“Come into the garden,” Grace said, grabbing my hand.
I stayed planted in my chair and lowered my book. “It is nearly midnight. We ought to have been in bed two hours ago, but you insisted on finishing your book, and declared you dare not stay up alone.”
She made a face. “The house creaks too much. At least when Ruby and Mr. Sanders are here, I can tell myself it is them. But with them gone, and Mrs. Henderson long asleep, every creak is a brigand crashing through a window pane.”
I lifted one brow. “Brigands plunder travelers on forest roads. They do not break into London town houses. If they did, they would not crash through a window, which would make much more noise than a ‘creak’ anyway.”
She sighed dramatically. “Edie . . .”
“What is this nonsense about the garden?”
She waved toward the window. “Mama’s fall roses are in bloom, and she always said they look best under an autumn moon. I want to see them.”
“Then go see them. I am not stopping you.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Go outdoors at midnight?”
“It is our back garden. There are no brigands.”
Grace put on her best pout. She was nearly eighteen, but some days I swore she was still a child. I supposed that was what happened with a much younger sister and doting older parents. No one had ever felt any inclination to make Grace grow up. To drag her into the adult world and tarnish the bright light that she brought into our lives.
One day soon I would need to be the one who did this. I would be as gentle as I could, but she must be ready to face the world. Our parents had planned to do it by sending her to finishing school. Their deaths meant I could no longer bear to send her away. Let her get past her grief and then I would gently lead her into the world beyond our safe walls.
In the spring. I would do it in the spring. For now, though, she could be a girl for a little longer. A girl whose sister would protect her from the horrors of a dark garden in a fenced and gated private courtyard.
“We will see the flowers,” I said. “And then it is off to bed for both of us. If we sleep in, we miss church.”
“A terrible tragedy,” she said, her eyes dancing.
I tapped her arm as I rose. “None of that.”
“None of what?”
I shook my head, and we went down one level to the back door. When I unlocked and opened it, I paused a moment to drink in the rich perfume of the night garden. It was mid-September, but it had been warm, and there was a heaviness to the air that still whispered of summer.
“See?” Grace said. “It is a beautiful night for a stroll.”
I ignored that and walked into the gardens. These were my mother’s pride and joy, and I regretted that I never took up the pastime. I had been too busy helping my father in hopes of avoiding things like embroidery and music lessons.
Grace skirted past me and danced along in her slippers, looking like a fairy child. I was of middling height, a little plump, with dark hair and gray eyes. My sister was my opposite—tiny and light on her feet, light of hair and eye, too. She seemed to glow as she pranced along to music heard only in her head.
I might regret not learning to garden, but I should not, because Grace embraced it, and it was something to be held between them, as my father and I held the law between us. My mother and I shared a love of stories and books, and that had been enough.
“For someone who was afraid to come into the garden,” I called as she vanished around a corner, “you certainly seem bold enough now.”
She giggled, and then a whisper sounded. A man’s whisper.
My insides went cold, and I raced forward, my skirts hoisted to let me run.
A man stepped around the corner of a stone-walled rose bed. He was not tall nor broad, but to me, he loomed like a mountain. I started to step back. Then I saw Grace at his side, his fingers grazing her arm.
“Grace,” I said, my voice strangled. “Please come over here.”
She sighed deeply, eyes rolling. “It is only Mr—,” she said. She gave him his name. I did not. I would not. He is Mr— like a character in a classic novel where the writer did not deem a name important.
“Please come here,” I said.
She started toward me with another deep sigh, but his fingers caught her arm.
“Unhand her,” I said, my voice low, hands clenching.
Grace stepped toward me again, so confident in the knowledge this was a mistake, and he would indeed release her. When he did not, she only looked up at him in innocent confusion.
“Sir?” she said. “I ought to go to my sister. She is my guardian.”
“A woman should not be a guardian. That is a man’s job, and it will be mine when she and I are wed. You would do best to begin obeying me now.”
Again that heartrending flicker of confusion. These were all commonplace sentiments, yet not ones she had heard in our house nor, openly, among friends and neighbors.
“Please release my sister, sir,” I said. “Your quarrel is with me.”
