Yours etc.
Winston lowered the letter. So Egerton was dead. It had finally happened. The bastard was gone. If Clementine had lived, the title would now pass to her son. But of course, she had not. He did not know who would inherit the Egerton estate instead.
His hands, Winston realized, were shaking, but it wasn’t from regret or anger. There was a time when he would have heard of Egerton’s death and felt furious that he had not been the one to end it. But now, he felt only a deep sense of relief: both that the man was finally gone and could no longer hurt anyone and that he had not been the one to do it.
I spared myself that particular damnation,he thought.
Did it change anything for his relationship with Vanessa? Now that Egerton was gone, his last true temptation to go back intothe darkness was gone. But the darkness was still there, inside of him. It was not Egerton who had created it—Egerton was just one of the many who had fed it. And Winston could not risk Vanessa if he were to find himself drawn back into his violent rage.
There was another knock on the door, and he looked up to see his butler again.
“Shall I show her in?” he asked.
“Yes,” Winston said, setting the letter down. “Show her in.”
The butler disappeared, and moments later, the door was pushed open again. Winston stood, ready to greet Phoebe, but then he froze. The woman standing in the doorway was not his cousin. Nor was it his wife. Nor anyone else he might have been expecting.
It was his sister. It was Clementine.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Hello, Winston.”
Her words echoed through the room and through Winston’s skull, knocking him backwards. His knees buckled, and he sank back into his chair. He could not breathe. He could not think. He was seeing a ghost. A flesh and blood ghost, standing in front of him, smiling at him as if she was not dead.
Winston’s stomach churned, and he felt that he was going to be sick. He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose, trying to quell the nausea. When he opened his eyes again, his sister had taken a step into the room, her smile gone, concern replacing it.
“Winston? Are you all right?”
“Clem…” He could not get the word all the way out. His throat was constricted. He looked up into her eyes, willing her to be real.Please, do not let this be a figment of my imagination. Amanifestation of my grief. Please, let her be real. Let her be alive.
“Winston, it’s me,” she murmured, bending down over the desk and taking his hands. “I am sorry for scaring you like this. I know it must be a shock. I’m alive.”
“You are—” but he could not finish his sentence. A split second later, he was racked by a sob, and then he was crying, sobbing, bent over his desk, the tears cascading down his face, his whole body shaking.
She was alive. The shock was so great that it seemed to have awoken something deep inside of him, some long-repressed grief, and now, he was crying as he had not done since he was a child, since his mother had died.
And just like she had back then, after their mother was buried, his older sister took him in her arms and held him, rocking him back and forth and whispering kind, comforting words.
“It is all right,” she said, her arms tight around him. “I am here. I am so sorry, Winston. So, so sorry.”
His arms encircled her as well, and for a long time, they stayed like that. Winston never wanted to let her go. He was afraid that if he did, she would disappear from him again. But at last, after his tears had quieted, he released her, and she stepped back, tears staining her own cheeks, and smiled tentatively down at him.
“How is this possible?” he murmured, gazing up at her lovely face. She was older now, with more wrinkles and gray in her dark brown hair, and yet, she was even more beautiful than ever. Back when she had been married to Egerton, she had always had dark circles under her eyes which were bloodshot from crying, and she had been far too thin. Her husband’s abuse had been so torturous that she hadn’t eaten much, and Winston had feared that she was becoming all skin and bone.
Now, she was healthy-looking with full cheeks and a sturdy figure that looked as if she ate well and exercised regularly. He drank her in, the radiance that emanated from her, the happiness he saw in her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. He could hardly believe it. The Clementine he had known had been so miserable. This Clementine looked happy.
“I saw you jump…” he began uncertainly. “I was sure you had fallen into the water below.”
“I did jump,” she said. “But there was a ledge down below, hidden from view, that I jumped onto. I’d found it when I was a girl and used to go there to hide from Papa. I was not sure if it would work, or if you would find me right away, but I had to try. I had to escape that man, Winston.”
“Where have you been all this time?” he asked.
“I went to live on a farm in the north,” she explained. “No one knew me there, and I pretended to be a vicar’s daughter who had been thrown out for becoming with child. A kindly family took me in, and I have been living with them all these years. Theynever knew my real identity, but they loved me like one of their own. Both me and little Robert.”
“Robert?” Winston’s heart thumped painfully in his chest. “Is that your?—”
“My son, yes.” She smiled, and the happiness in her face seemed to light up the room. “He is not so little anymore though. He is ten years old! And a real terror.” She laughed, and he knew that his nephew was not really a terror and that he was loved and cherished the way that all children should be—the way he and Clementine had not been.
