Page 381 of Alchemised
Her heart sank. She’d spent so much time worrying about this baby when it hardly existed, because it was all she’d had to care about. Kaine had been right when he’d called her desperate to love someone. It seemed to be her fatal flaw.
Now there was so much to care about, she’d stopped worrying about the pregnancy at all, thinking it could wait. But it couldn’t. It had been there all this time, and now it was a girl that no one wanted, except her.
Faced with indifference, Helena felt herself grow reactively possessive. She slipped her hand away from Kaine and went to the wardrobe, getting dressed slowly.
“What are you doing?” Kaine said as she buttoned her dress.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” she said without looking at him. “It’s good for the baby.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted him to if he was just going to brood and scrutinise her, but she nodded.
He removed the nullium from her manacles, and then instead of going into the courtyard, he took her to the rear of the house, with the hedge maze and the overgrown gardens. There was a pathway canopied with climbing roses.
Helena hesitated. “Won’t Morrough notice?”
“He only watches the courtyard.”
They walked in silence until they reached a gnarled apple tree, blossoms all faded, covered in fresh green leaves. Kaine stopped short and stood staring at it.
“I used to climb this tree when I was a boy,” he said. “It’s bigger in my memory.”
He’d never spoken of his past without prodding before. All she knew of his childhood was the loneliness of it. An absent father, a sick mother, and the servants whose ghostly memories still lingered around him.
“I got stuck right here once,” he said, reaching out and touching a large branch that barely reached Helena’s waist. “I was sure I’d fall and break my head if I moved. I stayed there half the day, shouting for my mother. She wasn’t supposed to get out of bed, but I wouldn’t listen, I wanted her to come for me. Wanted her to see how high I’d climbed. Eventually she did.” His hand dropped. “When I was older, I felt so guilty about it. All those stupid things you do when you’re young and don’t understand.”
Helena could scarcely imagine Kaine that young.
He pointed to a break in the hedges. “If we go that way, there’s a pond. Used to be all kinds of frogs and newts there. I used to think I could tame them, teach them to do tricks.”
He said all of this without any emotion, a flat recitation. He looked around.
“I should take you up to the spires,” he said at last. “I’d remember more from up there, I think. It’s strange … I don’t know why I have so much trouble remembering moments.”
He started to walk back, his eyes wandering as if he was searching for something there in the gardens. He paused, his lips moving several times before he finally spoke.
“My mother’s name was Enid.”
Helena nodded. She remembered that.
He looked towards the garden, fingers curling into a fist. “I always liked that name.”
Slowly Helena realised what he was doing.
This was his attempt at giving her what she wanted. For him, acknowledging that he would have a child, a daughter, meant acknowledging that he wouldn’t live to meet her. He was telling the stories so Helena could tell their daughter about him, about what he’d been like, before the Institute and the war.
He stared towards the city where it rose above the trees. “I’m not sure what will happen to the estate and inheritance. I’ve transferred as much as I can to a foreign account, but if you did ever come back, I’m not sure if she’d be able to claim it. I can look into it, if you want.”
Helena’s throat closed and her shoulders started to shake, and she couldn’t make herself breathe.
Kaine looked over. “I’ve brought you too far.”
She shook her head but couldn’t move. There were so many things she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to without having them break her open.
He stepped closer. “Can you walk back?”
She managed to shake her head.