He looked my way. “Quarrel? No, Edie. Disagreement. You are a willful girl. Willful and proud, as too many pretty girls are. Spoiled by your parents. I have offered my hand in marriage, and you spit on it.”
“I did not,” I said, my voice even. “I said we are not a good match. You can do better, sir. Much better than a spinster who is five-and-twenty and is, as you said, willful and proud. Look elsewhere and leave me to regret my mistake later.”
His lips tightened, as if I was being sarcastic. I was not. I was being polite. He had behaved boorishly enough that I did not wish him on any other woman, and I will never regret saying no, but I know not to insult him. Stay civil but firm.
“Let Grace go,” I said. “She will retreat into the house, and we will talk.”
I did not wish to talk, but my priority was my sister. My gaze had already strayed to a spade Grace left outside earlier. It was too close to him for me to easily grab and wield, but it was a comfort knowing it was there.
He moved, and I did not run for the spade. I thought he was letting her go. He seemed to be. He stepped away from her and she stumbled forward, relief relaxing her fine features even as her eyes stay a little too wide.
Then my sister flew backward as if shoved. I hesitated. For one heartbeat, I hesitated, confused, and it was a heartbeat too long. He yanked her against him, one forearm around her slender throat, the other clapping over her mouth before she could scream.
I dashed forward then, but he lifted her off her feet.
“Stop there, Edie, or I will kill her.”
That was what he seemed to say. It could not, however, be what he actually said, because he was not a monster. He was a boor and a cruel man, but not a monster who would kill an innocent girl.
I stepped forward. “Please—”
His hand dropped from her mouth, and she opened it to scream, but then both his hands were around her throat, cutting off her cry.
“Come closer, and I squeeze harder,” he said.
I forced my gaze to stay on him. To not check the distance between me and that spade. My heart slammed into my ribs, but I was eerily calm. He would not kill her. This was a ruse, and I must “fall” for it, as much as everything in me rebelled against that.
I had rejected him with such kindness and civility that it could not even be called rejection. That was what we were taught, as young women. If you must refuse an advance, take care. You risk offending him, and if you offend him, he could hurt you. Hurt your reputation or physically harm you.
A friend’s mother told her to treat suitors like very big, very strong toddling children, moments from a tantrum. Be gentle. Be kind. Deflect. Blame yourself, not him. The fault was yours, not his.
When I told my mother this advice, she sighed, but did not disagree. She only added that it applied to men one did not know well. Once one got to know them, one could better judge their character and a good man did not need to be treated this way. It was a precaution, that was all.
I took all those precautions with my would-be suitor because I knew his character well enough to know the advice was warranted. Now I needed to continue with it. Act subservient. Calm him. Mollify him.
He held my sister hostage, and even if I knew he would not kill her, I would not risk her being harmed in any way. So I swallowed my bile and bowed to his will.
“Please do not hurt her,” I said. “Tell me what you want.”
“You know what I want.”
“Marriage.” I hesitated. Then I plowed on. “If that is what you wish—”
His hands tightened around Grace’s throat, and I yelped.
“I am saying yes,” I said.
“You are pretending to say yes. You think me a fool.”
“Whatever assurances you need, I will give them.”
“Apologize.”
“What?”
His hands tightened more, my sister gasping, and I staggered forward, only to have him squeeze so tight that her eyes bulged.
“Stop there,” he said, his own eyes gleaming as Grace struggled in his grip.
As my heart hammered, I did not look at the spade. I could not take that chance.
Just give him what he wants. Anything he wants, and there will be time later to rage and howl.
“Do you want me to apologize for not accepting?” I said, my voice as calm as possible, even as it shook.
“Apologize for that. For making me ask more than once. For humiliating me. For costing me a position with your father. He wanted you to marry me, but he was weak, hen-pecked, ruled by the women in his life. You will apologize to me on his behalf. For everything your family has done. You will get on your knees and beg forgiveness.”
This time, I did not hesitate. Later, I would return to this moment, turning it every which way, trying to see what I did wrong.
Nothing.
