Chapter 22
James couldn’t think of the pain in his leg. Not now.
The weight in his chest felt far heavier, pressing down with every breath, until it was worse than the throbbing in the broken bone.
He stood in the barn. Incapable of moving. No noises drifted in except for the sounds of dust settling and the faint trace of Rose’s footsteps already fading. The letter in his fist was crumpled and damp from his sweat.
He couldn’t let go, as if the words themselves might vanish if his fingers loosened their grip.
Vincent Dunhill had murdered his mother.
The thought circled, again and again, refusing to tuck itself away or make sense. For years, he’d believed what everyone said—consumption, the wasting disease. The blood on her handkerchiefs. The way she faded to near nothing in those last weeks.
He’d only been nine then. Old enough to watch her slip away. Young enough to trust the doctor’s quiet explanation and not wonder what lay beneath it.
But poison. Vincent had poisoned her.
The barn door creaked open, and his muscles tensed. Rose, coming back to—
“James?” Enoch’s deep voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. “What’s wrong?”
He turned to his brother standing in the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking the morning light. He studied James with the same steady gaze he used on a limping colt, patient but thorough, taking in every sign of hurt.
“I…” The words stuck in his throat like broken glass. How did he even begin to explain this?
Enoch stepped closer. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Close enough. James forced his fingers to loosen their death grip on the letter, holding it out toward his brother. “Rose just told me something. About Mother.”
Enoch took the paper, his expression shifting from concern to wariness. “What about Mother?”
“Vincent Dunhill killed her.” The words came out flat, emotionless, like he was reporting the weather instead of confessing the worst truth he’d ever spoken. “Rose says he poisoned her. Then threatened to say her mother did it if she and Rose didn’t sing in his theater.”
His brother went completely still, his gaze dropping to the paper.
Shock radiated between them, battering James’s chest, while Enoch stared at the folded letter in his hand.
Enoch’s fingers tightened on the note until the edges crumpled. The muscles in his jaw worked, and something dark flickered across his face—something James recognized from the rare times his brother let his composure slip.
“Read it.” James’s voice came out hoarse. “It’s a letter Vincent wrote to blackmail Rose’s mother, if she ever tried to leave him.”
He unfolded the letter, slow and careful, as though the paper itself might bite. Quiet pounded hard around them while Enoch’s eyes moved across the page.
He studied his brother’s face, searching for…what? Shock? Rage? Some mirror of the numbness that had settled in his own chest like frost creeping across a windowpane?
But Enoch’s expression didn’t change, except for a tightening at the corners of his eyes. A storm gathering. When he finally looked up, his blue gaze held a coldness James had rarely seen.
“He deserves to hang.” Enoch’s words came out low, measured, but underneath them ran something as lethal as lightning.
“I’m not sure if he actually poisoned Mother.
I remember her being sick, and the doctor never questioned her illness.
But Vincent Dunhill deserves to hang for what he’s done to Rose and her mother all these years. ”
The coldness in his voice matched the ice spreading through James’s veins. His brother—steady, controlled Enoch who rarely let emotion override reason—was talking about hanging a man.
And James understood the feeling.
Under his own frozen horror, a fire had caught—a coiling, bitter smoke in his belly, anger sharp as ice.
Vincent had been in their home. Had played the courteous guest and lied with every word. All the while, he’d been killing their mother. Bit by bit. Slow, deliberate poison.
“Rose thinks it’s her fault.” The words scraped out of him. “Because her mother brought Vincent here. Because—”
“That’s ridiculous.” Enoch’s tone sharpened. “Rose was a child. Her mother was a victim.”
That was true. Of course it was. Rose bore no blame for Vincent’s evil.
But the look on her face when she’d spoken haunted him—the way guilt and fear had stripped her raw, like she could never believe herself innocent.
He’d stood there, wordless, while she apologized for what she could never have caused, while her eyes flicked up at him, braced for his judgment. Braced for him to condemn her for her mother’s choices. For Vincent’s crimes.
His chest tightened. He had to go after her. Had to tell her—
“Where is she now?” Enoch’s question pulled James back.
“She ran out.” He grabbed for his walking sticks, pain crackling up his bad leg. “I need to find her. I need to tell her—”
“Tell her what?” Enoch’s hand closed around James’s arm. “James, look at me.”
He forced himself to meet his brother’s gaze, though everything in him screamed to go after Rose. To find her before she convinced herself that he blamed her.
“What are you going to say to her?” Enoch’s voice carried that particular tone he used when he was trying to talk James down from something reckless. “Have you thought this through?”
Thought it through? His mother had been murdered. Maybe. Rose had been living with that knowledge for years, trapped by Vincent’s threats. And he’d just stood there, more lifeless than one of his carvings, while she apologized for something that wasn’t her fault.
