right now.”
No. It was no comfort at all. Her gaze felt like a weighted, heavy thing as she lifted it, sought out her mother. “Where’s Uncle Reuben?”
“With your father, presumably. You know they’re inseparable.”
Not quite. Not always.
“And that’s good news. More people traveling together means more chances they’ll be spotted.” The cheer in Lavinia’s voice was false, but Alethia still appreciated the effort.
She ought to be comforted by the fact that her mother was here. That she’d come. That she’d said, for once, that she was sorry. That she’d admitted that something horrible had happened right beneath her nose, there in her house. It was a first.
Her throat closed off for a minute, and new guilt twisted her chest. She’d lied to Lavinia last week when they’d firstspoken outside on the balcony. She’d said she didn’t hate her parents, not anymore. But she did. Oh, she did.
She hadn’t known, then, that it was a lie. But now it gurgled up. Every old fear and betrayal. Every tear she’d shed in that darker-than-night wardrobe. Every time she had begged her mother not to make her come down to say good night, not to make her give him a kiss hello, not to make her turn in a circle in her new dress to show him what a pretty little girl she was or play for him the violin he’d given her.
She was hermother. She should have stopped it, if she’d opened her eyes to see. But all she’d ever done was frown at Alethia, scowl at Samira and blame everything onher. As if the fourteen-year-old had been any more to blame than the six-year-old. As if she’d gone willingly to his arms in return for the baubles, as if each gift hadn’t been a shackle, a reminder of the words Alethia could still hear him breathing like a threat through that shielding wooden door.“You’re mine, my little lotus blossom. You’ll always be mine.”
All her mother had done for years was close her eyes to a truth she didn’t want to believe and let the horrors happen. To accept the horrid whispers of her horrid friends who claimed that Indian women like Samira were temptresses, that it wasn’thisfault if he’d been ensnared. It wasSamira’sdoing, she was a vixen in disguise. When Mama came to her other side now and reached for Alethia’s shoulder, she jerked away. Lurched to her feet, and then two steps away.
“Alethia?” She had the gall to look hurt.
Alethia’s fingers curled into her palms, and she was suddenly aware of the audience. Not just Lavinia, who had recognized the shadows so quickly because she had her own versions haunting her. Not Marigold, who she’d so quickly learned hid behind an ostentatious disguise to protect the truth of who she was underneath. Not even Fairfax, who sheso wanted to think the best of her, who had demonstrated in countless ways since he saved her life that he’d continue to do that as long as she needed him to.
But Sir Merritt was there, who she scarcely knew, apart from what Marigold told her of him. And, worse, Lord Xavier. Society’s favorite charmer, the man who had made her heart flutter in London, standing witness to how unworthy she was of anyone’s respect. How unworthy her family was of any alliance. Fairfax, she knew instinctively would never breathe a word about it—but Xavier? Charming, lighthearted Xavier? Why had they let him come?
Her mother shifted, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Dearest.”
Alethia edged away. She could hear Samira’s voice in her head telling her that love was the only way to defeat hate. That forgiveness was the only balm to the pain.
But Samira wasn’there.
Alethia shook her head. “You may not have known she was there in that maid’s room the other night. You may not have known that he’d kidnapped her and taken her to a place like that. But youknewwhat had happened before. You knew what went on in India.”
Her mother’s cheeks flushed scarlet. “I thought it one of so many shameful stories among the English households there. Do you have any idea how common it was? A British man with an Indian mistress? I didn’t know it had anything to do withyou. Not until—until she told me what would happen to you if I didn’t take action. When we sent her back to Calcutta. Why do you think I sent you away? Never brought you home? Why do you think I lied about every plan you made?” She took a hesitant step forward, the tears streaming now, hands grasping for Alethia again. “But she said you’d never been hurt, that he’d never touched you. She said...”
Never been hurt? Those wouldn’t have been Samira’s words. He’d never forced himself on her like he had Samira, had only bruised her now and then when she screamed or cried too loudly—but he hadhurt herin a million other ways, and Samira knew it.
And Mama—Mama had never once talked about it, even after Samira apparently warned her. They’d never had a conversation. No apologies, no questions. Alethia had, as always, been left alone to battle the fears. But her mother would bring it upnow, in company?
Mortification swept over her, pairing with the old hatred and the new awareness that she wasn’t the girl she thought herself. Wasn’t so forgiving. Wasn’t so faithful. Wasn’t what Samira had taught her to be. She glanced only once toward the corner of the drawing room, where Xavier and Merritt had taken up position.
Then she pushed past her mother, past Lavinia, past Fairfax, and charged as quickly as her injured leg would carry her out the closest door she could find.
The rain cooled her cheeks and made each step of distance seem three times as long as she put it between her and the house. She had no aim, no goal. She walked, letting the morass that had once been a lawn suck greedily at Samira’s shoes.
Some compassionate soul must have stopped anyone else from chasing after her because no voices called out, aside from the rain’s. No footsteps followed hers as she waded through the puddles of the lawn.
The copse of trees, when she finally entered it, at once caught the rain and sent larger drips splashing onto her shoulders.
Her side hurt. Her leg. Her chest. She moved to a fallen tree that looked every bit as soggy as the rest of the worldand sat on it, not caring a bit that it would ruin her dress or that the bark was rough against the palms she pressed to it.
As her heart rate slowed, as she filled her lungs with damp English air, the press of memories faded. Not much, but enough that she could remember the peace in Samira’s eyes as she’d hold her close in the mornings and dry her tears.
“He cannot steal my joy, sweetling,”she would say.“That is beyond his power. Because it is our good Father who gives it. Who loves us so much that He gave all for us. His suffering was so much more than ours can ever be. So when we suffer—and we all will, in this life—it can make us more like Him.”
