Chapter 11
I know Kerr played with you the night of Rat’s Castle—just as I know you how you pant for another still. It ends now. Defy me and Kerr pays the price in blood.
Await your next orders.
Your humble servant
On the night of her cousin Myrtle’s ball, when Andromena should have been dancing, she instead lay sprawled stomach-down on the plush, cheerful jonquil-yellow nursery carpet—the crystal beads embroidered into her silk dress biting painfully into her skin—and stared at the pile of sticks scattered between herself and Myrtle’s twins: the daughter, Lady Eira Bancroft, and the son and heir, Frost Bancroft, Marquess of Hawkesworth.
It was both bittersweet and funny how a woman’s life came full circle—moving from the nursery to having one.
Those high-ceilinged walls had carried the fresh, echoing sounds of children through the years: laughter, screams, and tears.
Ever since the latest note arrived, a quiet, gray ache had settled into her heart.
It turned her gaze toward the ashes of her past, and toward a future she would never have.
“Your turn, Aunt Andy!”
While Eira and Frost chattered about her next move, Andromena watched the crowded room of little humans, ranging from tiny babes to nearly nine-year-olds.
In them, she saw echoes of her own Fleur, Linnie, and Meghan, alongside Cassia and Helia squealing as they ran past. This was no quiet nursery belonging to the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge, but the combined chaos of the McQuoid and Smith families.
Laughter and bickering filled the air, punctuated by pleadings from desperate nursemaids.
There wouldn’t be a nursery for her. A glassy film built behind her eyes.
That fate belonged to all the McQuoids and Smiths but her.
Tonight marked her last night in London.
At least, for…for however long, she could not stay.
Three days earlier, she returned home from her work for her uncle and discovered the latest note on her pillow with demands for the Crown of Dionysus and a threat on Edgar’s life.
That’s when Andromena decided enough was enough.
It hadn’t even been guilt that drove her to quiet. It was her asserting control of herself and the situation.
Before Andromena left for Myrtle’s private ball, she had packed her things and left them below her bedroom window.
It was the only thing that made sense.
Andromena’s departure was a silent reclamation, not a retreat, as she denied the monster the very prize he craved: her agency, and through her, the stolen treasures he sought.
No longer would she bend for a monster. He thought he could use her as a key to the stolen fortunes he craved, starving her of agency while he schemed for control.
She would break his power over her. She told herself this to keep from crying.
In separating herself from London, her family, and Edgar, she was honoring her blackmailer’s orders, denying him access to her, and most importantly, keeping him away from those she loved.
Before the blackmailer’s demands took a darker turn, she entertained sharing everything with Edgar.
If she confided in him, their fragile truce would shatter.
He would go right back to insulting her.
But in the end, he would still come to her rescue—or what he called a rescue, as if it were his duty.
After all, that was what he had done time and time again.
Now she had no choice. Their roles had completely flipped: his survival now depended on her, just as the fate of everyone she cherished did.
“Don’t cry, Aunt Andy. It’s not hopeless. Try for that one.”
She wanted to go back to a time when ‘hopeless’ over games and contests was the greatest worry she had.
Andromena nodded at her spillikens partners. “That is a very good idea, Frost.”
“Now, you’re going to cry?”
This time, the echo of Edgar’s annoyance at her crying didn’t enrage or hurt; it drew a soft, sad smile.
She would miss him. The crusty cur. Except, this week, he hadn’t been a crusty cur, which made her planned flight all the more painful.
Despite his vow to steer clear of her, he’d seemed to make a point of visiting the earl’s antiquities room.
Granted, he did so to see the inventory list she’d created and analyze her sketches…
and also express frustration she never had images of the stolen pieces, and also appreciation…
“…You have a gift, Andromena…” he murmured, right before she thought he would kiss her—again.
A gift he had called it.
A gift, used for evil.
That had been the last time she spoke to him, and ever would.
Small fingers tugged her off-shoulder puffed sleeve like a tower bell. “Aunt Andy, you aren’t paying attention.”
Eira’s proper scolding cleared her head. “I was thinking.”
“We were giving you suggestions.”
