Silence followed. Not the crushed, wrong silence. Ordinary quiet, with a draft and the strain of old timbers and the tick of a far-off pipe. Something in Isabella’s chest loosened and something in her throat hurt as if she had swallowed a stone.
Rhys turned. He set the lamplight between them and looked at her.
“You—” She could not put the sentence in order. She tried again as he drew her to her feet. “You saw her.”
His breath shook once on the way out. It steadied. “Yes.”
“You heard?—”
“Yes.”
Never say it. Never show it.
She had spent a lifetime making her face a mask, every action, every glance a shield. Now, she could set it aside. Now, she could breathe. Relief surged through her, fierce and reckless.
Because she understood at last. Rhys had been condemned for the very thing she had buried in herself. He had been locked away in St. Jude’s not for madness but for vision.
Chapter Sixteen
Rhys did not let go of Isabella’s hand.
By unspoken agreement, they moved together through the house, her fingers cold in his, his thumb fitting the notch of her knuckles. He told himself it was for her steadiness, not his, though the lie sat poorly. Where she walked beside him, the needles of sound dulled to a tolerable prickle. He felt her shiver but did not look at her. If he looked at her now, he might gather her in his arms and the restraint that had just saved her would go to pieces.
He saw again the mouth unhinge, the black seep smoking where it struck the carpet. He had said Catrin’s name and the cousin he remembered from their childhood, a shy creature in pink with jam smeared on her cheeks, had looked through him like ice. Not for the first time, he wondered how that child had become a monster, wondered if she always had been.
They reached his rooms. He pushed the door with his shoulder and guided Isabella in. The coals were banked to a low red, the air warm and quiet. He left the lamp on the sideboard and, without ceremony, drew Isabella toward the hearth.
“Sit,” he managed, indicating the sofa before the fire. He set the lamp lower, as if gentler light could soften the look of confusion and dismay that drew her features taut. He poured brandy, let the glass warm in his hand for a breath, then pressed it to her hand.
She glanced at the brandy and made a face. “I have no liking for spirits. They make me cough.”
“It will warm you. Small sips. Let it sit on your tongue. Don’t chase it,” he said, and was gratified that she trusted him enough to do as he bid and took a tiny sip.
“Are you hurt?” The question scraped his throat.
“I don’t think so.” She flexed her fingers then lifted her foot and moved it this way and that, testing her ankle. “No, not hurt,” she said, but he heard all she did not say, all the questions she ached to ask.
“I’ve never seen it that strong,” he said, the admission quiet and plain.
Her mouth trembled, then steadied. “All my life they’ve been—” She searched for the word, found one that fit. “Harmless. No weight. No hands. They cannot move a cup, let alone…me. But she—” She swallowed. “She has grown stronger since I arrived.”
“She is not like the others,” he said.
“Why?” Her voice did not rise. It thinned. “Why is she so strong?”
He met her eyes then, because there was no honest answer he could give that did not paint him the villain and he wanted one more moment where she looked at him as if he were the hero. The illusion, brief as a candle’s flicker, was more dangerous to her than any wraith.
“Because of all she did while still living, and the things she has done since death. The house remembers. She feeds on that remembering, and it feeds on her.”
She stared at him, dark eyes wide, cheeks pale, pulse a fast flutter at her throat, beautiful even in her distress. She should have recoiled. Instead, she leaned nearer and that was his undoing. In St. Jude’s he had been no one—watched, judged, locked away, an animal in a cage.
Here, with her, he was seen, understood. That thread bound tighter than any rope.
Their silence was not empty. Her quick breaths, the snap of fire, his own heart behaving badly…the room held it all. He sat beside her, close enough that the hem of her skirt brushed his boot. He did not move away. Where their knees nearly touched, the house’s cacophony sank, as if their nearness tamped the sound down with a palm.
“Thank you,” she said, and the words shook. “For coming.”
He did not deserve her thanks. “I took too long.”
