Page 88 of The Curse of Penryth Hall

Tamsyn swallowed hard. “As do I.”

Silent tears streamed down Alice’s face. She turned to Ruan, laying a palm on his chest, reaching up to cup his cheek with the other in a display of maternal tenderness.

He sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes widened. “No, Alice. Don’t.”

She straightened her spine and stepped backward. First one foot, then its mate. “Set me free, Ruan Kivell. Set me free.”

He didn’t blink. His gaze never wavering from hers. Ruan’slips were a thin line as he shook his head. His voice cracked with quickly unraveling emotion. “I won’t. I can’t, Alice. Don’t. Please.”

What was happening?

She took another step backward in this strange dance between the two of them.

“This is the only way forward for us. We all know it. Even if you won’t accept it.”

Alice took a determined step backward into the large open window, and suddenly I knew how the tale unfolded. She was going to jump.

Her hands gripped the sill, knuckles white. Her body silhouetted by the sun making a shadowy cross on the nursery floor. The white robes flapped in the wind.

My heart lodged in my throat.Do something. Stop her…Yet I couldn’t move, couldn’t even draw breath for fear it would make her slip and fall to her death. Ruan watched her, his steady unblinking gaze fixed.

“Let me go, Pellar. Please let me go. I want to fly free with my George. I don’t deserve it, God knows I don’t after all I’ve done, but grant me that.”

Several seconds passed before Ruan took in a haggard breath and gave in, closing his eyes.

Silence.

A flutter.

Then a sickening smack.

I scrambled to the window and leaned over the ledge, knowing good and well what I’d find. Alice Martin’s broken body lay on the cobbles below. Her head at an unnatural angle from her shoulders as a pool of dark blood ran out beneath.

Alice Martin was free.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-NINEA Separate Sort of Love

RUANdidn’t speak after Mrs. Martin jumped from the window. But she didn’t jump. Not really. She stepped. Falling backward waiting on some unseen hands to reach out and ease her fall. The eerie fan of the white gown sprawled around her brought to mind the snow angels that my sister and I would make as children in New York.

My eyes burned.

I looked up at Ruan, his jaw set firm.

“She…”

“Dead.”

I glanced back down at her broken form. “How… how do you know?”

“How is she not?” Ruan walked out of the nursery, the door closing behind him, leaving me alone with Tamsyn and her boy. She hadn’t moved. Not an inch since she’d grabbed ahold of her son. The two of them cradled together on the clean dark oak floors. Brilliantly polished in the midmorning sun.

Alice was dead.

It was over. Truly over. Tamsyn and her child were safe at last and yet I didn’t know whether to be grateful or horrified athow it all unfolded. Tamsyn had been willing to let the woman go. To allow her to walk free from all the terrible things she’d done, and yet Alice didn’t take the chance. She chose a third option. To die in her own way.

I couldn’t make sense of it.

I didn’t know what to do, whether I should speak to her, to go nearer, or just leave this godforsaken place and never return. The final one being the simplest and wisest choice.