Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
I MADE NO ATTEMPT TO warn Raleigh that the anniversary of my mother’s death was approaching, nor did he acknowledge it himself, thankfully. It had been fifteen years. Fifteen years since I dragged her to the festival. Fifteen years since my recklessness had dragged Raleigh’s attention to her.
Raleigh … How would she feel if she knew I was only months away from marrying her murderer? The thought made me sick.
I feigned illness when the day came, only emerging from my room in the early afternoon long enough to coax Enrique into serving dinner in my room.
Not that it was hard to pretend. Grief gnawed at my stomach as I stared at the crimson canopy above my bed, but it wasn’t grief alone.
There was a painful tugging, like my heart was being dragged down, and at the same time a strange lightness that was increasingly familiar to me that only made the tugging stronger.
I rolled over, trying to block out the emotion. The grief I could tolerate; it was an old friend at this stage. The guilt felt so much worse.
By the time Enrique finally knocked I still wasn’t sure I could eat.
But when I opened the door to receive him, it wasn’t Enrique, but Raleigh holding the tray with my dinner.
He wore a black frock coat I’d never seen before that was so new you could almost see the tailor’s marks.
It suited him, as much as I hated to admit it.
‘Enrique said you were unwell.’ He seemed to find great interest in the doorframe.
‘It’s … passing,’ I said. I didn’t know what to do. What to say. He was the very reason I didn’t want to eat downstairs. How could I possibly do my mother’s memory justice when he … Not today. Not him. But when I opened my mouth to curse him out and banish him the words wouldn’t come.
‘You can come in.’ I stood aside to let him past, wondering what on earth I was doing as I watched him set my tray down on the dresser.
He looked about for a second chair, found none, and perched on the edge of my unmade bed.
He had no business being there, surrounded by my rumpled sheets in his pristine finery, and I again told myself I should send him away. Instead, I sat down at my dresser.
‘Am I correct in assuming,’ Raleigh started, painfully slowly, teasing out each syllable one by one, ‘today—’
‘Stop,’ I said. Then when Raleigh snapped his mouth shut, I conceded. ‘Yes.’
Raleigh swallowed. Took a breath. ‘Did anyone ever—’
‘Please don’t talk about it,’ I interrupted. ‘Not today. I can’t talk about this with you.’
Raleigh looked at his knees, lips pursed tightly shut.
I let him simmer, focusing more attention than necessary on uncovering my now lukewarm dinner.
If he’d come straight from the kitchen it wouldn’t be this cold.
How long did he have to spend convincing Enrique to let him go in his stead?
I glanced back at him, still staring at his knees, and the heavy guilt felt light again. Some food was better cold, I supposed.
As I lifted my fork to my mouth, Raleigh spoke again. It was barely more than a whisper, so soft I thought I’d imagined it. I almost wished I had. ‘I’m sorry.’
I set the fork down, trying not to let his words disintegrate me. I wondered if I could pretend I hadn’t heard him, but I’d already hesitated too long. ‘I’ve told you before this isn’t something you can apologise for.’ I turned to him.
He was still avoiding my eye. I sighed, abandoning my dinner to approach him. He flinched, then visibly relaxed when I simply sat beside him.
‘I said I was sick so I wouldn’t have to see you today,’ I admitted, leaning back with my hands flat against the mattress.
I felt him tense. ‘Would you like me to go?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said before I could catch myself.
I clamped my teeth together, shaking my head to clear the jumble of emotion clouding my judgement.
While I knew this would be a normal day without him, I could no longer picture him as the source of all my suffering.
I knew he was a murderer, but I no longer understood how the murderer could be him.
How could the Raleigh who would bring me dinner when I was grieving be the same Raleigh who caused the grief?
And why, today of all days, couldn’t I make myself hate him anymore?
My eyes began to burn. I tucked my chin to my chest, fighting to keep my emotions at bay, hoping my hair would block him from seeing whatever did manage to spill.
Raleigh sighed, but kept his eyes politely averted.
He placed one hand on the mattress. His little finger barely brushed mine, then lingered, and remained.