“I need to tell her it’s not her fault.” The words came out rough, desperate. “I need to tell her I don’t blame her, or her mother, for what Vincent did.”
Enoch gave a single nod. “Good. Tell her I don’t either. None of us would possibly think that.”
Something in James eased—a brittle knot inside him loosening enough to let him breathe. “Thank you.”
Enoch folded the letter and handed it back to his brother. “We need to show this to Robert. He’ll know what legal weight it carries.”
But the words felt distant. Rose mattered more than anything right now.
He had to find her.
He pulled free of Enoch’s grip and hobbled toward the barn door. “I have to go talk to her.”
“I have to head up to the high pasture. Tell Rose we’ll all talk through this tonight.”
James nodded but didn’t slow or turn.
As he crossed the yard to the house, his walking sticks bit into the packed snow. The cold helped numb the pain in his leg though.
Where would Rose have gone? Her room, most likely. Or maybe the kitchen, where she always seemed to retreat when she needed the comfort of familiar work.
As he worked up the porch steps, Enoch rode out of the yard, his saddle weighed down with an extra saddle bag—the supplies he’d forgotten earlier, no doubt.
James pushed through the front door, his breath coming hard from the exertion and the storm raging in his chest. The great room stretched before him, dim after the bright light outside.
Then he saw her.
Mandie stood—no, not stood. She bent over the back of the couch, her knuckles white where they gripped the wooden frame. Her body curved forward, rigid and unnatural, like every muscle had locked in place.
“Mandie?” Fear twisted in his chest. What was wrong with her?
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even turn her head. Just stayed frozen in that terrible stillness, her breathing shallow and controlled in a way that set off alarm bells in his head.
He moved toward her as fast as the walking sticks would let him. “Mandie, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t—” The word came out strangled, barely audible. “Don’t touch me.”
He stopped an arm’s length away, his pulse hammering. Her face had gone pale as milk, and a sheen of sweat dampened her forehead despite the cool air in the room.
The silence stretched, broken only by her careful breathing. His own mind had clouded over. He tried to think of how to help her, but coherent thoughts wouldn’t form.
Then her shoulders loosened—just a little. The rigid curve of her spine eased, and she released a longer breath.
Whatever had gripped her seemed to be passing. The tension in the room shifted, and James finally found his way through his foggy panic. “Is it the baby?”
She nodded, slowly straightening. Her hand moved to her rounded belly, pressing there as though she could hold the child inside through sheer will. “I think… I think it might be time.”
Time.
The word ricocheted through his thoughts, scattering everything else.
“I’ll get Mrs. Wang.” He should have done that the instant he saw Mandie in pain.
He started to turn, but another thought struck him.
Enoch. Maybe he would still be within calling range.
James spun back toward the door, calling out for Mrs. Wang as he hobbled. When would Mandie’s next pain hit? Would she be all right until he came back inside?
As soon as he stepped onto the porch, he bellowed as loud as he could muster. “Enoch!”
There was no sign of his brother on the trail leading away from the house. But still, he shouted with everything in him. “Enoch!”
Two more calls didn’t bring sight of his brother riding back, so James turned back.
He’d get Mrs. Wang first. Then he would figure a way to ride to his brothers. Enoch needed to be here with his wife, and someone had to ride for the doctor.
When he stepped into the house, Mrs. Wang was helping Mandie down the hallway toward the bedchamber she and Enoch shared. Good.
He hobbled that direction to see if they needed him to help with anything. If not, he’d ride for his brothers.
Mrs. Wang glanced back as he approached. “I’ll take care of her. Go fetch your brothers. Someone needs to get the doctor.”
He nodded, already turning back toward the door. But a final thought made him pause. “Is Rose in the kitchen?” She would want to know about Mandie. Would want to help.
The older woman’s voice drifted from Enoch and Mandie’s chamber. “No, dear. I heard her go upstairs a while ago.”
His chest tightened. She’d retreated to her room after their conversation in the barn—of course she had. He’d not said a thing, done anything but gape at her, and now she probably thought he blamed her.
He hobbled to the bottom of the stairs, gripping the newel post as he called up. “Rose! The baby’s coming—Mandie needs help. Can you come down?”
Quiet greeted him from the upstairs hallway.
Not the sound of her door opening, not footsteps on the floorboards above. Nothing.
She was probably too upset with him to answer. Too hurt to want to help, or maybe she simply hadn’t heard him.
He tried once more, louder this time. “Rose! Mrs. Wang needs you.”
He still didn’t hear her, but he couldn’t wait—Enoch had to know about his wife, and every second counted.
But the moment he arrived back with Enoch, he would find Rose. He would make her understand that he didn’t blame her, that nothing Vincent had done could ever change how he felt about her. He’d get down on his knees if he had to, broken leg and all.
He turned and started back to the door, determination settling into his bones alongside the worry. First Enoch. Then Rose.
He wouldn’t fail either of them.