Nell, on the other hand, was in her element. Once she’d recovered from her initial shock, she’d slipped into Sybella with an ease that took my breath away. She’d been brilliant as Nicolette, playing a role she’d invented; here she was faced with the much more difficult task of breathing life into a character about whom she knew absolutely nothing. Her concentration was disturbingly intense. Nell had lurked just below the surface of Nicolette, but she’d vanished into Sybella without a trace.
Williston remained standing, though there was room enough for two on the settee. “I told Mother you would come back, Sybella,” he said, “but she did not believe me.”
“It is the power of your belief that brought me,” Nell informed him.
“And the power of my anger that sent you thither.” Williston flung himself to his knees again and held out his hands beseechingly. “Can you ever forgive me, Sybella? I wish fervently to atone for what I’ve done.”
The undiluted agony in Williston’s voice brought a lump to my throat, but Nell was made of sterner stuff. I could almost hear her mental keyboard clicking as she calculated the best response. Too harsh, and Williston might clam up; too kind, and he might become too besotted to stay on track.
“I cannot forgive you,” she began, and as Williston’s shoulders started to slump, she added hastily, “until you have told me all.”
“All?” Williston cast a haunted glance over his shoulder. “I cannot tell you all, my lady. Not even now. Mother would hear of it. I would be punished.”
“Then tell me what you can,” Nell countered with infinite patience.
Williston’s knees cracked as he rosc slowly to his feet and asked for Nell’s permission to sit. At her nod, he flipped his tails out with a practiced hand, placed his feet with the precision of a dancing master, and lowered himself onto the settee, half-turned to face her. Nell looked as fragile as a Dresden shepherdess beside his towering figure, but her regal bearing gave her an aura of power that somehow made Williston seem smaller and more vulnerable than she.
“You were meant to marry me, Sybella,” Williston said plaintively. “That is why we took you in and managed your estates. It was clearly understood by all concerned that you were meant for me. You must have known.”
Nell nodded.
“You were so pure, so innocent,” Williston went on. “Mother warned you to be vigilant, but you were not. You succumbed to his advances. You believed his lies. You allowed yourself to be sullied by his touch.” Williston turned his head to one side, and I saw that his eyes were glistening with tears. “I could not allow it to go on, but Mother would not permit me to challenge him. It would hurt the firm, she said. The firm, always the firm ...” Williston bowed his head and groaned.
“What did you do?” Nell coaxed.
Williston straightened and his face went strangely slack. “I had no choice,” he answered, in an eerie monotone. “Surely you must see that. I had to keep you from corruption at his hands.”
“Tell me what you did,” Nell pressed.
“You know the first part,” Williston told her in the same hollow voice. “But the second part came ... after. It is the latter part, the theft, for which I can still make amends and, perhaps, earn your forgiveness.”
“How can you make amends?” Nell asked.
Williston rose and, as though sleepwalking, crossed slowly to the kneehole desk and cleared the writing surface of pens and papers. He reached underneath it, to twist something I couldn’t see, and the writing surface yawned open, revealing a hidden compartment beneath. He drew from the compartment a box. It was made of polished fruitwood, with splendidly embellished silver hinges. Williston carried the box with him to the settee.
“I can never repay you fully, Sybella,” he said. “I can never return to you the life you should have had, but I can restore a small part of what was taken. Do with it as you will. It is yours.”
Williston presented the box to Nell, who accepted it gravely and stood. I could no longer hear the keyboard clicking in her mind, or detect any sign of calculation in her actions as she lightly brushed her fingertips across Williston’s anxious brow.
“Torment yourself no more,” she said. “You are forgiven.”
“Well?” I said when we’d reached the safety of the hallway. “What’s in the box? Let’s have a look, Nell.”
Nell didn’t seem to hear. She stared fixedly at a mauve-tinted china vase on a table across the hallway, her cornflower eyes filled with pity and regret.
“Nell ...” I laid my palm against her cheek. “Nell? Snap out of it. You’re back on Planet Earth now, sweetie.”
“Hmmm?” She blinked slowly, as though emerging from a trance, shuddered slightly, and raised a hand to shade her eyes. “Oh my ...”
“Yeah. That was pretty intense.” I put an arm around her waist. “You want to sit down, catch your breath?”