Fiona Read online

  She does, talking to the operator while unlocking her car and starting it up.

  She hangs up, and we tear out of the parking lot, tires squealing. “Why would she take her down to the holly tree?” she asks.

  I try to put myself in the shoes of a woman whose master plan has crashed and burned around her, who is crazed and angry enough to kidnap a child. “It’s an easy location, I guess. One entrance, no other exit. She can control the situation.”

  “Should we have someone tell Charlie?”

  He should know about this, but when the image of him lying in that hospital bed, weak and lucky to be alive, flashes through my mind, I just shake my head. “He’s just been through a huge trauma. If we tell him, he’ll try to break out of the hospital to look for her.”

  Alice glances at me. “But maybe he could reason with her. He could tell Blair what she wants to hear, calm her down.”

  “I’m the one she wants,” I say. “She knew the nurse would hear what she said about the tree and tell me. She’s too smart to just let something like that slip by accident.”

  It’s not much of an argument, but Alice seems to accept it. I don’t want to tell her the real reason I don’t want Charlie there: If he came and told her that he didn’t love her anymore, that he loved me, there’s a very real chance we could all die. She could snap, and we’d be putting Poppy in an even more dangerous situation.

  No, I don’t want him near her. I don’t want to see him try to comfort her or touch her or feel sorry for her, even if he’s pretending. I don’t think I could bear it.

  So Blair gets me instead. She gets to spew her venom at me, while I work to find a way to get her to give Poppy back.

  For the remainder of the drive, I keep curling my hands in and out of fists on top of my knees, doing my best not to pick at my fingernails. I can tell Alice is just as tense as I am, and she’s speeding fast to get us home.

  The sun is hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds when we reach the castle. No one greets us at the front door, and Alice and I run through the halls alone. When we reach that narrow spiral staircase to the basement, I launch myself down it, hardly feeling the pain in my ankle, but Alice’s voice stops me.

  “Wait!” she hisses, staring at me in horror. “Let’s just stop and think for a minute before you go down there. She’s dangerous. She could have a weapon. We need to get the police, someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Poppy’s down there,” I say, my voice pleading.

  She looks at me for a quick moment of hesitation, then nods. “Should I go with you?”

  “No,” I whisper. “Stay here. Wait for the cops.” I look down at the staircase descending into darkness, steeling myself. “I’m the one that she wants anyway.”

  I creep down the stairs, running my right hand along the rough rope rail and my left along the cold stone wall to keep my balance. As the darkness envelops me completely, I reach the door at the bottom. It’s closed, sealing Blair and Poppy off from the rest of the world.

  I press my ear to the door, but I can’t hear anything from inside the room. I take a deep breath and knock. A long, silent moment passes, but then suddenly the door creaks open a bit. “Blair,” I say softly, trying not to sound angry or menacing. “It’s me. I’m alone.”

  She pushes the door open wider, and the electric lantern in her hand, casting shadows all around us, lights the bottom of the stairwell.

  She peeks around the edge, and even in the strange lantern light, I see how different she looks. There’s no facade on her face, no carefully pleasant structure overlying her features. Her long black hair is limp and tangled, her face bare without any hint of the perfectly applied makeup she usually wears. She’s no longer trying to deceive anyone.

  She glares at me with such undisguised hatred that I almost don’t notice what she’s holding in her hand. A gun. One of the pair of the antique dueling pistols. It can’t be Mabel’s—they would have taken that one away. It must be the other one. And then I see Poppy.

  And I don’t know whether I want to scream or faint or hit something very, very hard.

  Because she’s tied to the tree in the middle of the room, roughly bound there by Blair as if she were an ancient sacrifice.

  Her hands are wrapped and tied with some kind of cord behind her, low around the tree. “Fee?” she asks, her voice slurred. She’s shaking her head, as if trying to clear it. As if she’s been drugged. Of course. That’s how Blair got her out of the hospital.

