Chapter 10
Later that night, with a heart heavier than the arm her husband curled around her body, Rosaline snuck out of bed. After checking to make certain Eli remained sleeping, she crept through the darkness of Hespera House feeling just as furtive as she had the first time.
Though she and Eli shared a sleeping chamber, she’d the use of her own suite of accommodations, including a dressing room, receiving parlor, and washroom.
Done in the colors of blond sand and turquoise, the rooms adjoined each other with arched and wide intricate doorways the same dark wood as the floors.
Padding into her dressing room on bare feet, Rosaline struggled to quietly move several heavy trunks of her things yet to be unpacked. These contained what she’d rather the servants not manage, such as keepsakes, diaries, a few documents, and, to her everlasting shame…
Her trove of plunder.
With adroit motions born of obsessive repetition, she extracted each one, lining them up like the monstrous little memories they represented.
Her first, a monogramed pen of her mother’s, taken at age eleven, when Rosaline had asked her father to bring her back to London with him, and her mother had slapped her in front of everyone for her impertinence.
She’d not known at the time why her question distressed her family.
The hurt and confusion had rippled through her with devastating physical discomfort.
Nothing she tried alleviated it. Not counting her way up Fairhaven’s many staircases.
Not going through the house and turning on every single lamp.
Not even reorganizing her wardrobe and all her cupboards, much to her maid’s dismay.
When called back to her mother’s parlor, this time to be punished for the lights, she’d fixated on the gleaming pen on the secretary. Staring at it had quieted her mother’s shrill sanctions and presented a way to ease this untenable suffering.
When she’d swiped the pen and walked out without anyone noticing, an ever-present weight lifted from her chest, and whatever befuddling sensations coursed through her, diminished to a distant hum.
From her finishing school she’d taken exactly six things.
The headmaster’s pipe, Coreen McHugh’s hair ribbon, Miss Danbury’s sextant, a package of unidentified seeds from the gardener.
And, to her chagrin, a small candle from the oratory.
The owner of each item had done something to her, whether on purpose or not, to ignite that burning, stinging sensation and send it crawling across her flesh.
She’d felt as if she’d a rash over her entire body.
Not to mention the repetitive ringing in her ears, loud enough she couldn’t believe others didn’t hear it, as well.
The thoughts and fears she couldn’t escape, sometimes a whisper, other times a storm, screaming at her to take. Take. Take.
Anything.
Until she did.
Counting the older treasures as habit insisted she do, Rosaline reached into the wooden box where she kept her most recent acquisitions, and extracted what she’d been searching for.
A little bowl, no larger than a teacup dipped in metal she was beginning to fear was partly gold.
Marriage to Eli had been a miraculous turn of events, and the past weeks had been some of the happiest and most carefree in her life.
And yet, something about the event had triggered her horrid compulsion. She’d taken enough of his things that she’d had to dedicate an entire box to Eli.
This one full of happier memories, like the cufflinks he’d worn on their wedding day. One of his hair combs. A pearl-handled razor. Several bullets from his pistol. A gold paperweight. And a gilded letter opener with his name engraved upon it.
Elijah C. Wolfe.
He’d a middle name she didn’t know.
They’d still so much to learn about each other… Even during the lovely conversations they’d shared over the past couple of weeks, she’d never learned of his tragedy until tonight.
He didn’t know about this, her most horrendous flaw.
And he could never learn of it. Not only because it put her entire future in danger…
But because it would cause him pain.
All her life, Rosaline had done her best not to hurt anyone. Had tried to take things that were easily replaced, or not likely to be missed at all.
After the vulnerability Eli had trusted her with tonight, she’d done nothing but obsessively worry about this particular box. About him finding out just what sort of person he’d married.
And hating her for it.
She was going to return all of it, every last thing. Starting with the cup.
Furthermore, she was going to control herself. Even if it seemed like she’d immolate from the inside out. Even if she never took another full breath. If her body shook with strain from now until her dying day.
For him, she would prevail over her own demon.
For him…she would do just about anything.
As she crept along the lush halls of Hespera House, Rosaline silently railed against the cruel twist of fate that would see her so happily married to a man so wounded by theft.
Her heart ached at the thought of his loneliness. And her soul had shriveled when he’d taken her in his arms and granted her the first little tendrils of his hard-won trust.
Her coarse American husband. Foul-mouthed and rough-skinned. His strong hands were capable of the utmost gentility. His caustic wit tempered to make her laugh. His hard lips kissed her with a tenderness she wasn’t aware existed on this earth.
She loved the way he looked as if he didn’t belong in his fine suits.
She loved the way he looked at her, with a mixture of possession, passion, and something deeper she didn’t dare define.
She loved how his jaw never stayed smooth after a shave. And how his laugh sounded rusty, as if he’d not used it in a long time.
She loved the sparkle in his eye and the twitch in his right jaw when he was trying not to swear in front of her sisters.
She loved that he truly didn’t give one whit about what people thought of him. That he respected no one and cared not for nobility nor ego, but insisted that people earn his good opinion, no matter their station.
She loved that he was compassionate to the working class, and even more so to the destitute.
That he parted with his money more willingly than anyone she’d ever met.
Gave to every charity who asked, dropped coin to ever beggar on the street.
Purchased an entire cart full of blossoms so that the owner, who’d been suffering from a dreadful cold, could go home and rest.
She loved that he’d ordered the flowers delivered to every room in which she liked to linger.
