Page 35 of Worse Than Wicked
“I did last year,” I say. “I didn’t like to leave Jane alone more than necessary.”
I watch her from the corner of my eye, searching for signs of jealousy or guilt.
Mabel is quiet for a minute. “Did you love her?” she asks at last.
“Of course not.”
“Not even in the way you’re able?”
“No,” I say, scowling at her. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because you didn’t kill her.”
I bristle, but she doesn’t notice. “I tried to kill her.”
“I don’t think so,” Mabel says, never breaking stride as she steps over rocks and fallen branches. “I don’t think you’d make a mistake like that.”
“I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t run,” I grit out, stopping to help her over a log. “I saw your location, and I had to hurry back to get you. Was that your plan all along? Is that why you ran, knowing I’d come after you, and it might save her?”
She shrugs. “I don’t see why you chose her. She didn’t deserve what you did to her.”
“You told me to get rid of her,” I remind her.
“Death seemed preferable to torture.”
I remember the night Royal came home and told us he’d taken her to the hospital after dragging her out of the river. “I think she jumped,” he said. “That, or she walked in and tried to drown herself.”
I was pleased with myself, knowing we’d pushed her to it. That we had won, making her life so unbearable she craved death.
I turn to Mabel now. “If death is preferably, why are you upset that I tried to kill her?”
“Not at all,” she says. “I’m curious why you spared her.”
“I didn’t intentionally spare her,” I say slowly, forcing my voice not to betray my irritation. “And I don’t think you’re in any position to cast judgment, seeing as how you led a half dozen men to their deaths. If you didn’t kill them outright.”
“Those men deserved it.”
“Why?” I ask. “For talking to a girl who they thought was underage? You weren’t, so did they even do anything wrong?”
“They had a sickness that can’t be cured,” she says. “They were removed from society before they could do further harm. What harm was Jane doing?”
“She was contributing by being my subject,” I say. “Until you wanted her removed.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes, Mabel having pulled her hand away and taken the lead again. “Maybe I made a mistake,” she admits. “I let my sympathy get the better of me.”
“That’s unlike you.”
“I’m not heartless,” she says, and there’s that defensiveness in her tone, just under the surface, the same one that creeps in when she says she’s not crazy.
“You think I am.”
It’s not a question, and it doesn’t bother me, but I enjoy turning the thought over in my mind, considering its implications.
“No,” she says after a minute. “Duke is your heart.”
The woods have grown thicker, the canopy so dense the sun barely shines through. Where it does, bright patches spot the leaves underfoot like blood left by a wounded animal.
“Are you bringing me out here to kill me?”
