Thus, the month before she had announced a forthcoming work: The Memoirs of a Rakess. She would, she made it known, spare no detail, and no person, in her story.
The logic of the plan was simple: the scandal of her story, and the august reputations of the villains she would name in it, would create a fervor for the manuscript. People would buy it for the gossip. Those who hated her already would hate her more, but others would perceive the moral of the tale: the unfairness of her losing everything while the men who’d had an equal hand in her disgrace rose to ever greater prominence, unscathed.
She would harness outrage at this injustice by using the final pages of her book to call for donations for the institute.
She would turn sympathy into the capital to help the plight of women.
All she needed were the words.
But the words failed her, given all the years she’d spent making a point of never speaking them. Even Thaïs and Cornelia only knew the barest outline of what had happened.
This was not because she was discreet. It was because she couldn’t stand to think about it.
Even when it had been happening, she’d tried to push the reality away, convinced if she just refused to feel the pain it could not be real.
She had hoped that the view of Kestrel Bay would help the memories come more easily. But sitting here, in the very room where she had made that first, horrible confession that cold October morning, watching her stepmother’s unmoving face and rapidly flickering fingers, unceasing in their sewing—froze her.
It was too still. Too quiet. Too much like those endless, tense days of her childhood, embroidering in silence.
She opened a window, hoping the roar of the waves crashing against the rocks would ease the feeling of stillness, but it was unusually calm this morning. The air was warmer outside than inside—balmy and soft. Perhaps she would write out of doors.
She took her papers and the ink and quill and went outside into the sunshine.
“Toss the line!” someone shouted in the distance.
She looked out in the direction of the voice and saw that Mr. Anderson was standing at the foot of Tregereth’s property, conferring with a group of builders. Beyond them, another group of men worked at erecting some sort of pulley from the roof to the tent where they had assembled construction supplies at the bottom of the house.
The noise soothed her, even if the sight of the architect brought back a rush of longing for what she wanted from him and could not have.
She wished she could resent him for it, but the frankness with which he explained his reasons for refusing made her like him more, not less.
Perhaps it would serve her, to long for him; to long for a man in this house brought back a flood of memories.
She spread out a fresh page. Dipped her quill in ink.
She closed her eyes and let the briny air wash over her and tried to recall this feeling the way she’d experienced it as a girl.
It began as these things do. He was a neighbor.
He took an interest in me and I bloomed in it. Before him, I was nothing. Soon, his gaze on me was the only thing that made me breathe.
I was a homely, bookish girl, prone to flights of fancy and fits of temper. He was handsome and amusing.
Why he loved me I could not have told you then, for it was my miracle, my mystery.
Now I’m certain that he didn’t.
What drew him to me was something else. A flicker at my core I was not yet aware of.
He saw it before I did: my hunger.
And something else: my vulnerability.
To him I was an opportunity.
But to me, he was a god. I loved him with a kind of religiosity. How could I not?
He, who could have anyone, had chosen me.
I would have died for him.
And in a way, I did.
A child’s wail broke through her thoughts.
A child?
She stood and peered out beyond the terrace. A small, red-haired girl was sprawled on her stomach on the path that ran a few meters below the terrace steps, crying out in pain.
She looked like the little girl Sera’d seen walking with Adam Anderson. His daughter.
Seraphina rose and darted down the steps to help her.
Adam looked up from his building plans when he heard a shrill wail.
He had a parent’s preternatural recognition of his children’s noises of distress, and that sound was his daughter’s distinctive cry of pain.
He scanned the horizon and saw Addie splayed out a few hundred yards away, just below Miss Arden’s terrace steps. A woman in a vivid yellow gown was crouched down beside her in the dust.
It was Miss Arden.
He dropped his plans and began to run.
Miss Arden lifted Addie to her feet and said something to his daughter that made her laugh.
Thank God. If she could laugh, she was not too badly injured.
“What happened?” he asked, dropping to his knees to inspect his daughter, breathless from running.
Addie beamed at him, pleased to be the center of attention.
“It seems Miss Adeline Anderson here took a spill on this very unfriendly chunk of rock,” Miss Arden said, gesturing at a stone.
He felt such a surge of gratitude to her for easing Addie’s tears that he had to restrain himself from clutching them both to his chest.
Nonsense. Focus on your injured daughter.
He knelt down and gripped Addie tightly, shuddering a bit at the thought of what might have happened if she had slid a foot closer to the edge of the path.
Addie tolerated his embrace for just a moment before holding up her hand to show him where a bit of gravel had dug into the flesh, leaving it mottled and scraped.
“Miss Arden says that I may throw the rock off the cliff,” she informed him cheerfully, the drying tears forgotten. “To punish it for its abuse of me.”
“An eye for an eye,” Miss Arden said, very serious. “It’s only what the rock deserves.”
Addie picked up the stone in her uninjured hand. He reached out to stop her, lest she go over the edge in her attempt to toss it, but Miss Arden had already taken her gently by the shoulder to steady her.
“Careful, darling,” she said. “Not too close to the cliff.”
He took Addie by the other shoulder and leaned her toward him, so he could look into her eyes. “Addie, you mustn’t ever get too close to the edge, do you understand? And you mustn’t run on the path.”
His voice was gruffer than he liked, and Addie’s top lip began to quiver.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said plaintively to Miss Arden. “I tripped.”
“Your papa isn’t angry, only frightened,” Miss Arden said conspiratorially. “Promise him you will be very, very cautious whenever you are on this path.”
Addie looked at him. “I promise.”
He kissed her forehead. “Thank you, lass.”
Miss Arden winked at him, in a way that made it obvious she could see how upset he was and that he needn’t worry. It was a look Catriona used to give him, to reassure him when he was anxious about the children. The memory knocked the wind out of him.
Miss Arden turned her attention back to Addie. “Now then, stand straight.”
Keeping the girl at several feet’s distance from the ledge, Miss Arden helped her swing back her arm to throw the stone. “There we are. Let it go.”
The small rock plunged down the hill. Jasper and Marianne reached them just in time to see it smash onto the rocks below. Addie whooped with delight.