Page 61 of The Beautiful Ones

“Your family will remain exactly where it has chosen to stand.”

She opened her fan. Painted gardenias spread between us.

“Adrian is looking for you, little bird.”

I followed her back toward the crimson parlor because the corridor behind us belonged to my father, and I no longer knew which direction led away from him.

The room had scarcely changed. Nicholas still entertained Lucien and Philip near the drinks table. Augusta complained of the heat. My mother rearranged a vase of roses that required no rearranging. Only Adrian stood apart, one hand resting upon the pianoforte, his dark eyes fixed upon the doorway.

Upon me.

My throat opened in answer.

I could have crossed the room and told them all. I could have named the Sea Nymph, the hidden inlet, Nathaniel Vale’s grave. The words gathered, perfect and obedient, waiting for courage to give them shape.

Then Father’s voice thundered from the rear hall, ordering the servants to bar the gates.

Mother glanced toward the sound with irritation rather than alarm. Lucien laughed at something Nicholas whispered. Around me, the beautiful room continued breathing as if five hundred stolen souls and one murdered man were not buried beneath its splendor.

Adrian extended his hand.

I understood then that he had never offered me a cure.

He had offered me a place from which I could speak—and waited to see what I would become once speaking carried a cost.

I did not take his hand.

Neither did I call for my father.

I stood between them, silent by choice for the first time in my life, while somewhere beyond the windows Elin carried the truth away from Le Champ des Fleurs.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ELIN

Night settled over Le Champ des Fleurs without cooling it.

Heat remained trapped beneath the roof and inside the walls, thick with lamp smoke, damp linen and the sweet corruption of gardenias blooming where no living flower remained. Outside, cicadas rasped in the magnolias. Inside, every clock had stopped at a different hour.

Dinah brought me through the washhouse passage after dusk.

Monsieur Lebon had ordered the gates barred and every servant questioned, but anger made him careless. He searched the road for a fleeing thief and never imagined I would crawl beneath the clipped hedge, circle the kitchen garden and return to the house carrying Nathaniel Vale’s letter against my skin.

“Hide what you found before you go to her,” Dinah warned.

“Cécile saw me escape.”

“Then she knows enough to be frightened and not enough to keep either of you alive.”

We climbed the back stairs to my garret. The little room held the day’s heat beneath its sloping roof. I knelt beside my narrow bed and pulled out the wooden trunk I had brought from Sweden, its corners battered white from salt and travel. Beneath my winter shawl lay the Bible my mother had pressed into my hands at Göteborg.

I slipped Vale’s letter between the pages of Exodus.

Dinah watched me close the book.

“If anything happens to me—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”