  I look to Blair, breathing steadily and trying to remain calm. I keep my hands high above my head and move slowly so that I don’t startle her. “Okay, Blair. You’ve got me here. Alone. What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” she asks, as if the question is ludicrous. “I want you to have never been born. I want you to have never come to this house.” She stops talking and approaches me, bringing her face so close to mine that I can see the swirling storm in her blue eyes, that row of perfect little white teeth biting her lower lip. She doesn’t look crazy, like Mabel did. She looks sad, in despair. Like she doesn’t know what to do now.

  “I want you to have never met him,” she says finally, her voice breaking. “You’ve ruined everything. I’m the love of Charles’s life. I’m the one he’s supposed to want. But day after day, I had to watch him want you. And I couldn’t do a bloody thing about it.”

  She steps back, and I can breathe again.

  I need to keep her talking. It’s what I used to do with Mom, keep her talking until she calmed down. “There wasn’t anything you could do about it until Mabel told you about Lily’s plan,” I say.

  Blair lets out a sad laugh, and it’s a chilling thing. I see Poppy’s eyes widen even further, and I have to close my eyes for a second to stop myself from running over there and ripping her from that cursed tree.

  “She really thought she was a part of this family,” Blair says. “She would come down to this stupid tree and worship it like it was a deity. She thought it protected the family and that her role was to serve it. Seriously mental.”

  Blair’s entire voice has changed. Her words are rushing out without her usual careful control. Her Scottish brogue is much more pronounced, too—not as crisp and polished as usual. I remember my first impression of her, thinking that her accent sounded labored, as if she were affecting an upper-class voice. I guess I was right.

  “So you tried to make me think I was going crazy.”

  For a moment, she brightens. She smiles, that pointed, victorious smile that I’ve only caught glimpses of before now. “We did a rather good job, don’t you think? I was out in the woods the night Charles came back, when you saw me. Did you think you were hallucinating?” She laughs again, and I try not to let my mouth drop open in horror. “We made the shortbread your mother used to make. We planted a recording of her voice in the air vent of the hallway to make you think you were hearing things. We drugged your tea leaves the night of the ball, after Albert told us you were going to leave. Did we really make you think you might have done it? Did you think you were going crazy?”

  I nod tightly, remembering that moment when I was left alone, trapped in the hospital room. That one small moment when my perception shifted, and I thought my headache and lethargy might be symptoms of some psychotic break. In that moment, I truly thought I was crazy. And I hate her for that.

  I remember that morning, the fierce headache I woke up with. Of course it was the tea. Albert was the one who told me to make it. And like a fool, I did exactly what he told me to.

  “You should have seen yourself when you saw Copperfield!” she crows.

  “Did you do it, Blair?” Poppy asks, her voice twisted with tears and fear. “Did you kill Copperfield?” I shoot a look at her, telling her to be quiet. I don’t want Blair to think about Poppy right now. I just need to distract her until the police can get here.

  Bla
ir glances at her, her mouth contorted in a grimace. “Mabel took care of that, thank goodness. So disgusting. She really is the crazy one, you know?” She looks up at me, and I see the pure conviction in her wild eyes. She truly thinks that Mabel was the deranged one, the only one who spun out of control.

  What’s her plan now? She’s kidnapped Charlie’s sister, but she’s never going to get away with it, even if she kills us. She’s never going to get him back—she has to know that. She’s desperate and out of her head, and I can’t make one false move.

  I nod, trying to appease her. “And you made those strange sounds next to me in the middle of the night, right?” I ask, trying to draw her attention away from Poppy.

  “Did you never figure it out?” she asks, laughing in that chilling way again. “Mabel showed me. There’s a secret passageway that runs right by your room. There’s a hidden entrance in the hall, and it leads down to one of the spare bedrooms. Mabel said it was used when a guest wanted . . . particular overnight company from among the servants. So that’s where we went, to hide right beside your bed and drive you crazy all night long. Or just turn on the recording. You freaked out perfectly, by the way. Played right into our hand.”

