Chapter 10
Phaedra could not speak, her bewilderment a dark, hungry thing looming out behind her. She knew it to be wrong, this macabre curiosity sinking its claws into her, yearning to understand—to know—things it had no business knowing with a ferocity that sent a shudder through her frame.
Nathaniel watched her process his words, his eyes intent on her face, as if noting each minute shift of her carefully guarded expression. And when he finally spoke, his voice felt uncertain. Tense.
“I feel I must assure you once more that I am, in fact, not mad.” His tight smile was almost a grimace.
“I do realize that my… suspicions seem rather ludicrous. But I can assure you, I have my reasons. However…” He straightened, his eyes straying from hers as if he did not wish to see the effect of his next words.
“It is within your right to withdraw from the contract, should you wish to do so. It is at your liberty.”
Phaedra stared at him, the surprise of his words pulling her breath to a halt. Withdraw?
How had he managed to come to such an absurd conclusion? Had there been something in her expression that had made him think this was something she wished to do? Or was it quite the opposite, and what he had seen in her face had made him want to reconsider?
The notion slashed through her with a jagged edge, the pain as intense as it was surprising. Her heart fluttered as she asked, her voice low and careful, “And if I do not?”
He smiled at her then, and the rigidness of her body gave, like ice thawing at the first sign of spring sun, her thoughts breaking free of the frost once more.
She dared imagine that this relief was not only her own, and she searched for it in the slackening of his shoulders and the way the tilt of his lips softened his eyes.
Her fingers unclenched from around the charcoal painting them black.
“Then,” he said, his voice dipping into a murmur. “I shall be pleased to have you as my companion in determining the soundness of my delusions.”
She bit back her own smile. “And how shall we attempt this feat?”
Nathaniel leaned back, the amusement slipping from his face as he regarded the brittle cover of the book in his lap.
“My sister kept this journal the year leading up to the tragedy. It was found at the site of the wreckage, beneath what used to be her window.” He paused, his fingers whispering over the soft velvet of the armrest, before he pulled them back against his palm.
“I believe she may have thrown it to salvage it from the flames. To ensure that some kind of account would survive to tell the truth of what happened here.”
He opened the journal, and carefully leafed through the fragile pages.
“Unfortunately, much of it was damaged. Some pages are mere tatters, the entries reduced to bits and pieces. But there are a few that are better preserved. I…”
He trailed off, and as Phaedra’s gaze followed the curve of his brow over his eyes now cast in shadow, clarity dawned on her, the thrill of a mystery solved shooting like lightning through her limbs.
“You wish to see what happened to them.”
“Yes,” he said, and this time she did not need to imagine the relief moving through his body like a silent wave.
She nodded, her pulse hammering against her skin. “Then read me the first.”