Chapter Twenty-Nine
Damien thought it would look like a storage room – dark, dusty, and stuffed with wooden crates from floor to ceiling. That was what he’d been expecting as he left the scent of lavender behind.
Instead, the room was warm – a fire crackling within it, and it was bright enough to make him blink.
And then Damien felt his heart hitch in his throat – because for a moment, just a moment, it looked like his old house in London.
That summer, when he and his mother had cut their holiday short and returned back to Portman Square early to find all of their belongings were still clothed and covered, white linen sheets draped over every sideboard, every chest of drawers – every piece of furniture they had.
The weather had been awful that year, and a summer spent on the beach was suddenly less desirable when the sand was grey and wet, and the sky a roiling mess – and then he had come home, to find his home transformed into something from a picture book.
Instead of sofas there were now hiding places, instead of garderobes there were now mysterious doorways to other worlds. And though he was now a man grown, his fingers still itched to twitch back every corner, to see what hid beneath them.
‘Don’t touch that,’ said Ava, as he slipped a finger underneath the nearest linen and lifted it to check. ‘I covered these to make them less interesting.’
‘Ah, well, that’s where you’ve gone wrong,’ said Damien, reading Laudanum in great, bold lettering before letting the cloth drop back into place. ‘For the only thing one wants to do when one sees something covered up is uncover it.’
Ava chuckled a little. ‘I thought it would be less distracting this way.’
‘Did you?’ said Damien. ‘What’s the oddly oval-shaped thing in the corner?’
‘Take a seat,’ she said gently, directing his attention to the only two chairs in the room, positioned next to the window, the sunlight warm against the windowpane.
Damien hesitated.
‘It won’t be like last time,’ she said softly. ‘I promise.’
‘I’m going to count,’ she said – her voice gentle, a caress against his mind – and she did not make it past five before he found himself slipping, sliding beneath the warmth, the sound of waves still humming in his ears.
‘I want you to think of either your mother, or your father this time,’ whispered Ava’s voice. ‘Whichever feels safest.’
Damien felt a cold ache, like pressing his toes into frigid water – the numbness of it.
‘Try and picture a place that was special to them,’ Ava said. ‘Important to them. Try and anchor yourself there.’
The darkness before him shimmered, contracting and separating until he began to see something in the gloom.
He was back in his father’s study – the must of leather and old books mingling with the sweet, spring air that curled through the open windows.
His father wrote hundreds of letters. Great tomes of them – though he never spoke more than a handful of words to Damien.
How could it be – that he would say so little to his son, and yet so very much to the strangers who would receive these letters?
‘He is a very busy man,’ was the only answer Damien ever got when he asked. ‘If he could spend more time with you, he would.’
Damien wasn’t sure that was true. His mother would seek him out – take him for long walks by the lake, or rides with him – he on his stocky pony, her on her fine, chestnut bay.
Sometimes the nanny would join them, sometimes they would be alone – but his father never came.
He was always too busy spending his words on other people to spend any with Damien.
And so one day, when his father was walking the estate, and his mother was napping upstairs, he’d sneaked into his father’s office.
And he’d stolen the small stack of letters that’d sat at the edge of his father’s desk.
He remembered how his heart had thrummed in his throat as he’d slid a finger under the wax seal, remembered how satisfying it was to watch it peel away – leaving nothing but a small stain of red upon the paper.
His father always folded his letters into careful squares, and Damien unfolded them with equal care – eyes flicking over his father’s neat, scratched script.
There were many words he didn’t understand, like ‘yield’ and ‘remuneration’, but there were many he did.
His father wanted to sell the house – this house, rather than the one in London, or a portion of the land – and Damien had begun to imagine which slices of their vast estate he wouldn’t mind parting with.
He supposed his father could sell the rock garden – for he never went there; though he wouldn’t like him to sell the stables, or his pony, or the riding tracks he and his mother liked to take.
He’d opened the second letter with a little less care, and then the third, and then the fourth – and when his father had stepped into the office, Mr Briggs at his side, and saw Damien at his desk – the dark mahogany covered in paper – he’d frozen.
