All that wine. She’d missed Golowan. The children.
Oh God, and Adam. Pushing him away when he’d tried to comfort her.
Insulting him.
Falling.
Ripping off her clothes, demanding to be fucked.
She lay in her bed and held herself and wept. She wept for him—for what he must have felt, for how he must have suffered. She wept in shame for having taken pains to hurt him, to lash the kindness out of him. She wept for herself, for her unbearable sadness, her own capacity for cruelty, the terrible force of her rage. She wept for Elinor and Jack, for her father. She wept for her poor baby.
She wept until she was a husk, her head aching, her eyes painful in their sockets.
And then, finally, she stopped crying.
And she knew.
If the drinking did not kill her, the despair would.
She had to stop this.
Adam trudged up the coastal path wincing at the cheerful wildflowers that drifted in the lazy wind. Had it only been yesterday that he’d picked a bunch for Seraphina, anticipating the sweetness of making up after their first quarrel? Had he really stood here smiling to himself, imagining a few weeks of luxuriating in her bed?
To think how much hope one could lose in a single night was gutting.
There would be no more luxuriating.
Adam had spent enough time with people in the grips of drink to know that an unquenchable thirst could not be reasoned with. When one loved a drunkard, one’s love went unrequited; one could not compete with the pull at the bottom of their glass.
He had watched his mother lose this battle, convincing herself she could change his father with arguments and ultimatums, only to be shattered anew each time his thirst proved more powerful than her pleas.
He ached for Seraphina. But he could not subject his children—or himself—to the ravages her thirst would leave on any hearts that got too close to hers.
And he was much too close.
Whether she called him a friend or a lover, he was falling for her. She was in his dreams, in his thoughts. He felt more alive—more daring, more thoughtful, more himself—in her presence. And he craved the moments when he coaxed her brittle shell open for a second, and the kind and tender woman inside shone out.
He’d entertained the idea that if he could wear that crack into a deeper fissure, he could perhaps lodge himself inside her heart and heal it.
But was this not what his mother had imagined of his father, when she remained his mistress, welcoming him back to her bed whenever he visited his Scottish holdings, no matter how dreadful he’d been the time before?
He wouldn’t repeat the past. The price was too high, and the things he had to protect were too precious to pay it.
But he wanted a proper end.
He did not want to remember Seraphina Arden stumbling after wine or weeping naked on the floor. He wanted to remember what had drawn him to her—her fearlessness, her beauty, her wit. He wanted to wish her peace.
He knew she would be sick when she awoke so he waited until well after the luncheon hour before walking to her home.
Her house looked odd as he drew near it. All the windows, usually open to catch the ocean breeze, were closed, and the shutters along the terrace were locked, save for the single loose one, which he had forgotten to have fixed. It clattered desolately in the wind.
He walked around the front of the house and knocked.
No one answered.
Perhaps Sera was upstairs resting in the dark and had ordered the house closed to visitors.
He was just about to leave when the door opened and the maid, Maria, greeted him.
“Is Miss Arden up to a visit?” he asked.
Maria shook her head. “She left. Early this morning.”
“When do you expect her back?”
Maria shook her head. “No, sir. She went back to London with Miss Tompkins. I’m to close the house and return by coach.”
She was gone? Impossible.
Maria looked at him expectantly. He realized he was standing with his mouth hanging open.
But how could she have left? What about her book? Curse her bloody book, what about him? Did he mean so little she could not be bothered to say farewell?
“Er, she didn’t leave anything for me, did she?” he asked. “A note?”
Even as he said the words, he knew they were preposterous. The pitying look that came over Maria’s face confirmed it.
“No, sir. I can give you her address in London if you wish to write.”
“No. No, that’s quite all right.” He reached into his pocket for the Celtic amulet that his children had purchased for Seraphina at the Golowan market, and handed it to Maria.
“Would you give her this? Tell her it’s from the Anderson children. A farewell gift in thanks for a memorable few weeks.”
Weeks their father would no doubt remember all his life.
Part Two
From The Society of Sirens: A Memoir
By Seraphina Arden, 1827
The act of committing my history to paper transformed it from the haze of the long-buried past into gruesome detail.
I couldn’t live with it that close to me.
I tried to drown it, one final time, in drink. A pint of brandy, a liter of wine. Enough to be surprised that I’d woken up alive.
When I did wake up, I felt poisoned. From the wine I had consumed, from the pain that was undoing me, from the vicious things I’d said to a man who’d tried to soothe me.
I was becoming utterly undone. I was terrified that in the face of what was coming—the scandal my memoirs would provoke, the threat of prosecution by Lord Bell—I would lose control entirely.
To meet the vow I had sworn the night that Elinor went missing, I had to save myself.
But I did not know how.
I only knew that I could not do it alone, in Cornwall.
I returned to St. Martin’s Lane, to my Sirens, and asked their help. That I am alive three decades later is to the credit of Cornelia and Thaïs and my faithful secretary, Jane Tompkins.
They emptied out my wine cellar. They called a physician when I swore that I was dying. They fed me cleansing herbs and broth.
I quickly changed my mind and fought them bitterly. Bless them, they didn’t listen.
They took me for brisk walks through the park to exhaust my nervous energy and sat up with me at night when the thirst to drown my memories became so overpowering that I begged them to relent, to bring me just a sip to calm me.
They would not let me ignore my pain, or numb it. Expel it, they ordered me, night after night. Treat it like an exorcism.
I roamed my house in a tattered shift drinking endless cups of tea, writing memories I’d never told another soul on strips of paper that I promptly threw into the fire. Four years of Jonathan Trewlnany’s words, his touch, his laughter, his promises, his secrets—all torched. Tamsin. My father. The wretched planter they tried to marry me to. From memory to ink to ash.
The only ones I kept were my memories of my baby girl. I still have them, in the bottom of my jewel box.
None of it helped. Until, somehow, it did.
I was as shocked as anyone when one morning I woke up feeling calmer than I had in weeks and read a newspaper. The peaceful feeling did not last. But it gave me hope that I might not always feel so dreadfully. I took more walks. Drank my herbal tinctures. Slept more than I had in years.
I returned to myself in dribs.
I began to crave sunshine, to bathe and dress myself with regularity, to eat meals without being forced by my friends.