And where before she had been able to resist, to wave away the question, now she crumbled. She wanted, so badly, for him to explain everything.
“Dr. Nizamiev told me about magic, about spells to bring back the dead,” she said.
He paled but did not reject it. And he did not look at her with a liar’s false pity, the way he had when she told him of her “nightmare.” “What else?” he asked.
“I saw you,” Jane said. “When they played at magic, I saw you, covered in blood. I saw Elodie, dying. You had your hands about her heart.”
He closed his eyes tight, as if in pain, but did not deny it. He did not fight her, did not threaten or excuse or lie.
Jane pushed herself upright in her bed, emboldened.
“Augustine, I saw her, down in the cellar. She was there, soaked in blood, and she seized me. She would have killed me.” Her voice cracked with anger and frustration, and she did not try to hide it. “We have gone so far beyond our arrangement. Please, tell me: What have you done?”
Silence. Outside, she could hear the sound of night insects and the murmurs of a living town, so different from Lindridge Hall’s preternatural stillness. She held her breath and waited for him to run.
“I lied to you,” he said at last. “I summoned the dead, and I held my wife Elodie’s heart in my hand, and all of it, every single foul action, was because I was desperate and afraid.” He related it all without emotion, eyes downcast. “That first night we met, I told you we could not marry. But I was weak, and I gave in when you pushed just the slightest bit. I am ashamed of many things that I can never forgive myself for, Jane, and that, as much as all the rest, pierces me to my soul. And last night, I compounded it by blaming it on you. That was not fair, and I am sorry.”
Jane pressed her hands to her face. She heard Augustine leave, his steps heavy—and then his pace quickened, a door cracked against the wall as it was heaved open, and she heard him retch.
He was not well.
Everything she had learned was true. She should ignore him, sleep, and in the morning she would go to the magistrate. The marriage could be broken, now that he admitted that he was a murderer.
But he did not feel like a murderer. Her heart whispered, traitorously, that she knew him, and she could not shut it out.
Damn him.
Jane levered herself off the soft, new mattress, and hobbled out into the hall, each step a necessary agony. The door to his study was open, though none of the lights were on. The sound of his breath drew her inside. He was crouched behind his desk, bent over a ceramic dish, and she passed him without a word. She went, leadenly, to the couch where she had first kissed him and sealed her fate.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “I want to understand. I thought I knew you.”
He said nothing as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. As if in pain, he eased himself back against the curiosities cabinet that contained Mr. Renton’s bowel and closed his eyes.
Jane waited.
“I loved Elodie,” Augustine said at last. “Our parents were close friends, and we always knew we would marry. By the time we were grown, I truly loved her. Shortly after we were wed, she took ill, then rallied. I had thought to cancel my travels with my colleagues to be by her side, but she encouraged me to go to them, only sad that she was not strong enough to travel with me. I left her at Lindridge Hall with my parents and hers, all gathered together because of her illness, and all but her displeased that I would abandon her while she was still recovering.
“And then I received the letter saying they had been right, that she was dying once more, and if I could have conjured flight, I would have flown back. As it was, the journey took three days. By the time I got to Lindridge Hall, she was almost dead. I did everything my training had taught me, and more besides. Her pulse was fading, her heart on the verge of stillness.” He paused. His jaw tensed, his teeth grinding. “But a person does not die when their heart stops. They have a few moments more, borrowed from the universe, and I have seen it done, where the heart can be brought back.”
Her world began to slow. Her eyes burned. “Augustine,” she warned, but he did not stop.
“I split her chest open, and I held her heart in my hand, and I pumped it for her, to squeeze the blood through her veins. It could have worked. It could have worked, Jane.
“But she died, instead, and in the end, it was I who killed her.”
Hot, filthy tears slid down her cheeks, and she wasn’t sure who they were for. For Elodie, who had surely wished to die in peace, but had instead suffered the brutality of her husband’s desperation? For Augustine, falling into such depths of self-hatred whenever he lost a patient, faced then with an even dearer loss? Or for herself, for having to know these things that she would have preferred never to touch on?