Chapter 2
I cleared the ballroom.
Not dramatically.
No threats.
No shouting.
Dinner ended.
That was enough.
Blythe stayed with me.
Mirella remained seated because standing hurt.
Honora wanted privacy.
She did not get to choose the shape of this conversation anymore.
“Start from the beginning.”
Mirella looked at Blythe.
I understood.
“Tessa.”
Blythe’s nanny came forward.
I crouched.
“Go upstairs with Tessa.”
My daughter immediately grabbed Mirella.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“She comes?”
Mirella’s face softened.
“I’ll come later.”
Blythe hesitated.
Then whispered:
“Promise?”
Mirella nodded.
Only then did she leave.
I waited until the doors closed.
“Now.”
Mirella began.
Six weeks earlier, Honora told household staff that the west wing would be renovated before our engagement became public.
That part I knew.
I had approved it.
Barely thought about it.
The west wing had belonged mostly to Eliana.
Her reading room.
Her dressing room.
A small sewing room where she made ridiculous costumes for Blythe when she was a toddler.
After Eliana died, I closed most of it.
Not as shrine.
As avoidance.
Honora asked whether she could reopen the rooms.
I said yes.
What I did not ask was how.
Mirella had worked in that wing for years.
She knew Eliana.
Not intimately.
Enough.
On the morning of the fire, Honora ordered several boxes removed.
Dresses.
Letters.
Photographs.
Children’s drawings.
Eliana’s unfinished needlework.
Blythe saw.
She panicked.
“She started taking things back out,” Mirella said.
Of course.
Six years old.
Mother reduced to objects.
Objects suddenly leaving.
Mirella tried to calm her.
Honora arrived.
Then?
Mirella looked at her hands.
“She said Miss Blythe needed to learn that dead people don’t keep rooms forever.”
My stomach tightened.
Honora interrupted.
“That is not what I meant.”
Mirella looked at her.
“You said exactly that.”
Silence.
Then Honora took Blythe into the blue sewing room.
Mirella followed because the child was crying.
Honora told them both to stay there until Blythe “stopped performing.”
Then she locked the corridor door.
Took the key.
And walked away.
May you like
Twenty minutes later—
smoke entered beneath it.
