“How will you know if I tell the truth?”
“I won’t,” she told him, “but if you lie later, I’ll know your nature. I must be able to trust you if I let you into all of this madness. I might be exposing my father’s wickedness, but I’m not sure I wish to share that with someone who will turn on me later. Are you trustworthy, Mr. Thorne?”
“I am.” He said it so clearly and firmly she felt certain she could believe him. At least for a moment before doubts filtered back in, but she didn’t voice those and he continued, “You have my word. I will speak for Oliver as well, but he will tell you himself. Your secrets will not be revealed by us. We’ll stand by you and give you our help, our protection, whatever we have to offer. We’ll help you and you’ll help us.”
Severine paused and considered. She needed friends. She might have that entrée into society, but she also had enemies that she couldn’t identify amid a crowd of barely interested onlookers. Someone at her back? That would be priceless. “Then we have an accord. Like pirates of old.”
Chapter Thirteen
Andre had been born when Severine’s mother had been but seventeen years old. Flora had married the man her parents chose. Old, well-connected, rich. And cruel. He was the sort of gallant Southern man that said all the pretty things and was hideous behind closed doors. Flora had left him before she was nineteen, and she’d dared to take a house of her own, and though she shared her son with the man, she struggled over the next seven years to divorce him.
She succeeded finally and married Lukas DuNoir far too quickly. He was younger, better-connected, richer, and only occasionally cruel. That cruelty didn’t extend only to Flora. Given Andre had been a frequent recipient, perhaps there was never going to be friendship between two children who were also nine years apart and raised at different boarding schools with only occasional overlapping holidays. Andre had spent time with his father as often as he’d spent time with his mother. Given his two parents hated each other and the father and stepfather despised one another, there was never any chance for relationships to be peaceful.
Severine rubbed her hands over her face, realized she’d streaked herself with dust, and decided she didn’t care. There was no one to impress at the moment as Grayson had left to find Oliver, locking the door behind him.
She rose and crossed to the shelves lining the entire far wall. Father had stuffed them floor to ceiling with books. The library was for show, but these books, they were for him.
She pulled out a book, finding Poe’s detective stories and then sneezed. The dust was thick in the air, and she dropped the book when she was hit with another round of sneezes. She leaned down to pick up the book and heard the crinkle of the paper in her pocket from her father’s globe. Severine pulled it out and then frowned.
She had hoped for a sort of letter or clue. Something along the lines of, So-and-so came, and I saw him digging through my desk for a weapon. Instead, Severine found a sketch. It took her a moment to realize it was one of the bookshelves. She frowned and then noticed the X over a book on the second shelf up. Severine stepped to first section of shelves and pulled out the first stack of books where the X was located. She examined each individually, but they were just novels.
She had remembered her father reading one of them, but there was nothing in the pages, no inscriptions, no sign that the cover had been cut away and re-glued. She sidled down to the next bookshelf and found the same location on that shelf. Nothing.
Nothing and nothing again. Six shelves across the room and each were filled with a random assortment of books. She stepped back. Had her father removed whatever he’d hidden there? But…why would he need to mark the spot on a map at all? Why wouldn’t he just write the name of the book and the author. Or a clue to the book if he wanted to be more obscure.
This note had to reference something else. What if it was a map of the house? She didn’t know it well enough to be sure one way or the other. Severine frowned. She was grasping at straws because once she proved her brother was trying to kill her, she’d have nothing. Cousins she didn’t know, aunts and uncles who had no affection for Severine, a grandmother who preferred anyone but herself. Severine sighed deeply.
Love takes time, Sister Mary Chastity had said to Severine. No one invested that time in you, darling. That is hardly your fault.
Nothing had changed in the last few minutes or even days. It wasn’t as if she was losing a family who had always been close. She was not having to choose honor over cherished relationships. She was choosing what was right and losing nothing in the process but the chance that she’d have something more fulfilling from them in the future.
Severine left her father’s office after cleaning and loading both guns. One would think she wouldn’t have been taught such a thing by nuns but Sister Mary Chastity had been both a nun and spy. Being in war-torn land had taught the nun that a woman should be able to protect herself despite her calling and devotion to God. The guns weren’t small, so she dug around until she found a box on one of the shelves. She put one of the guns inside of the box and then tucked it on top of two books on a high shelf where it wasn’t easily seen. She left the office and locked the door behind her.
“There you are,” Grandmère said, making Severine jump in her skin, despite the presence
