Yes. She’d do that. She’d do that and more to keep me from undermining her.
“You want me to stay here forever, a scared little girl jumping at shadows, because you need someone to take care of,” I said, triumph coursing through me as I began to see the threads of her motives woven throughout this entire mess. “You need to feel big and important, to hear people fawn over you for your benevolence.”
She snorted. “You don’t get it. You don’t get it at all.”
“But I finally do. This was never about me. It has always, always been about you. Your need for control. Your need to be admired. And look at the lengths you’ll go to get it.”
Camille set her tumbler down on a side table, staring off into the distance as if she couldn’t bear to look in my direction. “Everything I’ve done has been for you. Do you know what would happen if you ever left the islands by yourself? If you did go to court, go to school, go wherever? You…you…” She trailed off in a groan, balling her hands into claws of frustration. They trembled with pent-up kinetic energy, wanting to lash out and strike something. The table, the glass, maybe me. “You see them everywhere. Everywhere,” she repeated darkly. “When I came back for you at the tavern today, there you were. Introducing me to a serving girl who wasn’t there. I shudder to imagine what had happened before my return. What people thought. What people said. What they’re saying now.”
I remembered her strange avoidance of the girl, of Miriam, acting as if it was beneath her to acknowledge the server’s presence. I thought Camille had just been overplaying her role as duchess. But what if…
“Do you know how strange you look, speaking to them, carrying on entire conversations overheard as one-sided? You look mad, Verity, as though you’ve entirely lost your mind. If I wasn’t there, if you weren’t here, under my protection…you’d be taken away, thrown into an asylum. No one is going to believe a girl who talks to thin air.”
An icy line of worry trickled down my spine. For a moment, I could see it happening, could picture my hands gripping filthy iron bars, hear my cries for release. “You’d get me out, though…wouldn’t you?”
“To what end?” she spat, her anger rising. “News of your confinement would spread across the kingdom. Think very hard on how you’ll go on after that. No one is going to want a mad little fiancée, for a mad little wife, issuing out mad little children. You’d be ruined forever.”
I tried the brandy again but my throat felt too thick, too sick to swallow. It lingered in my mouth, burning.
“And then…it would all come back on the rest of us. People would talk. People would wonder. What do the rest of the Thaumas girls see? Do you want that on Mercy? Honor? Marina and Elodie? Everything we do always comes back round to those who love us. Think about them, Verity. Think about their futures. Please.”
I felt myself begin to nod, begin to acquiesce as I always did, but caught myself. “You’re the one who’s mad,” I whispered. “This whole scheme is insane. Those weren’t ghosts. They weren’t spirits come to warn me of impending doom. Things like that don’t exist.”
Camille watched me warily, as if facing down a wild animal capable of destroying her. “But they do.”
“How would you know? You say you can’t see them. If I’m the only one who can and I can’t tell they’re ghosts—” I started to laugh again. The absurdity of the conversation had gone too far. It sounded as though we were actors in a badly written play, our dialogue too outlandish to bear. “You’ll have to do better than two girls in red wigs running about in Lenore’s old nightgowns. If someone was truly being visited by ghosts, they would know it. There would be no question of it.”
Her body bristled and her stare had turned cold. “You’re so very sure of that?”
I nodded.
“Roland?” Camille called out, raising her voice.
Her valet entered my chamber, still wearing his suit despite the late hour. “Madam?”
“I wondered if you could go and fetch Hanna for me, please?”
He cocked his head, squinting. “Madam?”
“Hanna Whitten? Our old nursemaid?”
“I…I remember who she was, madam.” Roland made no motion to leave and find her.
His words struck me like a bolt of fire from the sky. Was…
Camille was not to be stopped. “Could you go get her, please? For Verity?”
Roland glanced uneasily between us. “I don’t understand, milady. Hanna Whitten has been dead and gone these last twelve years.”
Drip. Drip.
Drip, drip, drop.
Water plinked into the tub, sending ripples across the surface to lap against my bare skin.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d sat in the bath, naked and shivering. The water was cold now, beading against my skin like icy diamonds, the bubbles long gone.
As I sat in the water, hunched over my bony knees, the drip echoed against the glazed jade tiles and lulled me into a dissociative trance.
Far from Roland and his ludicrous pronouncements.
Far from Camille.
Far from ghosts I wasn’t fully sure I believed in.
Far from Highmoor.
Far away to a place where it was just me.
Me.
Me and the water.
Me and the leaky faucet.
Drip. Drip.
Drip, drip, drop.
Drip. Drip.
Drip, drip—
Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeak.
I froze, my muscles tensing into a painful rictus of dread as the sound ripped me back into the present. Back where it was too cold and too dark and anything could have been hiding away in the shadowy depths of the bathroom. Watching. Waiting.
Waves of pebbled gooseflesh rose and every bit of me stood at attention as I noticed the burnished seahorse doorknob turn, listing to the left as someone on the other side fumbled with it.
Was it my long-dead sisters, come for a late-night visit? What would they look like up close? I imagined ghoulish faces and fanged grins, tendrils of red hair running down their bodies like rivulets of blood, clouded eyes as white as milk.
The seahorse dipped all the way around and the latch clicked, releasing the catch. I sucked in one sharp breath, cringing as the door slowly drifted open.
For a moment, it seemed no one was there.
“Ro…Rosalie?” I dared to whisper, fear staking my throat too thin. I could feel my heartbeat ricocheting through the veins in my ears, its pulse drowning out any answer from the other side.
The Other Side.
But then Hanna bustled in, carrying a tray of hair soaps and oils, a fresh bath sheet hanging over her arm.
“Did you say something, dear heart?” she asked, her voice clear, her figure unmistakably present and solid.
Echoes of Roland’s absurd statement lingered in the back of my mind and I wanted to laugh. How foolish did he and Camille think me? They probably planned to let Hanna go first thing in the morning, taking away my one solace as they plotted how to best carry out this ridiculous claim.
“I thought I’d find you in here,” Hanna said, setting down the tray and arranging the items along the marbled countertop. “I heard about the…argument…and went to your rooms to see how you were coping. When you weren’t there, I knew you’d either be down at the shore or in here.”