“Then she saw a crow kill a sparrow,” Rafe finished, “and the coming of the storm.”
He turned back around. With great effort, as though her eyeballs weighed a ton, Sally looked at him. “My error in judgment will haunt me forever. I loved her, and I killed her. If I had told you, if I had not been so selfish…”
If, if, if, if, if.
“The kidnapping attempt,” Rafe said. “She must have been terrified.”
Sally smiled wanly. “You would have been proud of her, the way she fought. One of those men wears my bullet hole, but the other will carry Katharine’s tooth marks till the end of his days.”
The image of Katharine fighting off one of Ventnor’s ruffians swelled in Rafe’s mind. He thumped the window frame, the sting in his knuckles driving the picture away.
“We tried so bloody hard to keep her calm,” he said. “That’s what they recommend. Calm. Routine. Sympathy. Sunlight. And she went months without an episode, living a normal life. Then blasted Ventnor sends his blasted ruffians…”
“It was all Ventnor’s doing, then,” Thea broke in. “Neither of you is responsible for her death. Ventnor’s actions led to his daughter’s death, and he probably doesn’t even care.”
“He doesn’t,” Sally spat with loathing. “He even said her death solved his problem.” With another deep breath, she stood. “Master Rafe—I mean, my lord. I have so many regrets. I have tried to do right by you, since you came back. I have kept this house in readiness for the day you brought home another bride, to house a new, happy family. But perhaps my reasons for that were selfish too: Because if you could free yourself of the past, maybe I could too. I shall leave, now.”
Rafe shook his head. Free himself of the past? He had lost himself in the selva for that, yet still the past pursued him. Once again, his gaze strayed back toward Thea, but this time, he could not bear looking at her. This time, the walls began to close in, air became short, his legs grew heavy. Nicholas was rising to his feet, Martha was frowning at him, Thea was saying his name in an echo that shuddered through his suddenly empty skull.
“I need to think,” he managed to say, eyes on the door, forcing his legs to carry him away. Something in Sally’s face stopped him as he reached her side. He put a hand on her shoulder. “You loved her. I am glad of it. She deserved to be loved.”
Then his legs propelled him forward again, to make his escape.
In the oppressive foyer, Rafe headed numbly for the front door, but Thea’s voice, calling his name, coiled around him like a rope. If only the whole blasted world would disappear, leaving nothing but him and Thea. She would chase away his shadows, and he would chase away hers.
As he pivoted back, she skipped through the doorway toward him, easily, assuredly, their quarrels forgotten. She pressed a hand to his chest, and it felt the most natural thing in the world to trail his knuckles down her cheek.
“It wasn’t you,” Thea whispered, her eyes searching his.
Then Nicholas joined them, and they lowered their hands in a futile charade of propriety.
“Forgive me,” Rafe said. “I need some time alone. I need to think.”
Nicholas laid a hand on his sleeve. “Then take time to think. And think of how it truly was not your fault Katharine died. Not yours, nor Sally’s. You have believed the wrong story all these years. This is what I tried to tell you.”
A disbelieving laugh curled out of Rafe’s throat. “Oh no, old man, do not pretend you ever imagined this.”
“Not this exactly.” Nicholas tilted his head to consider. “Fair enough. Not this at all. But I never doubted you did everything you could for Katharine.”
“Yet it wasn’t enough.”
Nicholas and Thea exchanged a look, and Rafe’s feet shuffled on the checkered floor. His four limbs fought to take him in different directions: to run to London and tear off Ventnor’s head; to pull Thea into his arms and lose himself in her; to dive into the lake and swim to exhaustion; to fall to his knees and weep.
“Miss Knight, if you might give us a moment?” Nicholas said.
“Very well.”
Rafe kept his eyes on Thea as she returned to the drawing room, watching until the hem of her dress disappeared.
Nicholas pulled the door shut behind her and grinned. “She’s truly enchanting, isn’t she, our Miss Knight?”
“Now? You want to do your matchmaking now?” The man was impossible. “Yes, she is enchanting, but recall she is here only so I could secure the funds to finance the medicine business. If you want happy marriages and rooms full of babies, go bother Christopher and leave me alone. I’m the man who could not protect his first wife from her own father.”
He turned to leave but Nicholas caught his arm in a surprisingly firm grip. “You know, my boy, I have always wondered about this plan of yours to make medicines. I wondered how much you wish to save others because you still long to save Katharine. For years, you had to watch someone you love suffer, while you stood helplessly by. I know something of how that feels. But know that Katharine died despite your love, not because of it.”
Air was growing short again, and Rafe glanced longingly at the front door. “Does this sermon have a point?”
Nicholas smiled. “Now you are in love again, and you are afraid.”
“I am not.”
But he was something. Something that did feel a little like fear. He was accustomed to fear as a jolting thing, direct and acute, with teeth and claws or guns and knives. This was a different kind of fear. The kind of fear that used to grip him when he witnessed Katharine’s torments, when he lay awake in the dark worrying what to do. This kind of fear turned him to stone, from his shoulders to his feet, and it was difficult to breathe, with stone lungs.
“Forgive me,” he said again. “I need some time alone.”
Nicholas nodded and stepped away, and Rafe escaped into the air.
Craning her neck at a window in the drawing room, Thea watched Rafe stride across the lawn toward the woods, toward his greenhouse and his plants. Only when he was gone from view did she turn back to where Sally and Martha sat silently side by side.
“This is why you feared I would dismiss you,” Thea said to Sally. “The secrets you kept.”
“I cannot live here,” Sally said. “Not after what I have done.”
“No,” Thea protested. “It was not your love that killed her, but Ventnor’s fear. No one blames you.”
“I blame me.”
Martha laid her hand over Sally’s. “You loved her.”
Sally smiled. “I used to tell Katharine that her illness was due to her having so much spirit, her human mind could not contain it.”
“And when she died, you had to grieve alone,” Martha said.
“I cared for nothing anymore.” Sally stared down at their joined hands. “I could not bear to stay here, so I went to London. I knew I could not harm Ventnor so I used him instead. When he offered his patronage—the whole notion thrilled him, I think—I decided to live as I pleased. After all, keeping secrets had led only to heartache. But in the end, I was sent running again.”
Thea growled. “Yet another reason to loathe Ventnor, for chasing you away.”