Page 68 of The Beautiful Ones

I took his hand and pulled him beyond Father’s hearing. So many words crowded my throat that for one panicked instant none could pass.

Lucien waited.

He had always waited differently from Elin—not with her patient stillness, but with a crooked smile that promised to make a joke of the silence if I needed him to.

There could be no joke that morning.

“G-go,” I said.

His fingers tightened around mine. “Not without you.”

“With P-Philip. Find the m-magistrate.”

Philip stared at us. Behind him, Reuben demanded that he enter the carriage.

“Why?” Lucien asked.

I forced myself to look into my brother’s face.

“Father k-killed Commander Vale.”

The words did not come beautifully. They came with breath, pain and a visible struggle that made every syllable impossible to mistake.

Lucien’s smile vanished.

“What did you say?”

“The glasshouse. He is b-buried there.”

Philip went white.

“Cécile, come with us,” Lucien said. “Both of you. Where is Elin?”

“She has the p-proof.”

The lie was small enough to protect us. Elin had the beginning of proof, not enough to save anyone if Father caught her with it.

Reuben seized Philip’s shoulder. “Get in.”

Lucien resisted when Philip pulled him toward the coach. I put both hands against my brother’s chest.

“Go,” I said again.

This time the word came whole.

The shock of it held him for one second. Then he kissed my forehead, climbed onto the rear-facing seat beside Philip and shouted to the driver.

The George carriage rolled away. Lucien twisted around to watch me until the oaks swallowed him from sight.

Two guilty houses had escaped Le Champ des Fleurs. My brother had escaped with one of them.

I did not know whether I had saved him or placed him upon the road toward another reckoning.

“What have you done?” Mother asked.

She stood beneath the archway in lavender silk, dressed as perfectly as if the morning had been arranged for callers. Only her bare throat betrayed her. The diamonds she wore from breakfast until bed had been left behind.

“I sent Lucien for help.”