There was more to this police report than just a stolen phone. And given the timeframe of my apparent descent into chaos that I only know about via hearsay from my parents, I somehow just know.
The two incidents are connected. They have to be. I might not be able to trust my own memory and perception of my life, but I somehow just know.
I know with such intensity that I march out of the dressing room, then the en suite, then my room, and go straight to Malachi’s study in the east wing.
His door is open, and he’s at his desk, looking perfectly aristocratic and coldly handsome in a well-tailored Oxford shirt and suit jacket, just as he always does. His appearance should be a reminder and a warning of my place in this world, but I suddenly don’t care.
“Malachi,” I announce myself, stepping into the study.
He doesn’t look up and continues to scroll with the mouse. “I thought we had established not only the fact that you are to address me as Duke and Sir, but also that you are to stay in your room.”
“I need to go to New York.”
At that, he cuts his steely, pewter eyes up to me. “No, you do not.”
“I do, Malachi.” I hold up my phone and wave it frantically at him. “I filed a police report with the NYPD, and I can’t rem—”
“You what?” he snaps, shooting up from his chair and practically leaping around the desk to lunge at me. “Why the fuck are you in contact with the NYPD?” He snatches the phone out of my hand and pitches it at a far wall with such intensity that it shatters on impact, and then grabs my arm. “Of all the conniving, manipulative—”
“Malachi, please. I didn’t file it now, it was from—”
“Silence yourself, Duchess!” He’s now dragging me out of the room toward the stairs, and it’s so much like the horrifying day from more than a decade ago that my head goes light.
Papá’s furious, angry voice as he dragged me up the stairs.
Cállate… cállate… cállate… no quiero escucharlo… cállate…
My feet stumbling on steps, my shins smacking and scraping against marble stairs… both then and now.
“Silence yourself, Duchess.”
Cállate, no quiero escucharlo.
“Silence yourself.”
Cállate.
My head dizzying with desperation to simply know…
What did I do… what happened… I just want to know… please.
Por favor.
I’m sorry.
Lo siento.
The lightheadedness increases to exponential levels, and then…
I feel something snap.
Not a big snap; more of a tiny snip.
Like a thread of fraying yarn held between two hands that give it a subtle, light tug that breaks it apart.
Malachi is now dragging me, cursing at me just like Papá did, his words a battery of get up, get up, stand up, goddamn you, but there’s suddenly a cold wash over my face and neck; a paling sensation, and a sickly turn of my stomach, and my clammy hands shaking from where he has me suspended by my elbows.
Blackness is creeping in, my hearing buffered by static and white noise and a high-pitched hum, and the dragging ceases.
Malachi releases my arms. “Duchess?”
I can’t really hear him.
“Duchess.”
I can’t see anything either now, but I feel hands on my face.
Hands on my face, but not in a slap or a harsh, tight grip.
“Duchess.”
Gentle hands, sweeping across my forehead and cheeks.
I can’t see anything, and I can’t hear much, but just before everything shuts down, I hear him call me something he hasn’t in eleven years.
“Isla.”
TWELVE
MALACHI
Present
FEAR.
Fear, the likes of which I haven’t felt since that day eleven years ago, electrifies every cell in my body, and instinct renders me to my former twenty-year-old self.
“Isla.”
Her typically warm, tawny skin is blanched to an unnatural pallid shade, and she’s trembling so violently that she looks like she’s having a seizure.
“Isla, look at me.”
She can’t because she’s out cold, because there is suddenly blood.
And I know exactly what’s happening because it happened before.
“Mrs. Maisely!” I call into the cavernous center of the palace from where Isla collapsed on the stairs. “Call the midwife!”
“Your Grace?” Mrs. Maisely’s panicked voice carries from somewhere I can’t identify.
I pick up Isla’s limp wrist and drape her arm over my neck as I scoop her up and ascend the other side of the split staircase as quickly as my legs will carry me. “Call the midwife!”
At the landing, I take off in a sprint, carrying her back to her room, instinct overriding everything.
Her betrayal.
Her obstinance.
The dull, gutting pain of knowing I lost everything I loved more than anything because of her sheer, unadulterated selfishness.
None of it registers, and it all takes a backseat to pure, guttural instinct.
I lay her on the bed and dart to the en suite to retrieve towels and her robe, and this is my fault.
No, it is not, and it doesn’t matter because I’m still flying on instinct as I gently strip off her clothes and slip the robe over her arms and shoulders, securing it around her to maintain a scant amount of her dignity. I slide a towel underneath her, and then retrieve a damp cloth to drape across her forehead.
“Isla… sweetheart… baby girl,” I say, all of my former names for her coming to life on my tongue as I suddenly can’t tell the difference between now and then. “Look at me. Can you look at me?”
Of course she can’t, and this is my fault, but no, it’s not.
This wouldn’t be happening again if she hadn’t betrayed me. Because if she hadn’t betrayed me, I never would have yelled at her, or dragged her down the hall and down the stairs, or done any of the things I’ve done since I had to bring her back into my life after such a betrayal. I wouldn’t have turned into the person I am now if she hadn’t destroyed everything.
“Your Grace, let me take over for you. Just try to breathe.”
I’m suddenly watching all of it from a distance.
The midwife and another nurse are suddenly there; Mrs. Maisely and another housemaid, too; all four of them tending to Isla, who is still unresponsive, and pale, and bleeding.
I did this.
No, I didn’t. She did.
But that still doesn’t stop me from pacing just beyond the foot of the bed, hand clasped over my mouth, while a panicked lump surges to the top of my throat and tears burn the rims of my eyes.
This is literal hell.
My own personal hell after a fall from grace. Utter hell after her choices caused heaven to come crashing down all around me.
MALACHI
Thirty Years Old
THERE WERE A NUMBER of potential wives, and after my thirtieth birthday came and went, the expectation to choose one became all the more incessant.
I had moved to a penthouse condo in downtown Gallarney after I finished my obligatory stint in the Royal Navy, and Gallarney, for the time being, was the place I carried out my temporary duties. Temporary because the duties consisted explicitly of attending social functions in order to select a wife. Once I’d done that, I’d be required to take on a national pet project along with the participation of the aforementioned wife I was expected to choose. And given my last experience with a woman I expected to marry, I had very little motivation to accomplish this task.