“Thank you,” I said. He gave us a moment of privacy to say goodbye, and I clasped Cedric’s hand. It was about as much as I could do, given his injuries.
“We’ll get through this,” I said. “I’ll find a way.”
“You always do.”
The old bravado was in his voice, but I caught a glint of uncertainty in his eyes. I kissed him fiercely, uncaring of any passersby who saw. And when Silas’s men led him away, I stared after them until Cedric had been swallowed by the bustling crowd on Cape Triumph’s docks.
“Miss,” said one of the hired lawmen. “Mister Garrett said we’re to escort you wherever you want to go.”
I had no idea where I wanted to go. I’d thought little beyond Cedric’s fate and now found myself in an odd situation. After years of feeling constricted and defined by the rules of others, I had no limitations now. I could move and go freely—except I had no place to go. No home, no money, no family.
But I still had friends.
“Take me to Wisteria Hollow.”
Unsurprisingly, my reception wasn’t that warm. Jasper came striding out of his office as soon as Mistress Culpepper announced me in the foyer. He pointed an accusing finger at me.
“No. No. I don’t care who you are or what titles you allegedly have. You cannot come crawling back here after everything you’ve done to us. You chose to walk away from this life. Don’t try to get it back.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I just . . . well . . . that is . . . I don’t have anywhere to stay.”
We’d gathered an audience of my beautifully styled peers, making me self-conscious about my bedraggled appearance. Charles was among them. His return to Osfrid to help recruit the next batch of girls had been delayed after all the recent developments. “Jasper, the girl was one of our own, and she may very well be one of our family once this business with Cedric is settled.”
Jasper turned on his brother incredulously. “‘This business?’ He’s being tried for heresy and assault! There’s only one way that can be settled.”
“Assault?” I asked in surprise. “Have you seen him?”
“That’s the story going around,” Jasper said. “That you two got desperate when it became clear you weren’t going to be able to pay off your debt to Warren Doyle. So you staged an attack to make it look like raiders had come after him—only his men got there in time to save him.”
My jaw nearly hit the floor. “Is that what they’ve come up with? It’s a lie! Come on. You must know Cedric better than that.”
“Actually,” said Jasper, face grim, “I really don’t feel like I know my son at all. What I do know is that before you came along, he wasn’t abducting noblewomen, practicing heresy, or assaulting government leaders. So you’ll understand when I say politely as I can: Get out of my house.”
“She can stay with me.” Aiana strode forward from those gathered, as cool and confident as ever. “And don’t look at me like that, Mister Jasper. I rent my own home and can do as I like. Come on, Adelaide.”
What else could I do? There was no home for me here. I had to take whatever allies I could get—though I was surprised to find that my two biggest ones hadn’t been in the foyer.
“Where are Tamsin and Mira?” I asked, once I was inside Aiana’s home. It was a surprisingly spacious suite of rooms above a tavern in the city’s busy entertainment district. The soundproofing was good, but I could still make out the faint tinkling of piano music from below.
Aiana had been putting a teakettle on her large stove and turned to me in surprise. “You don’t know? About Tamsin?”
“What is there to know? Did she get married or something?”
“Sit down,” Aiana ordered.
I obeyed, settling into a chair covered by a blanket with an intricately colored turtle design. I wondered if it was Balanquan, but the look on Aiana’s face made me forget all about art. “Where is Tamsin?”
Aiana pulled up a stool and sat across from me. “Adelaide, Tamsin was lost on the day of the storm a couple of weeks ago—the tempest? Part of it hit you too, right?”
I almost thought I was mishearing, that we were somehow talking about our initial sea voyage. “Lost . . . what do you mean, lost in the tempest?”
“She was in Mister Doyle’s party—going back to Hadisen. They were practically engaged, and he was going to show her around. They were approaching the bay as the storm was rolling in, and they say she panicked and . . . well, left. No one knows what happened to her.”
“Panicked? Tamsin’s never panicked in her life!”
“I don’t know anything firsthand, only what they tell me.” Aiana’s calm was impressive. “She didn’t want to get on the boat during the storm. She ran away from the party. They tried to find her, but it was too late—especially in those conditions. They searched for her the next day, but there was nothing.”
I put my head between my hands, afraid I would faint. “No. That’s impossible. You’re confused. She was lost once—this can’t happen again! She wanted that marriage more than anything. She wouldn’t have let a stormy crossing hold her back . . .”
And yet as I spoke, I wondered. Would she? The tempest had upset me with painful memories of that night at sea. What had it done to Tamsin? Maybe the thought of boarding another ship in the storm really had been too daunting. But enough to run off alone into the night?