The observatory most of all.
She loved him.
She loved Elijah Wolfe. Her husband. And she was going to do everything she could to demonstrate that love.
Slipping into the observatory, Rosaline made her way toward the tables used to catalogue the findings from the proposed Midas Tomb. The panes of the glass ceiling allowed in an anemic glow, and she calmed her nerves by counting each individual reflection on the floor as she tiptoed through them.
“One, two, three, fou—”
They disappeared as the lights flared to life, startling her so absolutely she lost her hold on the wooden box. It crashed to the floor with a splintering sound, the lid flying off and the contents spilling everywhere.
“Rosaline?” Eli’s sleep-husked voice echoed through the observatory, fracturing her name into reverberating accusations as she squeezed her eyes shut in horror. “Are you all right? What are you doing in h—?”
With infinite slowness, Rosaline turned to find Eli stooping to retrieve one of the cufflinks from the ground with a bemused expression.
“I thought I’d misplaced these… and…” He crossed to where his razor had slid to the rug her kittens had stained.
Her heart didn’t flutter with panic as she’d expected it to do.
Instead, it shrank and skipped entire beats each time he found something else of his.
Stopping altogether when he abandoned everything to a chaotic pile in order to use both hands to reverentially retrieve the cup.
“The set wasn’t incomplete after all,” he said as if to himself before finally skewering her with a look of dawning suspicion that quickly darkened with temper. “Tell me you didn’t have this the entire time. That you didn’t take it on the night we met and lie to me about it ever since.”
Legs weak from trembling, Rosaline swallowed around a desert-dry lump in her throat and forced herself to meet his flinty dark eyes. “I can explain.”
“You can explain.” He threw his arms open in a sarcastic gesture, as if gathering an invisible audience to hear something more absurd than they’d ever believe.
“Everyone always wants to explain after they get caught. Well, let’s hear it, Mrs. Wolfe.
Let’s hear why you stole from me. Let’s speculate as to why I would catch you with it the night I mentioned that people who were close to me had a remarkably predictable penchant of pulling this exact brand of bullshit. ”
“I heard what you’ve gone through, and it…it moved me, Eli. I have all of this because I was intent upon returning it to you.” Bending her knees, she picked up his comb and held it out to him as a pathetic peace offering.
He simply stared at it, at her, as if the sight disgusted him. “Still doesn’t explain why you took it all in the first place.”
“I—I don’t know why,” she said, hating the tears that burned behind her nose. Hating how small her voice was becoming.
Hating herself most of all.
“I just…I just take things sometimes. I’ve done it always, and I can’t seem to stop.”
He made an ugly sound of disbelief, his lip pulled back in a snarl. “You can’t stop?” he echoed, his voice rising in volume. “It’s not that hard to not take things that don’t belong to you, Rosaline. You just don’t fucking do it.”
She rushed toward him, beseeching him to listen, to hear what she’d never had to say. “I don’t take anything important. Nothing of value. I just…I can’t help it. If I don’t give in to the—”
“This had value to me.” He brandished the cup at her.
“This was priceless. Possibly one of the most valuable artifacts in the known world. I spent a bloody fortune on this. Ten fortunes. Above that, I sacrificed my freedom for it, as we’d never even be in this predicament if you’d not stolen it in the damn first place!
” Whirling on his foot, he stalked to the tables, setting the cup next to a matching set.
The ones inlaid with a ruby and an emerald.
She’d taken the chalice. The one belonging to the missing Anatolian Sapphire.
His words crushed her defenses, and she lost the battle with her tears. They leaked from a wound so deep, she worried that everything that gave her life would bleed away in the approaching storm of sadness.
Predicament? After what she’d thought was a rather happy beginning to their marriage, he still considered her a predicament? Still felt as though their match was a sacrifice of his beloved freedom?
Of course he did. She’d known that was what their arrangement was. That he’d been forced into the marriage by circumstance, Morley’s coercion, and his own ambitions.
That it had been her doing.
And yet, she’d thought they’d somehow moved past that. That they’d established affection. Intimacy.
Perhaps more.
But no. To him she’d been a predicament, one he was trying to make the best of by at least enjoying her in bed.
“I knew it,” he growled, spreading his palms on the table, the cup sitting between them. “I knew that night that you’d taken something, and I let those big, doe eyes of yours convince me otherwise.” Pushing away from the table, he stalked toward the door, his stride long and angry.
“Eli,” she sobbed his name, chasing after him. “Eli, wait.”
He paused. Not turning back to face her but allowing his chin to touch his shoulder to cast her a sidelong look.
“I’m sorry, Eli. I—I thought this was harmless. Until you told me what you told me tonight… And I heard you, Eli. I vow it, I was putting everything back where it went. I’d made a pledge not to ever again touch what wasn’t mine.”
Exhaling for what felt like forever, he finally spoke in a quieter voice, though one as measured and cold as the underside of a glacier.
“That’s not nothing,” he conceded. “But no more. No wife of mine will be a thief, you hear? I refuse to spend my life watching for you to slip up. Wondering what else you’re going to take from me…
I just…” Both fists curled at his sides. “I won’t fucking do it.”
The door slammed behind him like the gates of a fortress he’d erected between them.
The leaking dam behind her eyes burst, and she fell to her knees, wracked with sobs too powerful to deny. They tore through her, rending her strength obsolete.
This agony wasn’t his fault.
It was hers.
How could he ever understand the weight of this demon?