Page 38 of Dangerous Exile

“I promise.” She turned back to the street, leaning forward, her right arm long along the railing propping her up as she watched the carriages below. She would promise him anything at this point. He’d brought her here instead of leaving her in that madhouse. It was better than she could have hoped for.

“Thank you for not leaving me there.” She said the words softly, letting them drift off into the night air of the city, not sure he even heard her.

“What did you mean at the asylum when you said, ‘not like your mother’?”

Her mouth clamped shut as she stilled in place. The gratitude hadn’t been an invitation for questions, but she should have been prepared for Talen to be curious. She’d acted like a madwoman when he’d left her there. Now he wanted to know why.

Her look trained on a woman in a glowing silver gown floating down the street at the arm of a gentleman. So simple. So light. A burn deep in her chest seared with envy. She would never be a woman like that. Light. Easy. Not a care in the world.

That sort of freedom was stolen from her long ago, so what did it matter now if she talked of her mother? Who was there to judge?

Her mouth opened, hanging agape for long seconds before she could form words. “My mother was the finest woman. A lady, through and through, the fourth daughter of a baron. She loved me so much. Loved my father.” Her head shook, the darkness of the night sinking into her lungs.

“But?”

She turned around to look at him and leaned back against the railing. The black cat with two white paws had moved from the corner, curling in and out of his legs, though Talen’s attention was solely on her. His forearms balanced on his thighs, he stroked its back, sending warbling purring that sounded more like a mouse squeaking into the night air.

“But my father tired of her. Tired of her by the time I was ten. To be honest, I don’t know that he ever cared much for her. Not for how he treated her. Treated me. Still, it took him years to get rid of her.”

“How did he do that?”

“When I was fourteen he wanted to have his mistress move into our estate in Cumberland, so he placed my mother in an insane asylum.” Her right hand moved to clutch the front of his banyan higher over her bare chest to cut the chill invading her. “He committed her to the asylum and my mother wasn’t mad. She was sad. Sad that her husband had no regard for her. But she was always sane. And once she realized she was in there for good, with no escape, she was even sadder.”

“Could you visit her?”

“I was allowed to see her once a month and I lived for those days, for she would always brighten when she would see me. Sing me songs she used to sing to me when I was child. Like she could send time back to where I would crawl in her lap and she would sing to me. I think she thought I wouldn’t notice the marks on her arms if she was singing. The marks set onto her arms by her own fingernails. The gaping wounds where she’d gouged out her own skin.”

Even with the scant light from the lantern, she could see his eyes darken. “Yet she was sane?”

“Too sane. And it was more painful—harder—because she was. If she were mad…it would have been easier. But she wasn’t.” Her bottom lip pulled under her top teeth for a long moment as she choked back tears. “I would ask father to bring her home. Beg him. Beg him for hours on end. He would do nothing but laugh at me.” Her hand curled onto the folds of the banyan at her chest, her knuckles near to popping. “Every time, he would laugh. Until he didn’t.”

“He stopped?”

“He did. That was the day he told me he’d found a new place for me to live. He was done with me. That I was to marry Gilroy. I didn’t even know the man. But Gilroy had seen me at our estate, reading in thegazebo.Father said Gilroy offered him a healthy sum for me, and he sold me. Sold me to him like a sack of grain.”

“Did you not have a dowry?” His forefinger twirled around the cat’s half-missing left ear.

“Why waste a dowry when he could get paid instead?” She unclenched her hand from the banyan, flattening her hand on the slope of her chest. “I fought him on it for a week, refusing to marry Gilroy. I had never stood up to him until that moment, and I paid for it. Paid for it with bloody lips and bruised cheeks until he finally gave me an ultimatum—my choices were marriage to Gilroy or marriage to a lecherous old marquess looking for his fourth wife, or exile, or the madhouse.”

A shudder ran through her and she exhaled a long breath. “I chose Gilroy. So I was sent to Whetland Castle in Scotland with my maid. Married within a day. It was its own exile that I never saw coming.”

“Why?”

“There were no women at Whetland. Only a few maids. A cold castle. An even colder man that was my husband.”

His head shook and he looked down at the cat wrapped around his left leg, scuffing its chin against his calf. He scratched it behind the ears for a long moment before looking up at her. “Your mother, is she still in the hospital?”

Her mouth opened as she sucked in a hiccupped breath. She shook her head, her eyes closing, fighting the tears that threatened. No matter how many years had passed, the images in her mind stayed vibrant, as though they were happening in front of her in that very moment.

“I was allowed to visit her one more time before I left for Whetland and I was the one that found her, a sheet wrapped around her neck and tied to the railing of the bed. She looked so peaceful, like the sadness couldn’t get to her anymore. It was all I wanted, month after month, to see her happy, at peace. But not like that.”

A sob gargled up her throat as she buried her face in her right hand for a long moment. Her voice reclaimed, she looked at Talen. “Not like that. I don’t know if she knew I was leaving her behind. She lived for those visits with me, and if she knew they were ending…”

Her right arm wrapped across her ribcage, her gaze going to the left, locking onto the greenery wrapping up the trellis in the corner. “They said she killed herself. I never believed it. She would hurt herself, bleed her arms, yes, but to kill herself? No. She believed in the sanctity of heaven and hell. She would never.”

The same visceral rage from when she’d first heard those words spoken—that her mother had killed herself—surged in her gut. Surged to the point of almost exploding when she was always so good at tamping down the anger.

What the hell was happening with her? She excelled at controlling the rage. The pain. Holding back tears. But now, in the last few weeks, it was all she could do to hold onto the slightest remnants of sanity.