  I bite down on my bottom lip, hard, and don’t say anything.

  Blair steps closer, her head cocked, considering me. She starts to speak, but her voice is lower, softer. Full of pain again. “Why does he want you? You’re nothing. I’ve been in love with him since our first year at university, and it took me two years to get him to fall for me. He’s all I ever wanted.” The words are pouring out now, and I wonder if she even remembers that I’m here. “Even when he cheated on me, even when he didn’t call or forgot my birthday or stood me up for a date, he just . . . he had this way of making me feel like I was the luckiest girl. All he had to do was look at me, and I felt like I was the only girl in the world.”

  “Did you fake the pregnancy, too?” I ask softly.

  She is crying now, angry tears spilling down her cheeks as she stares at me. “He wouldn’t have taken me back any other way. He told me, when he broke up with me after his parents died, that he needed a fresh start. That he couldn’t be the person he wanted to be if he stayed with me. It was the only thing I could think of. I need him. Albert helped me when he found out I was lying about the baby. He knew Dr. Furnham was having an affair with a nurse and threatened to tell his wife unless he helped me.”

  “He got him to recommend committing me, too?”

  She nods, dropping down to the floor. She keeps the gun up, pointed right at me, but her body shakes with sobs.

  I start to speak, even though every voice in my head is screaming at me not to. “You tried to make me think I had imagined the fight we had, about Poppy’s horse show. You used my memories of my mother against me. You used every fear I had against me.” I stop, trying to rein in my anger.

  There’s a creak on a step above me, but I don’t react. I try not to show that I heard anything unusual.

  But Blair heard it. She whirls up and grabs Poppy by her ponytail, pulling her face closer to her. Poppy yelps as Blair lifts the gun and rests it on her temple.

  “Don’t,” I say quickly. “Don’t hurt her. She’s just a kid, Blair. And hurting her won’t help you with anything.”

  She stares at me, venom in her eyes. Then, all of a sudden, that venom disappears, and all that’s left is misery. “He’s never going to love me, is he?” she whispers, her voice raw and broken.

  “Just let her go, Blair. And everything will be okay,” I lie.

  Poppy stares at me, her eyes filled with fear.

  We all stay there, frozen, for a few moments. And then finally, Blair shoves Poppy’s head down and lets go of her hair.

  And turns the gun on herself.

  CHAPTER 41

  I don’t think.

  I dart around Poppy and run for Blair, tackling her before she can pull the trigger. The pistol falls to the floor just as I do.

  The wind is knocked out of me, and distantly, I hear Poppy scream. There are footsteps on the stones, so many footsteps. Someone—a stranger—is kneeling over me, telling me that it’s okay, that I’ll be able to breathe soon. There are stars at the edge of my vision, and I open my mouth, desperate for air that won’t enter my lungs.

  I remember the last time I saw stars, when I forgot to breathe around Charlie. That was much more pleasant.

  Finally, with a rush, I get a breath in, and my vision clears. The room is filled with cops, and they’re pulling Blair up the staircase, her wrists in handcuffs. I let one cop help me onto my feet, and Poppy, free from the tree, launches herself into my arms. I wrap them around her tightly. “It’s okay now,” I murmur to her, over and over. “It’s okay.”

  Alice is waiting for us when we finally climb the staircase back into the real world. “Thank God you two are all right! What happened?” she asks.

  “She tried—” I start to say, but then suddenly it all crashes over me. I just watched a woman pull a gun on herself. And I stopped it.

  The way I always wished I had been able to stop my mother.

  I sink to my knees, unable to stand any longer. Alice kneels beside me, her arm around my shoulder. Poppy kneels on my other side, and together they let me cry. I’m crying for all those years of grief and pain, and for these last few months of aching love and fear.

  “I’m sorry,” I say when I can finally speak.

  “It’s okay,” Poppy says, repeating my own useless words back to me. But somehow they’re comforting. “You just needed someone to sit with you.” She smiles at me, and I squeeze her hand.

