Page 59 of The Forsaken

“Because it’s bloody good, goddamn it!”

“Making ridiculous suggestions about things you know I’m not permitted to do.”

“Since when did people telling you what to do stop you?”

“And making me question my life and if I’m happy—”

His jaw slackened. “Andromena—”

Andromena saw her opportunity and took it.

She snatched her book from his fingers. Except her hands quivered so badly, it tumbled to the floor with a splat, where it lay damningly upon its spine, with one page exposed.

The absolute worst page.

Neither of them spoke. They stared in silence at a forbidden rendering.

Oh, God.

She thought she might have uttered it.

Because Edgar stared at her with a weird expression.

They grabbed it at the same time. His reflexes and speed gave him the advantage over her.

While he stared at the picture of them, shame spread hot and fast through her.

She had meant to destroy it. After her trip to the Rookeries, sleep alluded her, and she tried everything to get her mind to rest and to get herself to bed. And invariably she did what she did when she couldn’t clear her head of worries. She sketched something, but this time, unlike anything she had ever done.

Something naughty. Forbidden. Wicked.

As the artist, Andromena had masterfully captured the moment.

Draped across the heavy slabs of his muscular thighs, her body flowed into the broad strength of his arms. Every line of the scene appeared alive: the sharp, textured wrinkles of her redingote against the dark fabric of his trousers, the stark white of his knuckles where he grasped her hips, and the soft, helpless fall of her neck. Then came their mouths, fused in a heat as sweet and binding as the gold honeybee necklace that had drawn them to this exact room today.

“My God, Andromena.”

The horror in his utterance was too much.

She decided she didn’t need her favorite notebook after all. If the rendering of them disappeared forever, she could pretend this day never happened; pretend he hadn’t seen it.

And gathering her skirts, she bolted…and did just that.

Chapter 11

I know Kerr played with you the night of Rat’s Castle—just as I know you how you pant for another still. It ends now. Defy me and Kerr pays the price in blood.

Await your next orders.

Your humble servant

On the night of her cousin Myrtle’s ball, when Andromena should have been dancing, she instead lay sprawled stomach-down on the plush, cheerful jonquil-yellow nursery carpet—the crystal beads embroidered into her silk dress biting painfully into her skin—and stared at the pile of sticks scattered between herself and Myrtle’s twins: the daughter, Lady Eira Bancroft, and the son and heir, Frost Bancroft, Marquess of Hawkesworth.

It was both bittersweet and funny how a woman’s life came full circle—moving from the nursery to having one. Those high-ceilinged walls had carried the fresh, echoing sounds of children through the years: laughter, screams, and tears. Ever since the latest note arrived, a quiet, gray ache had settled into her heart. It turned her gaze toward the ashes of her past, and toward a future she would never have.

“Your turn, Aunt Andy!”

While Eira and Frost chattered about her next move, Andromena watched the crowded room of little humans, ranging from tiny babes to nearly nine-year-olds. In them, she saw echoes of her own Fleur, Linnie, and Meghan, alongside Cassia and Helia squealing as they ran past. This was no quiet nursery belonging to the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge, but the combined chaos of the McQuoid and Smith families. Laughter and bickering filled the air, punctuated by pleadings from desperate nursemaids.