“There must be another way.” He shot her a look, something between pleading and furious. “Are you willing to hand everything over to Carlyle so easily?”
Every fiber of Mouse’s being hummed with rage, boiling through her blood and skin.
“What do you know about it?” she bit out.
“At least I am attempting to think of something while you sit there, accepting your fate.”
Mouse breathed deeply. Her hand flew up to rest at the juncture where her chest met her throat.
“Every hour of every day, my anger pierces me like a thorn,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, as though transmitted through a poor connection on a radio. “You think I feel nothing? For years, I’ve felt so much anger that it is killing me, as sure as any poison. Every day the burr sinks deeper. There is no closure. There will never be justice for my brother, cousin, father, or mother. Or for me.”
Words rushed from her like a train with the brakes gone out. Thornwood stared at her, his eyes wide in shock. She didn’t care. The air felt hot and thick.
“I hate what Thistlemarsh represents; my uncle, the family that threw away my mother—they looked down on my father and his entire country as somehow lesser, but still my happiest memories are here. The only memories I will ever have of my cousin and brother are here, and my last memories of my father are here. But my uncle is here, too, and that family tree of vile snobbery and superiority, just like Carlyle’s.”
Even if Uncle gave everything upto protect John and Bertie’s memory, she thought, trying to press away the barrage of feelings and failing.
Lord Dewhurst was a bastard, but he had truly loved his son. Mouse now even understood his reason for setting up his impossible task for her and his reason for highlighting Thistlemarsh’s Faerie covenant. He tried to give Mouse time (if only a month) to say goodbye before Thistlemarsh fell to Carlyle, while still protecting John from Carlyle’s blackmail.
Something wet was dripping down her cheeks. She took gulps of air that stung in her chest. Her vision blurred black at the edges. Thornwood was at her side as she slid to the floor, propping her against him.
The only sound in the room was the fire crackling in the hearth. Mouse wondered if Thornwood had lit the fire with magic. She did not remember seeing it burning before.
“Breathe. Slowly.” Thornwood’s voice was soft in her ear. He wasbeing kind again, damn him. She did not know what to do with his kindness.
Her vision was still blurred. She sucked in a breath but could not let it go.
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“I know you can. We’ll do it together.” He breathed, and Mouse could not join in. “Come now, breathe.”
Thornwood’s breath flittered over Mouse’s face. Her lungs unlatched, and she breathed. With each inhalation, the rage faded and the darkness lifted. Thornwood smiled. He had a gap between his front teeth that she had never noticed before, and his incisors were more pointed than she remembered. Or had she ever seen them before? She couldn’t remember.
“Did you just use magic on me?” she asked. Thornwood tilted his head at her.
“What did Carlyle do to make you hate him so much?” he asked.
Mouse frowned. “You evaded the question.”
Thornwood shrugged. “That is not the same thing as lying.”
“It might as well be,” she whispered, taking in the ceiling. New cracks had formed in the plaster. It almost looked like a branch strained through the gap, but when Mouse blinked, it was gone. A trick of the light.
The fire filled the room with the smell of smoke. It should have been comforting, like a bonfire on a frosty night, but Mouse was beyond its reach.
“Carlyle was at Eton with Bertie and Roger. He was in Bertie’s year, although he knew them both. They thought he was their friend.”
Mouse scrutinized the lines of Thornwood’s face. There was knowledge there, but also curiosity.
“Bertie told Carlyle something. A secret. He should not have, but he thought he could trust Carlyle with it.”
“But he couldn’t,” Thornwood said.
“No, he could not.” Mouse looked down at her hands. Crescents of dirt stood out under her fingernails. When had that happened? She breathed in deeply. “Bertie told Carlyle about his feelings for another young man in our village. And, because Carlyle was not his friend, he used that fact against Bertie. I do not know if you are aware, but Bertie could have been arrested. And that is only what would happen to him according to the law, not what other dangers he might face if it came out.
“Carlyle blackmailed him at school, extorting nearly all the money Bertie had available. Bertie could do nothing without revealing the very secret Carlyle was blackmailing him with. It went on for more than a year. When Roger found out about the blackmail, he was furious. My brother boxed in school and was as strong as an ox.
“Roger broke Carlyle’s nose, then was suspended for the rest of the semester and labeled a rabble-rouser, just like his father.”