  • • •

  Poppy and I give the cops our statements, and when we’re finally free to go, Alice takes us straight to Charlie’s hospital room.

  He gasps, a mixture of a sob and a laugh, when he sees Poppy in the doorway. She runs to his side, and he bends his head down toward hers. “I’m sorry,” he says, his deep voice overflowing with sorrow and relief. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looks up at me, his expression unreadable.

  I can guess what he’s thinking, though. He must be furious at me for leaving the hospital without an explanation. For not telling him how much danger his sister was in.

  I’m planning out what I’ll say to him, when he asks Poppy if he can talk to me alone for a second. I watch her go, her hand securely in Alice’s, and then I’m left to face Charlie alone.

  I wait for him to ask me how I could do this to him. For him to yell at me. For him to tell me that he can’t trust me anymore, that whatever fragile relationship we started building last night is now over.

  But he doesn’t. Instead, he reaches for me, pulling me to him, and kisses me fiercely. I hardly have time to kiss him back before he leans back on his pillow and looks at me. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I let her into our lives.”

  He kisses me again, and this time, I’m prepared for it. I kiss him back just as fiercely, nuzzling close to him and wrapping my arms around his shoulders.

  We break apart again, and I’m about to tell him that it’s not his fault, that he couldn’t have known, but he speaks first.

  “I love you,” he says. “I love you.”

  My lips part as I stare at him in awe. He loves me. I can see in his eyes that it’s the truth, but I still can hardly believe it.

  He looks at me with a broad smile full of joy. “I think I’ve loved you since the night I first met you in the pub, when I couldn’t stop staring at you.”

  I laugh at the memory.

  He tucks one of my wild curls behind my ear. “I looked up from the fire, and all of a sudden you were there, like I’d conjured you up. I think I couldn’t stop staring because I recognized something in you. Something I needed. I think even then, I knew you were going to save me.” He brushes his palm down my cheek. “And then I got to know you, and I start
ed up that stupid secret-for-a-song game because I wanted an excuse to open myself up to you. I’d never wanted to let anyone in until I met you. I couldn’t stop seeking you out, inventing any excuse to see you.”

  “I wasn’t all that hard to find,” I point out. “I think I spent all that time in the library because I was hoping you would come and demand a song.” I kiss him again, my lips lingering on his for a moment before I pull back. “I love you, too,” I whisper.

  CHAPTER 42

  Charlie is finally discharged a few days later, and we take a cab from the hospital. Neither of us says anything as we slide into the backseat of the taxi, but I know we’re both thinking about Albert. He, Mabel, and Blair are locked up, awaiting psychiatric evaluations and trials. Dr. Furnham has been arrested as well, on numerous counts of fraud and malpractice.

  Thankfully, the police have interviewed the rest of the staff and have determined that no one else was part of their mad plot.

  “Dunraven Manor,” I tell the driver.

  Charlie looks at me, a question in his eyes.

  “Do you mind?” I ask. “There’s something I have to do.”

  He sits beside me in the back of the cab, taking my hand in his. “Of course not.”

  We arrive at Dunraven, and my stomach feels as if it has twisted itself into a permanent knot. I don’t know if I can face these people, who’ve already rejected me, again. But I have to. I have to tell them one last thing.

  Charlie gets out with me as Mrs. Drummond opens the front door. She beams at him, though her bright smile falters a bit when she sees me. “Lord Moffat,” she says. “I’m so happy to see you up and about.”

  He smiles at her as we approach the front door. “Thank you, Mrs. Drummond.”

  She turns her attention to me. “Shall I tell your grandparents that you’re here?” she asks softly.

  I nod, my throat too dry to attempt to speak.

  She has us wait in a grand sitting room while she hurries up to tell her employers that their unwanted granddaughter is waiting for an audience. I sigh, craning my neck up to look at the intricate plasterwork ceiling, the leaves and musical instruments and cherubs that adorn it. Much less interesting than the ceiling fresco of the dragon above the entryway.