Part 31 (2/2)

She moved toward it slowly.

For there was his copy of Marcus Aurelius.

Nearly tattered now, the gold embossing nearly worn smooth from being tucked inside his coat countless times, packed into trunks, cupped open in his hands.

She paused before it with a sense of vertigo. She hesitated. Then gingerly, tentatively, she reached out and gently touched it. As if it might vanish, along with this room and Lyon, like a mirage.

Marcus Aurelius. One of the very first things she'd learned about him.

How she had cherished everything she'd ever learned about him. Almost as if she'd known her time with him would be finite. That someday he would be gone, and all she would have would be a scattering of memories, like figurines kept in a curio cabinet.

And just like that, suddenly, the anger swept in again.

For all that he'd missed.

For all that she'd missed.

For leaving her.

And now showing her what his life had been like without her.

She wasn't certain if this was rebuke. A way to show her how very, very wrong she'd been.

Or if he was showing her what could have been.

Next to Marcus Aurelius were all the volumes written by his brother, Miles Redmond, a naturalist and now a famous explorer, a coveted guest at London dinner parties for his tales of his travels in Lacao.

”Miles was almost eaten by a cannibal.” She said this almost lightly. ”Did you know?”

He betrayed not a flicker of surprise, but then he seemed to have mastered inscrutability.

”He wouldn't have gone down easily. A bit sinewy is Miles.”

She turned to look at him.

His face was still and hard. His arms were crossed. A bit like armor.

She moved farther down the shelf, examining the spines of the books.

”Violet has a baby now. She married the Earl of Ardmay. She's a countess.”

She chose this one deliberately. She glanced over her shoulder.

He still didn't blink.

”She nearly died giving birth, I heard,” she added, almost casually.

And now he was absolutely motionless. But he was whiter about the mouth now.

She was certain he knew precisely why she'd said it.

She sensed a sort of coiled potential in him that boded ill, something was being wound tighter and tighter. His face was taut, his mouth white at the corners.

But she couldn't seem to help herself from winding it tighter. She wanted it to break. You weren't there. I needed you I missed you. You missed it. You missed it all.

”Did you know Colin nearly died on the gallows?”

”I knew.” His voice was soft and taut.

She had sat with her family in their London townhouse that horrible morning and prayed.

She had longed for Lyon then. If only he could have come home to her.

But he hadn't.

Colin had lived. Colin generally had that sort of luck.

She turned abruptly away from him again, toward what appeared to be a tiny sculpture of some sort at the end of the shelf that caught her eye.

”May I?”

He nodded curtly.

It was a bird. A lovely, fragile little thing, scarcely heavier than a dandelion. She plucked it up and perched it in her hand.

”It's an origami crane,” he told her. ”Origami is the j.a.panese art of paper folding . . . a sheet of paper cleverly, intricately folded into different shapes. Animals, flowers, and the like. It's funny how one ordinary thing can so easily be transformed into something extraordinary.”

She looked up at him searchingly. She knew precisely why he'd said that.

”A woman gave it to me. For luck, and to remember her by.”

And she knew why he'd said that.

The little crane in her hand suddenly might as well have been a viper.

And now it was clear that every word they were exchanging, no matter how seemingly civil, no matter how seemingly mundane, at its core hid seething fury and accusation and hurt.

Perhaps love was in there, too.

Perhaps they were forever inextricable now.

She put the origami crane down quickly.

Now she would like to set it on fire.

”I could do with some air. Why don't we have a walk on the beach, Olivia?”

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