She looked back over the courtyard wall, but the tears came faster. He was the last person she wished to shed her tears before. Why couldn’t he have been Minney? Minney would have understood. She would have known that it’d been three nights since Eliza had slept, or that the ball was in two days and she was still stumbling through the dances like a fairy with broken wings.
“Come down here.”
No, she wouldn’t. He was always telling her what to do. Why should she listen?
He yanked off his tailcoat, undid the knot of his necktie. Then he grabbed the lowest limb, ascended quickly, and paused one branch below her. Yellow bruises still hung below his eyes and chin, but the cut across the bridge of his nose was nearly gone. “You are crying.”
She swatted the tears back off her face.
He edged closer. “Something has happened. Someone has tried to harm you again—”
“No.”
“Then what?” Softer now. His eyes probed her face. “If anything is wrong, you must tell me. Have they taken your dog?”
She shook her head.
“Then Lord Gillingham. He has said something to upset you.”
Another shake of her head.
“Perhaps Mrs. Eustace—”
“No, it is not her. It is not anyone.” The breeze stirred the leaves around them, stirred at her hair she’d refused to let the maid fix into curls and a chignon. “It is me…the nightmares.”
“What nightmares?”
“I can’t sleep anymore. I’m afraid to.”
He pulled himself to her limb, closer than he should have been, and touched her shoulder. Ever so slightly, he guided her to face him. “You never told me about this.”
“It does not matter anyway. I never see the face.”
“Then it is of that night?”
“I think so. I didn’t know for sure…not until three days ago when I went into …” Why couldn’t she speak the words?
“No one should have brought you in there.”
“I went on my own.”
“Why?”
Did it matter? No, nothing mattered. Not even the nightmares mattered because they didn’t tell her anything and they only hurt her more.
“Eliza.”
With one hand, she rubbed at each eye. More tears still escaped. “Eliza, tell me the nightmare.”
“I do not want to.”
“You must.”
“But it tells us nothing. Don’t you see? I cannot remember who killed her.”
“Tell me.”
How could she put it into words? She’d only ever told Captain once or twice, in younger years, in the middle of the night when the horrors had still had their hold on her.
