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“She severed herself from them long ago,” Annis says. “They were shopkeepers. Decent people, who spent every shilling they had sending her to a good school, and she did not so much as thank them.”
They were a step on the ladder upward, and once she’d passed that step, she didn’t look back. Oh, she might have, at her most destitute, as she did with Annis, but the fact that they aren’t here says everything.
The fact thatno oneelse is here for Sarah says everything.
Those who knew her only socially—as Isla and Gray had—bought her act. So did every journalist who covered the trial, and every broadsheet and pamphlet writer who spun the story of the sweet and pretty ladydeceived and trampled by her upper-crust friends. Yet the emptiness of this courtyard says that therewerepeople who saw her true nature… and they were the ones she should have treated best—her family, her friends, her lovers.
I don’t notice when the door opens to bring Sarah out. There is no fanfare. Not even a murmur in the sparse gathering. Annis turns, and that is the only way I realize Sarah is here.
I have tucked myself into shadows, in hopes Sarah doesn’t see me. Annis came to be here for her, the one person who did, and I won’t ruin that by attracting Sarah’s attention.
Sarah doesn’t seem to see Annis at first. She climbs to the gallows. Someone in religious attire says a few words. I expect Sarah to weep. To fall to her knees. To continue the act of the innocent. And there’s where I misunderstand her. There’s no audience for a performance, so she doesn’t bother to give one.
“Do you have anything to say?” the minister asks.
She turns to those assembled. Her gaze sweeps them. Then it lands on Annis, and there is no doubt she noticed her the moment she walked in. “Only that I am indeed guilty of an unforgivable crime. The crime of naïveté. I loved a woman, the best friend I could have had. Loved her even when she cast me out. When she let me back into her life, I thought myself blessed, only to realize I had been tricked again. She simply wanted me to take the blame for her terrible crimes. Now I see you’ve come to gloat, Annis. To watch me—”
I step out. I move right beside Annis, where Sarah cannot fail to see me. She stops midsentence. Her mouth works, unable to find words as the fury rises, her cheeks flaming scarlet with it.
She opens her mouth to speak again, but the minister is already tugging her back, using her pause as an excuse to end her speech. She seems ready to fight, but a guard steps out to restrain her, and she decides not to bother. I may have cut her diatribe short, but those around us heard and understood, and they may be officials, but that won’t keep them from selling those final words.
Even on the gallows, Miss Sarah blamed Lady Annis Leslie. Beautiful, sweet Miss Sarah forced to stand and receive the noose while the icy Lady Leslie looked on, the woman so cruel she could not even grant her friend a peaceful end.
That will be the story, and Annis will never escape it, because it’s such a good story, with the delicate damsel and brutal bitch firmly occupying their proper roles.
The hangman steps forward, and the hairs on my neck rise, as I remember words of the woman we’d followed at the beginning of this case.
It seems I am not the one who needs to worry about paying a visit to Calcraft’s toilet.
Is this the man behind the gallows moniker? William Calcraft? I can’t see him. He’s hooded and silent as he moves forward to do his job.
Before Sarah’s hands are tied, before the hood goes over her head, she looks out at Annis one last time, blows her a kiss, and says, “I hope you never meet my equal, dear Annis.”
“I pray I do not,” Annis whispers.
And then the rope is placed, the hatch is opened, and Sarah drops through.
FORTY-NINE
Annis wanted me to come back to the town house alongside her. No need to hide where I’d been, now that it’s over. Instead, I ask to be let out as soon as we enter the New Town, and I walk the rest of the way.
I come in the back door. Voices drift down. Isla and Gray, up in the drawing room, comforting their sister, as best Annis will allow.
I stand there, and I listen to them, and I hope Annis does allow it. I hope she understands what a treasure she has in her family. She might have turned her back on them, and they have every reason not to allow her into their lives again. Just as she had every reason not to go to Sarah’s execution today. But there are times when we are able to put aside our own pain and do what we think is right. Annis did that today. Isla and Gray have done it for Annis since the beginning of this investigation, and I hope to hell she recognizes that and does what Sarah could not: prove herself worthy of the love she threw away.
I consider going up to my room, but I want to be someplace else. As much as I’ve learned to love my cozy little attic room, right now it’s only a reminder of where I am. Of who I am.
Seeing Sarah die had been…
I hesitate to say traumatic. After all, I’ve seen people die before. People who deserved it so much less. Only weeks ago, I held a man as he passed from this life and begged forgiveness for his crimes. Compared to that,seeing Sarah—her face covered—drop from a gallows should quickly fade into an uncomfortable memory.
It won’t. I know that. I watched a state-sanctioned murder, and I cannot get it out of my head. When I try, I find myself instead thinking of my grandmother on her deathbed.
I so desperately hadn’t wanted to watch Nan die, yet I’d steeled myself to be there for her. But I hadn’t been there. I was here, and I’m still here, and she must be gone by now. Did she die alone? She’d been so close to the end, and if my parents hadn’t been able to make it in time, she’d have been alone, and even Sarah had someone at her death, and she was a million times less deserving than Nan, and that is not fair. It is so goddamnedunfair.
I’m down in the funeral parlor, sitting on Gray’s office floor, knees pulled up as I try to cry. Iwantto cry. No bullshit about how I’m not that kind of woman. Tears aren’t weakness. They’re release, and I want desperately to find that, and I can’t. I sit dry-eyed, thinking about Sarah and Annis and my grandmother and my parents and my old life. I grieve for all of them, the pressure building until I want to scream.
I don’t hear the door open. I hear nothing until I see black-clad legs, and then I scramble up as fast as I can manage.