I sniffed, now in desperate need of a handkerchief, but as much as I loathed myself for it, I couldn’t tear my hand away. ‘It was so much easier to hate you from afar,’ I admitted.
‘Is … that a compliment?’ Raleigh asked.
‘Do you think I would compliment you in this situation?’ I sniffed again and Raleigh tugged an ornamental handkerchief from his pocket.
He moved as if to wipe my tears, stopped, then tucked it into my hand instead.
I closed my fingers around the silk, resisting the urge to laugh.
He was so emotionally clumsy, but I suppose we both were.
No one with normally functioning emotions would allow herself into this situation.
‘Most people say I’m easier to love from afar, so this is new.’
I thought I’d misheard him at first, then couldn’t help but choke on my tears when I realised I hadn’t. ‘Who says that?’
‘Women … men … people who aren’t you.’
I wiped my nose. ‘You don’t know anyone else.’
‘I have plenty of pen pals, thank you, Clara. People generally like me better when I keep my distance.’
I couldn’t imagine that. The Raleigh I knew from a distance was the putrid devil responsible for ruining my life; this Raleigh was someone who would cast his title aside and play servant to comfort me on the hardest day of the year.
The spot where our fingers rested together began to burn. The pain in my chest ached anew.
‘I suppose that’s why you had to resort to abduction.’
‘If you’re going to be like that, might I remind you, you can leave at any time.’
I laughed despite myself. He was ridiculous; this whole situation was ridiculous. Comforting me on the anniversary of a murder he committed, joking about my abduction. But, God, it was so difficult to hate him.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ I rose from the bed, my finger strangely cold from where he no longer lingered.
‘It’s not the end of the year yet.’ I paused as the words settled, then spun slowly, turning back to him.
‘Raleigh,’ I asked. ‘What is the significance of the end of the year?’ I’d asked it before, and his answer remained as clear in my head as it had the first time he’d said it.
‘The new century,’ he said lightly. ‘And the end of fifteen years since I returned to the valley. I’ve told you this, haven’t I?’
He had, but I’d never dwelled on it. Now I found it very hard to think of anything else.
It had already been fifteen years since we found my mother’s body.
Fifteen years since he ordered the construction of the dam.
Was he granting me extra time? Or were the scant months we had left so insignificant to an immortal lifespan, he hadn’t considered them?
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I must have forgotten.’
And as hard as it was to hate him, I didn’t dare correct him.
Enrique insisted I accompany him to Triz the following day.
I returned every so often, whenever Father Leon wrote to tell me he’d uncovered new information through his research into the Linford family.
If the markets were on, Enrique would join me, often with a bundle of letters he claimed were too sensitive to send from the castle.
I couldn’t tell whether Raleigh had asked him to keep watch over me or if he really did just want to select his apples himself, but I enjoyed his company on the long ride.
This time, though, I tried to protest when he woke me at dawn.
It was a distraction I didn’t need and time away I didn’t have, not when I’d already missed a day of research.
The first nibbles of winter had begun to pierce the valley.
All around the castle the trees were beginning to turn, their scarlet leaves dripping onto the hills.
Rostenburg was named for the way the hills seemed to rust in the autumn.
Even its crest featured the beech leaves that gave the valley its colour.
It was the only spectacle we could truly boast about.
It had once been my favourite time of year, but I could no longer muster any pleasure in watching leaves rot. Winter was approaching, and I was no closer to finding a cure.
‘Read in the cathedral, then,’ Enrique said. ‘You need a change of scenery.’
He was right. By the time we reached the first of Triz’s many stairways, the gnawing desperation I’d been feeling had faded to an ache.
I left Enrique at the market and sought out Father Leon at the cathedral.
He greeted me like a puppy and asked me to wait while he hunted down the latest artefact he’d found while searching the reliquary.
It was a golden frame that folded like a book, with two miniature portraits inside.
The first was of a young boy, who could have been any young boy for all the skill the artist had in recreating facial features, while the other was something vaguely baby shaped, with the scowling face of an adult man.
‘This is hideous,’ I told him.
The priest looked delighted. ‘Isn’t it just? That one’—he gestured to the infant—‘is your betrothed.’