‘Excuse us,’ his father had said curtly, turning to Mr Briggs – who’d stepped from the room with naught but a curious glance towards Damien.
Damien had kept his gaze upon the letters – though he could feel his skin growing hot. He’d planned to have put everything back before his father could find out. He’d planned to …
‘So,’ his father had said, his voice low, measured, and far too calm. ‘This is where you are. The nanny was looking for you in the gardens. She was terrified you’d fallen into the lake.’
Damien could feel how dry his throat had become. ‘Father, I can explain—’
‘Stand up.’
Damien had slid from the chair, coming to stand beside the desk – his gaze upon the rug, its intricate weave of burgundy and gold.
‘Did you know, Damien, that tampering with another man’s letters is a crime?’
Damien felt his throat tighten, and he shook his head – a cold kind of fear gripping him.
‘I could report you to the local constabulary, you know. Have them come here and take you away. Is that what you want?’
Damien shook his head – his whole body trembling. He’d seen the constable when he’d gone into town with Mrs Willis, the nanny. A tall man with a dark uniform, and watchful eyes. But these were just letters – letters in his father’s office. He hadn’t meant to do anything bad. He’d just wanted to—
‘Speak up, boy. I cannot hear you.’
‘No, Father,’ Damien said quietly – hating how meek his voice sounded. How … small.
‘Why did you do this?’
Damien glanced up, and saw in his father’s face that he did not want the true answer. He wasn’t interested in hearing how Damien had longed to hear his father’s voice, even if it was only scratched upon a page. He wanted the answer he always wanted.
‘Because I’m not a good boy.’
His father had nodded in agreement, pulling a stack of paper from one of the desk drawers. Then he’d dipped the fountain pen in ink.
‘Sit,’ he’d commanded, pointing to the chair – and Damien had sat, though it had taken him a little effort to climb back onto it. His father had leaned forwards then, scratching something into the first page.
‘Write this out until you understand it. Until every page is filled.’
And Damien had stared at the words scrawled in neat, black letters.
Bad things beget bad things.
‘And he meant you?’ Ava’s voice was soft. ‘Your father thought you were a bad thing, Damien?’
And though he opened his mouth, he found he could not answer her. Couldn’t hear his own voice any longer – for it was only his father’s voice that rumbled in his ears.
It’s your fault. Your fault. All your fault.
‘Damien?’
Ava’s voice was getting further away, and though Damien knew he was sitting still, that a slice of sunlight was dappling his eyes, he couldn’t feel it anymore – couldn’t feel the solidity of the chair beneath him.
He felt as though he was getting pitched and tossed on jagged waves, his stomach roiling as his father’s voice grew louder and louder, the same words repeated over and again:
Your fault.
Yours.
That is what he had said when he’d left him at the boarding school, stepping back into the carriage without so much as a farewell. That is what he had said each time Damien had sent a telegram – asking when he could come home.
That is what he had whispered with every look, every brusque letter, every Christmas Damien had spent alone with the housemaster, and the handful of other boys that’d been left for the holidays.
At least the other parents had sent gifts – fine, woollen scarves to stave off the school’s creeping chill, or fruitcakes wrapped in crackling wax paper.
But his father?
His father had sent nothing.
And so … when he’d gotten a little older, and the number of boys left at the boarding school come Christmas had dwindled to become just him, and some of the much younger students, he’d left.
He’d stolen out in the dead of night, his small suitcase packed with whatever he could fit within it.
‘I’ll not let him find me,’ Damien mumbled.
‘Is he looking for you, Damien? Your father?’
Something reached inside of him, squeezing at his chest, making it hard to breathe. It was better this way. Better his father believed him dead – better to start a new life. One in which it was buried.
Because it was all my fault.
‘What was your fault, Damien?’
Ava’s voice again – and it pulled at him, dragging him down twisting alleyways, and damp boarding houses, over rolling hills, and sodden dirt-tracks, back – not to the lake house this time, but to London, to a red door yawning open – and a tall man, with a hunched posture: his father.