I did not hesitate for even the blink of an eye. He let me kneel on the cold garden cobblestones. He let me look up at him, my regrets flooding out, ready to apologize for my very existence if it helped, to promise that existence to him if he would only free my sister.
Yet he held her off her feet, one slipper on the ground as she kicked and gasped, and I apologized faster and faster.
“More?” I said, gasping for breath. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to mean it.”
“I do,” I said, my voice rising with panic. “I swear to God that I will wed you and be a good wife and—”
“I do not believe you.”
Tears streamed down my face. “Tell me what you need. Please. What assurances do you require?”
“I need you to remember what I can do. What I will do if you cross me.”
He lifted my sister higher as she gagged and choked. Then he squeezed, and . . .
Something cracked.
It was such a tiny sound. Tiny and yet it filled my entire world like the crack of apocalyptic thunder.
With that sound, my sister stopped struggling. Her body went limp and her eyes, still open, held nothing.
I screamed and ran at him. He backed up, still holding her, and on his face there was no triumph. There was shock. Then anger.
“You have killed her!” I shouted.
“I have not,” he snarled. “She is as much a lying minx as her sister. She fakes it.”
He dropped Grace to the ground, sneering, as if expecting her to cry out as her head hit the stones.
She did not cry out. Her head struck with a crack, and she lay there, her neck bent at a terrible angle, blue eyes open and staring.
I dropped beside her. My hands went to Grace’s throat, to her heart, praying that I was wrong and he was right.
Let him be right. Let her somehow be feigning this, and I will give him everything he wants with all my heart, if only she lives.
Those blue eyes stared up at nothing.
I sobbed and pulled her to me, whispering under my breath as if she could hear.
“I did not mean to kill her,” he said. There was no penance in his voice, only the whine of a petulant child. “Her bones are weak.”
“Her bones . . .” The words came slow as my gaze turned on him.
“She is too small for a girl of her age. Small and foolish. What was she thinking, letting me into the garden at night, leaving the gate open. It is not my fault.”
“Not your fault.”
A wise man would hear my tone and back away, but he only set his jaw. “This is all your fault for refusing me. For forcing me to take such measures. Your fault and hers. Not mine. You did this, Edie Welburn, as surely as if you—”
I ran at him, screaming like a banshee. I barreled into him with both hands striking his chest. His eyes widened in shock, and he did not think to protect himself. He toppled backward and his head hit the low garden wall.
He did not lose consciousness, but he was dazed. I grabbed his hair in my hands, and I bashed his head back into that wall with inhuman strength. Again and again and again until the stones ran red with his blood and his skull was stove in and bits of flesh and brain matter flecked the wall.
Only when he was truly, unmistakably dead did I stop. I heaved breath, my hands still wrapped in his blood-drenched hair. Then his body twitched and horror rocked through me. I staggered back. My rage was spent, and if he lived, I no longer wished to change that. Yet how could he live, with his skull bashed open? And if he did, it might be a mercy to finish what I had begun.
He rose, and such a thing should be impossible. It was impossible. What I had done meant that even if he lived, he would not rise gracefully. When I blinked, though, I saw two of him. One broken and battered against that low garden wall. The other standing—standing far taller than he ever did in life.
What flooded me then was hope. Hope because the more unbelievable the situation became, the more certainly it had to be a nightmare. Him luring me into the garden at night? Taking hold of my sister? A bad dream. Threatening to kill her? A nightmare. Actually killing her and then me violently murdering him and then his ghost rising and speaking to me? Clearly I was deep in the throes of more than a mere nightmare. I must have contracted a fever, and I was deep in the worst delirium.
He stood there, and a head taller and broader, like some true beast of nightmare. He slapped me, and I flew off my feet, bloody furrows in my cheek as if his fingernails had become claws.
I staggered back.
“Run,” he said, his voice deep and hoarse. “Run, Edie Welburn.”
“I—I—”
He strode to where I lay on the ground, and he lifted one booted foot and kicked me so hard I howled. Then he leaned down to my face.
“Run,” he said. “Or I will go into that house and kill that useless housekeeper of yours. I will kill her and then—”
I scrambled to my feet . . . and I ran.