Page 38 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

“I told Father what I saw, what I heard. Told him that I thought Catrin to blame. I thought, foolishly, that if I stacked my facts neat enough, he would see the truth of it. But he did not wish to see, because if I was right, if she had done all of that, then what manner of man was he that he had allowed it? What manner of man was he that he had summoned death into the midst of his family? He sent me to St. Jude’s, to Hargreaves, believing grief could be taught out of a man like bad penmanship. ”

Isabella gasped, the name Hargreaves sending a cold finger down her spine despite the warmth of the room.

She had known Rhys had been locked away in St Jude’s, but knowing was not the same as hearing it stated in his voice, heavy with remembered suffering.

She tasted the memory of limewash and fear, knowing that her brief encounter barely scraped the depth of what he had endured.

“Six months I was there,” he said. “In the beginning, I was honest, and then I was not. Honesty would only have extended my purgatory. Instead, I told Hargreaves what he wished to hear and was sent back to Harrowgate cured .”

The horror of six hopeless months in that place made Isabella’s heart wrench. Her fingers tightened on his.

“What happened the night of the fire?” she asked. Her voice sounded even. It felt like a thread.

He drew a breath as the fire in the hearth settled with a pop and a hiss.

“I had gone to visit a friend for a fortnight, but he took sick, and I returned early. I was not expected. I found Father in his chamber, in the chair by his desk, his head cradled on his arms. The pool of blood on the desktop and the gaping wound in his skull told me he had not laid down himself. That, and the poker that lay on the carpet, bits of hair and bone stuck to it.”

Isabella’s stomach lurched, but she held her tongue, unwilling to make the telling any more difficult for him than it surely was. Something ticked in the wainscot, once, twice, thrice, and went still.

“As I stood there, Catrin raced in. She carried a lamp and a tin ewer of oil. She saw me but did not pause, instead flinging her arm so the oil doused the carpet, and me. She raised the lamp high.”

Isabella held his gaze, horror suffusing her. “She meant to burn the proof.”

“She meant to burn it all.” His tone was flat, but the line of his mouth cut deep. “I reached for her, but she stepped away, brandishing the lamp like the weapon it had become. My trouser leg was soaked in oil.

“She smiled and listed every death like a catechism, her parents, my brothers, my mother. My father lay before me now, the wound in his skull dripping blood to the floor. She had murdered them all. She laughed, saying no one would believe me, a madman freshly returned from the asylum’s care, a lunatic raving against a quiet, sweet girl left alive in a house of tragedies.

“A choice, I realized, my life or hers. She had killed them, all of them, everyone I loved. I would not let her go unjudged. And so I became both judge and executioner. She threw the lamp at me. As the fire caught and roared, I dove through the door and slammed it shut.” He did not look away, did not flinch or retreat.

“Then I barred the door, and I let her burn.”

She should recoil at his admission, shrink from the man who had left his cousin to the flames. The cousin who had murdered all those he loved.

Horror tangled with empathy, all the sharper for knowing he had not set the fire.

He had only barred the door. Only . And yet, what else was he to have done, faced with his dead father and oil on his skin, the lamp raised high?

Faced with the ugly truth that, freshly returned from a lunatic asylum, his accusations would not be believed.

If anything, he would be sent back, a prisoner while the murderer walked free.

Isabella pondered what she would have done if someone had taken a poker to Papa’s skull, left him butchered and bleeding. The answer chilled her. She could not condemn Rhys without condemning herself.

The room held still, and the reek of scorched oil seemed to rise from the memory, singing Isabella’s nostrils.

Rhys’s words did not look for mercy or absolution; he did not ask it.

Isabella felt the truth of it settle into her like a brand.

Horror…yes. And another, quieter thing: understanding of the terrible logic of a cornered act.

“When she manifests as she did tonight,” he said softly, “it spends her. She draws heat, breath, memory, and fear to make the shape. Afterward she must feed.”

“Feed?” Isabella asked with a shudder.

“On the house. On the dead. She cannot so easily rise like that again. It will not be tonight, or tomorrow. But it will be soon.”

“Then our reprieve is counted in days,” Isabella said. The thought should have broken her. Instead, the feel of their linked hands steadied the pieces. “She felt…colder than any wraith I have known. Heavier. Stronger.” She paused. “Wrong.”

“She is wrong. She has always been wrong,” he said.

“And you—” He hesitated, his expression softening, letting the care show.

“You will feel wrung out for an hour or two. She is a thief of warmth.” Her teeth clicked, a betraying chatter though the room was warm.

He dipped his chin toward the glass of brandy. “Drink more.”

Isabella was loath to disentangle their hands.

Still, she obeyed, pulling one free to take up the glass, leaving the other resting between his, and took a small sip, the brandy a sweet-bitter throb.

He took the glass from her and took a sip for himself, placing his lips exactly where she had placed her own.

The simple intimacy sent a rush of heat through her that pooled low, urgent and insistent, heat that had nothing to do with the fire.

Silence rose between them again, different than it had been, vibrating with the shape of what they were to each other now. Not strangers anymore. Not friends, though there was an element of that. Something else, something dangerous and deep.

She turned her hand, lacing their fingers. He did not pull free.

“You once asked me if I would leave, go back to London… Did you want me to?”

He huffed a soft exhalation. “A part of me wanted to send you away, to see you safe, far from everything dark and rancid that leaches through these halls.”

“And that part of you still wants me to go,” she said, watching him carefully. “Even as another part does not want me to go at all.”

“The selfish part,” he said. “The part that wants your help banishing the monstrosity that has taken residence in my home. But more than that, the part that wants you here in this house, in this room, beside me. The part that wants you , Isabella. All of you.”

Her pulse stuttered at his bald admission. “Rhys?—”

He leaned an inch nearer. She felt the brush of his breath on her cheek, and she realized she had already decided. She had lived a life pretending she did not see, did not hear, did not want . But here was a man who saw her, who wanted her. And she wanted him back.

“Isabella?”

She knew what he asked. The simplest answer rose, terrifying and bright. “Yes,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes, opened them, and lifted their joined hands so his lips grazed her knuckles. He undid her with his gentleness. The ache that followed, hot and low, was not fear.

“We will finish the tale tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight, you will stay where the house is quiet.”

“Here,” she said, because to leave him now would feel like stepping into deep water with stones tied about her waist.

“Here,” he murmured. “With me.”

“Yes.” Her reply was little more than a breath. She did not know which of them moved that last fraction. Only that the space between them vanished and the air changed shape, desire humming through her, heady and dangerous.

For once, the house made no sound at all.