Page 61 of An Honorable Deception
Sir Merritt. Friends, then. She sucked in a long breath as the others spilled in. Lavinia. Lord Fairfax. And then...
She straightened, her eyes going wide. “Mama?”
Her mother’s face lit when she spotted her, and she rushed her way with arms outstretched, nearly blocking her view of the final figure. Nearly. Not quite.
Alethia was enveloped in silk and heavy perfume and arms she’d never felt hold her quite so tightly—and yet carefully,as if she knew where not to squeeze. “Mama? Is thatLord Xavierwith you? Why?”
Where was Samira? That was what shewantedto ask, but she couldn’t think her mother would have that answer.
She couldn’t think why her mother washere.
She couldn’t think what it meant that she was. She’d sent her the letters, yes, because she knew for a fact her mother never shared with anyone else anything that Alethia wrote. She’d never been certain, truth be told, that her mother even gave them more than a glance. Whenever talk turned to what she’d written home about while she was at school, the facts her family thought they knew bore no resemblance to what she’d reported. She’d gone with a friend to Sheffield—Father asked her how she’d liked Scotland. She’d spent the last Christmas before she’d come home in Cornwall—Uncle Reuben thought she’d been in Paris.
She’d never corrected them. It only would have made them scowl at her mother and insult her intelligence—a familiar refrain. Better to be silent. To send her notes to Mama, resigned to the knowledge that she gave them only the most cursory of glances and then tossed them into the grate. That when it came down to it, her mother didn’t care where she was.
A theory in stark contrast to the way Mama held her now. “My precious girl.”
“Mama?” She hugged her back, new thoughts, worries—hopes?—pummeling her. “What’s the matter? Has something happened to Father? Uncle Reuben?”
Mama pulled back, her eyes damp—and fierce. “We can only pray so.”
Her mouth fell open, but if there was a proper response to that, she didn’t know it.
Her mother’s hand cupped her cheek, nostrils flaring.“They did this—one, the other, both. I don’t know—I don’t care. They sent those men after you. Tokillyou. They’re lucky they’d left Town on their latest business trips before your friends told me that or I’d have killedthem.”
The idea was laughable, on the one hand—Mama had never so much as swatted her own flies. But the subject was anything but humorous. Her gaze flew to the others, who still stood in a solemn knot inside the doors. Even Lord Xavier had made no move to greet her, his usual smile absent from his face.
Her stomach dropped to her toes. She took her mother’s hand from her face and held it as she stepped away, so that she could see Fairfax and Lavinia. “What happened? Where’s Samira?”
Mr. A was supposed to have found her. Rescued her. Sent her here with the others.
But there was no Samira in this sober crowd.Please, Lord. Don’t let her be dead. Please. Please, not Samira.
Lord Fairfax stepped forward, apology in his eyes. “We don’t know.”
Her breath held. Released.We don’t knowwas at least better thanWe found her body.“What happened? I thought you said the investigator—”
“He...” He glanced over at Lavinia, sighed, raked a hand through his hair. “He’d found her. At the Empire House. But it isn’t a charity, not after the doors close to the public in the evening.” He hesitated, looked now at her mother, seemingly for permission. At her nod, he grimaced and said, “It’s a brothel. Catering to the aristocracy.”
She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut. But she didn’t. Not looking at the truth wouldn’t fix it. “You said he had a plan to get her out.”
Mama’s hand slipped out of hers. “You’re not even surprised.”
Her words brought silence down upon them. Alethia’s breath came too fast, but she caught it, slowed it. Had she known that the charity was a farce? No. But it didn’t surprise her. Nothing surprised her. Not since she was six years old and went crying to her ayah because she’d known—known—that he wanted to hurt her, known the way he trailed his hands over her wasn’t right, even if she hadn’t understood how.
Her gaze dropped.This is your fault, the voice hissed in her head. But she forced her eyes up again. It wasn’t. That was what Samira had whispered far more often and with the truest kind of love. It wasn’t her fault. She’d done nothing wrong.Hewas the one with the sickness in his soul.Hewas the monster. Not her.
Why had those words always been so much harder to believe than the accusing ones? Why was it easier to believe in evil than in good? Why did the devil’s arguments sound so much more logical than God’s?
She drew in another breath, let it out, and met Fairfax’s gaze again. “I didn’t know. But I’m not surprised. He always treated her like his...” She couldn’t say the word, though he’d tossed it around like both a curse and an endearment, depending on his mood. She shook it off. “But where is shenow?”
Fairfax went silent.
Lavinia eased forward. “She was gone before Mr. A could get his people in place. He’d known she was likely to be moved, so he gathered people to watch—but she was already gone. We spent yesterday looking, but ... Mr. A is following the trail. He’ll find her.”
Mother was all but vibrating with anger. “They had her at thehouse, Alethia. And I didn’t even know it—I swear I didn’t. I didn’t know until your friends came pounding onthe door the next morning, saying an investigator had followed clues she’d left there, and we went searching. She’d left a shoe in the corner of that unused maid’s room—that’s where they had her. But they were gone.”
“They.” She felt numb. Cold. Fuzzy.