And suddenly he knew the door wasn’t opening.
No.
It was closing. On him. On his family. On everything he had known – and the water was getting colder, and blacker, and—
‘Damien.’
He felt warm hands upon his face, warm breath making his hair flutter, and he opened his eyes. Ava was crouched in front of him, her pale hair pulling free of its bun, her stone-grey eyes verging on blue, tears welling within them.
‘Damien,’ she said, and his name was a breath upon her lips. ‘You’re safe. All is well.’
The look he gave her was unguarded. Exposed. And his eyes flicked away. ‘Yes,’ he muttered – though his voice was thin as wire, and shaking. ‘I’m well.’
She could see that was a lie from how he avoided her gaze. How he folded his arms tightly across his chest. He sat back, away from her touch, his attention fixed firmly on his hands.
‘He was wrong, you know,’ she said, trying to draw his gaze back to her. ‘Your father.’
He shunted a breath through his lips. ‘How?’
‘Because you are not a “bad thing”, Damien.’
When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were dark with challenge. ‘And how do you know?’
‘Because no mistake makes us bad people, Damien. Especially not the mistake of a child.’
‘Really?’ His lips curled upwards a little, and he huffed a humourless laugh through his teeth. ‘And what if I’ve made worse mistakes since? Not once – not twice – but dozens of times. What then?’
Ava sat back on her heels, considering this for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said quietly. ‘I suppose that depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On how it felt, afterwards. Whether you felt guilty.’
He shook his head. ‘I know what you’re trying to do, Ava. But I’m trying to tell you—’
‘What are you trying to tell me?’ She tilted her chin up towards him. ‘That your father was right?’
Something flickered in his expression – a hairline crack in glass. ‘Don’t be blind, Miss Adams. You cannot sit here and tell me, in good conscience, that those who do bad things are good people. Noble people.’
‘I don’t believe I said “noble”.’
He shook his head. ‘I know your kind,’ he said – his voice low. ‘You shape the world into the place you wish to see. You twist it – contort it – until it fits the shape you want. But that’s not how life works.’
It felt as though his words raked across her skin – but she kept her gaze fixed firmly upon him.
‘You know I stole something, once? When I was a child. My mother had taken me to her dressmaker’s, and I saw this yellow ribbon.
I thought it was beautiful. The colour of buttercups in spring.
But Ma told me it wouldn’t suit me – wouldn’t suit my colouring – and besides, she’d already spent all her money on the stage gown.
’ Her mouth twitched upwards at the memory. ‘So I pocketed it.’
‘Miss Adams …’ Damien said quietly. ‘I don’t think this is quite the same thing.’
‘Do you know what my mother did, when she discovered it?’ Ava looked at him, her gaze steady.
He shook his head.
‘She took me back to Miss Drinkwater’s shop, and she made me apologize. Made me return it. That was my punishment. She made me see I’d done something bad, not that I was something bad. And that’s the difference, Damien. That’s why your father was wrong.’
His expression softened a little. ‘So says the ribbon thief.’
‘I’m serious,’ she countered, pulling the chair around to sit beside him – for her legs had begun to ache, sitting like that upon the floor. ‘I don’t believe it. Not for a second.’
He scoffed. ‘Well, then you are the only one in this world who doesn’t.’
‘Then believe it with me,’ she said – reaching to place a hand upon his forearm. ‘And I won’t be alone.’
He looked down at her hand, and then up at her – and there was a quiet depth to his gaze. As though she’d drawn a wire between them, and now he tugged it taut. And she could feel it.
‘Ava …’ he said – his voice low in his throat.
Her lips parted, as though to answer him – though she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
His gaze fell there – to her lips – and she watched him swallow.
Watched his throat move with it, and when he looked back at her there was a question in his eyes that she couldn’t read – though she could feel it.
‘I should go,’ he said, standing quickly, turning to pull his coat from the chair.
‘Wait—’
‘I’ll see you next week,’ he said, and – before she could ask him to stay, to wait just a moment – he was gone.