She brushed the loose curl that always hung across the little boy’s forehead. “Not about that.”
Brother and sister asked together: “About what?”
Andromena pushed herself up into a seated position, drew her knees close, and wrapped her arms around them. “About how much I would love to be in the nursery.”
“You are.” Frost’s brow pulled with a fleeting seriousness. “Ow!” The lad glared at his sister. “What was that for?”
“She doesn’t mean now, you clodpole. She means, she wishes she could go back in time.”
With big brown curls, a shade to match her mother’s, Eira could be, if not Myrtle’s twin, a replica of the spirited girl she had been years earlier. Back when they’d been wee lasses dreaming of their first balls and whispering about the charming princes they would one day marry.
Myrtle had found all that, and more. And Andromena…
Andromena never would.
“If I could go to a ball, I would never be in a nursery with all the babes,” Lady Eira Bancroft muttered.
“I used to think that, too.”
Big brothers being what they were, Frost delighted in pointing out, “You’re in the nursery because you’re a babe, Eira.”
A rose-red blush swept over the girl’s freckled cheeks. “Well, that makes you one, too.”
Frost sighed with the heavy pride of a future duke. “I am here because I’m the marquess and future Duke of Bainbridge. As such, it is my duty to protect you and—ahhh”
Eira lunged, but Andromena shifted the spillikens stick, causing a crash that united the warring twins in shared amusement.
“She touched!” Eira cried out with a true child’s delight, showing just how far away in fact she was from the day of her Come Out.
Andromena cried out. “Drat!”
Frost laughed. “You touched the stick, Aunt Andromena!”
The sigh she let out was neither feigned nor forced. “That I did.”
From the middle of their sword fight, Cassia and Dallin’s eldest sons paused their action long enough to investigate the commotion. “What is it?”
The young marquess gesticulated wildly at the pile spread between him, Andromena, and Eira. “Aunt Andy fumbled the entire pile!”
“Why are you playing with the girls, Frost?”
Redness blotched his cheeks. “I’m not!” And to save face with the other lads, Frost did what boys and men had done since the beginning of time—he scapegoated a woman. “Aunt Andromena was glum. It’s all handled.”
In the absence of a suitable response, like mention of actual physical pain, the pair laughed and resumed fighting.
Frost scrambled to his feet. “I’m finally free to fight.”
Eira stuck a foot out to trip the future duke but, paling, pulled her toes back. “Mama! Aunt Cassia!”
The room went quiet under the unexpected arrival of the Duchess of Bainbridge and Marchioness of Winfield.
Unlike Aunt Catherine, who commanded quiet and unease, Myrtle’s appearance brought loud squeals and laughter and children stampeding and crawling in every direction to hug her or her voluminous ponceau red sarcenet skirts.
Laughing, the young duchess and marchioness patted heads and hugged admirers.
Until the boys recalled they weren’t supposed to want hugs from aunts and mothers and raced away from the grand show of affection to resume a bloody sea battle.
Myrtle queried the room at large. “Now, who is going to tell me why Aunt Andromena is sad?”
“Why is Andromena sad?”
They all looked to this latest intrusion. Meghan, Linnie, and Fleur had made an appearance. It had been inevitable.
Oh, hell.
Andromena got to her feet. “I didn’t say I was.”
She needn’t have wasted her breath.
The trio’s arrival brought with it a fresh celebratory round. By the time the jubilee quieted and lads and lasses returned to their respective games and nannies, there’d been sufficient time for her often flitty family members to forget the prior topic of discussion.
Relieved, she greeted her sisters and cousins with a hug and kisses. “It is so very good to see you.”
“You could have seen more of us if you were not hiding in the nursery.” Cassia, with her usual naivete and bid to be helpful, offered that suggestion.
“Remember, it is because she is sad,” Myrtle reminded her elder sister…which only deepened Andromena’s sisters’ worried expressions.
“I’m not…hiding.”
“It doesn’t escape me you didn’t deny being sad.”
Linnie’s observation was met with nods from the gathered McQuoid and Smith ladies.
Eira, still hanging on her mother’s hip, gave Andromena support. “She misses the nursery, mama.”
