Page 62 of The Beautiful Ones

“If it does, take the Bible. The letter names Lebon, Dewey and George. It names the Sea Nymph. It may be the only proof left that Commander Vale died trying to expose them.”

She touched the lid of the trunk with two fingers. “Then you had better live long enough to carry it yourself.”

We went to Cécile’s room together.

She sat before her dressing table in her nightshift, motionless beneath the lamplight. Her dark hair still held half its pins. Pearls lay scattered across the marble top where she had torn them free, and the blue silk gown had been thrown across the bed like a beautiful thing struck dead.

When she saw me in the mirror, her face crumpled.

I had prepared myself for anger. I had not prepared for relief.

Cécile rose so quickly that the stool overturned behind her. She crossed the room and seized both my hands. Her lips moved, but no sound came. The perfect voice that had dazzled the parlor was gone—or hidden—and terror had tightened every small muscle in her face.

“I am safe,” I said. “He did not catch me.”

Her fingers traveled over my arms, finding the tears in my sleeves and the scratches left by the dead gardenias. Only after she had assured herself that I was whole did she let me guide her to the bed.

Dinah silently gathered the fallen pearls. When the last had been placed in its velvet box, she carried the blue gown away and closed the door behind her.

Cécile and I were alone.

“You were outside the study,” I said.

She nodded.

“I saw your dress beneath the door.”

Her eyes filled. She reached for the slate beside her bed, but her hand shook so badly that the chalk clicked against the frame. At last she wrote three words.

I HEARD THEM.

I sat beside her.

“So did I.”

The chalk moved again.

VALE DID NOT LEAVE.

“No.”

FATHER KILLED HIM.

The final letter broke beneath the pressure of her hand.

I could have softened the truth. For two years I had helped soften everything for her—her mother’s contempt, Warren’s attention, the physicians who discussed her mouth as though she were absent. Kindness had too often required a lie.

That night, the lie would have been another cruelty.

“Your father, Judge Dewey and Reuben George killed him,” I said. “Vale discovered they were bringing enslaved people through the inlets and selling them. More than five hundred in the last year. He threatened to take their records to a federal magistrate.”

Cécile closed her eyes.

I took her hand before giving her the part that belonged to her.

“He did not abandon you. The letter says your father tried to use your future as an excuse for what they had done. Commander Vale refused him.”

Her eyes opened.