All she seems to do these days is cry.
Dimly, she is aware of Cecilia being helped away, of a heated exchange between Leo and George.
And then the door slams.
She is alone.
Except – she is not.
Lydia strokes her hair, hands cold as the winter ponds on the Heath.
‘You are doing so well, my girl.’
Odette nuzzles into the touch.
‘Keep going.’
9
Cecilia
IT IS SO QUIET. Perfectly, impossibly quiet. Cecilia cannot hear the noise of the servants downstairs or the chime of the clocks or the wheels of carriages outside. There is nothing.
They have left her in a spare room to rest, as though lying amongst more pillows is what she best needs. Her mother near-fainted away and was too weak to go back to the Gate House. She sleeps now in an armchair in the corner of the room, head tipped back.
Cecilia cannot believe what Odette has done. It feels unreal, impossible, like the product of a fever or one of their own plays gone so darkly wrong. She could not have meant it, surely. She would have stopped, whether or not she had been dragged off.
Wouldn’t she?
And yet Cecilia can still feel the press of the cotton against her nose and mouth, the weight of dense down and the bar of Odette’s arm behind her, stealing the breath from her lungs. It felt like she thinks drowning must, breathing but finding no air, lungs heaving against nothing.
At least in drowning, there would be the give of water, something to fill her.
This was an absence, a panic, a hard stop.
Odette did this to her.
She cannot sleep.
Cecilia wriggles away from the pillows, out from beneath the covers, and pads softly from the room without waking her mother.
She must speak to Odette. So much poison lies between them now. If she cannot draw it from the wound, then it will fester and kill them both.
Perhaps it already has.
Perhaps she is doing nothing but chasing a ghost.
When she comes to Odette’s door, she can hear crying from the other side.
At least they are not so lost as all that. At least emotion touches them still.
So she goes inside.
Odette is slumped on the floor, leaning against the wall. The fire has died down low, and the cold has begun to creep in from the windows.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ is the first thing Odette says. ‘It’s too dangerous. You shouldn’t be here.’
Cecilia does not sit near her. Instead, she drops down onto the rug before the bed and puts her back to the footboard. ‘No. Probably not.’