Myrtle stroked the top of her daughter’s head. “Does she, poppet?”
Eira nodded, but neither McQuoid sister saw, as they stared intently at Andromena.
Under their scrutiny, she fought the urge to shift her weight.
Fleur, who had only recently discovered she was with child, began softly weeping. “It goes so fast. One moment we are babes in a nursery ourselves, and the next,” she cradled her belly, pressing the material against her gown as she did, displaying the gently rounding.
Cousin Cassia brought her younger sister close and held her while she wept.
Cassia’s aptly named, tow-headed daughter, Guinivere, glanced up at her mother. “Aunt Fleur is crying again?”
“She’s always crying,” Eira complained. “That’s how my mama used to be when she was with—”
Myrtle raised her voice and cut out that too-wise observation. “Loves, would you allow the women to speak with Aunt Andy?” The young mother looked for the respective nursemaids, who came over to gather their charges.
“What happened?”
Blunt questions were a specialty amongst the McQuoid and Smith families; but she didn’t expect betrayal from Meghan of all kin.
“Nothing,” Andromena spoke with quiet adamance. It didn’t matter.
Arms collectively crossed, Andromena’s devoted sisters and cousins, adorned in each shade of the rainbow, stared dubiously at her.
Because they knew her so well, and loved her so much—and because it had always been the six of them—they turned to one another.
They pulled each other out of trouble. They took the blame for each other’s crimes to confuse their families.
Even as grown women, they had matched the colors of their ballgowns to the soft pale arc made from rainbows bent by water.
But this time? Andromena was alone. Her sisters and cousin had families—husbands and children. They had struggles. Fought their own demons.
Andromena looked at the wooden pirate ship.
It was the same ship she used to climb all over.
The Earl had made one for each of his children, nieces, and nephews when they had their first babies.
She saw herself standing at the wheel with a toy wooden sword, waving it at make-believe monsters.
“Do you ever wish we could just go back in time?” she whispered.
“Nev—ow.” Cassia scowled at the duchess. “Yes?” Her corrected answer tilted up into a question, not confirmation.
“I know what this is about.”
All eyes diverted to Fleur.
Andromena’s heart beat faster. “Y-You do?”
My God, what if she wasn’t alone and the three of them who attended Lord Rutland’s were all being blackmailed and they had each kept it close to prevent the others from—
“It has been since I married.”
“Yes!” Andromena exclaimed. Her heart broke into a full gallop. She grabbed Fleur by her chiffon pale violet sleeves.
“You will find love, too,” Fleur promised.
And it was such an odd thing to say when they were talking about blackmailers that it took a moment to register; they weren’t talking about the same thing at all.
“I also doubted I’d find what Cassia, Myrtle, Meghan and Linnie did, too.”
“I also didn’t believe I would find love,” Cassia said. “Especially with Nathan supposed to wed a lady he’d been betrothed to since the nursery.”
Linnie lifted her hand in consensus. “Nor I.” The Georgian emerald, crowned heart ring gifted by Jeremy glittered in the fire’s glow.
That flimsy bubble of hope burst.
It had been selfish and wrong to have even hoped. But in stealing from her uncle, she already proved she was a terrible woman.
“You are right,” Andromena said, willing them to hear past the misery cloaking her throat.
And maybe it was easier for the besotted lot to believe dreams of love were all that plagued her.
And maybe they were in large part…correct, for Edgar’s half-grinning visage flashed in her mind.
“Can someone please explain why the majority of my family is missing from your sister’s ball, including the hostess herself?”
As the Countess of Abington began lecturing her daughters and nieces on proper behavior, the adult McQuoid children groaned.
It was a welcome rescue, however, and Andromena would take any escape she could get.
Smiling for the room, she let her sisters link arms with her and guide her toward the door.
Andromena made them stop only at the door, where she looked back to watch the ebullient children play. Amongst her giggling and chattering nieces and nephews she imagined a pair of dark-haired twins running with the others—grief at what could never be stabbed her heart.
Nor, as the nursery door finally clicked shut behind her, could she say which she mourned: the babes she would never have and hold, or the father she dreamed of for them who would never be the one man she foolishly wished for.