“Probably because, like me, he wanted everything tied up neatly, swept away. No hint of scandal. But after I read that terrible article in the paper, I realized that you were not in England. You’d been holed up in the madhouse all that time. The thought made me wretched. I realized what I’d set in motion, that it was my fault. Right away, I tracked down the reporter, to find you.”
“You not only found me, but Christopher as well. I saw your signature, where you took him out of the Foundling Asylum.” Sara turned to Mrs. Camden. “Did you know you’ve been raising my son?”
“I suspected.” She glowered at Theo. “But I had no choice. He told me to take him in, and never speak of the circumstances.”
“How could you agree to such a thing?” Sara spun back to Theo. “After trying to get rid of the child, why bother?”
Mrs. Camden’s voice was bitter. “Because he was a boy. Theo wanted a son.”
“You already have Luther.”
A terrible silence fell over the room, the only sound the metallic ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
“Tell her,” Theo instructed Mrs. Camden. “Go on, tell her the truth.”
Mrs. Camden flushed. “The twins were born when we were apart for a period of time. They are not Theo’s.”
The memories tumbled over in Sara’s mind. How Theo was less affectionate toward the twins than to Emily. The bruise on Luther’s arm. The way Theo’s own stepfather had mistreated him. And that day in the Langham hotel room, when the nanny had insisted Theo was supposed to be watching the twins. She’d been telling the truth. He’d gone out and left them alone in a room with an open window.
Theo paced the room, the words pouring out, like an actor practicing a soliloquy. “I’m not a terrible person. I made one mistake, and it threatened to bring everything tumbling down. I was panicked. You see what my work means to me; you’ve been by my side the entire time. Half of it’s yours, Sara. You’ve earned it.”
“Money won’t solve this problem, Theo.”
“It’s not about the money. I’m creating something phenomenal, we’re creating something phenomenal, and I want a son, a true son, to carry on my vision.” He looked up, tears in his eyes. “I figure I’ll teach him everything I know, so he can carry on after I’m gone. I vow to take good care of him, and you, to set things right. If I’d know that was where Douglas was sending you, I would have swum across the East River to rescue you. Don’t you see? I had a moment of terrible weakness, of panic. But then I tried to rectify it, to save both you and the boy.”
“Who is Luther and Lula’s father, then?”
Theo glanced at Mrs. Camden, who stood unblinking, furious. “She fell for some romantic poet who professed his love and then left her with child. Twins, no less.”
Mrs. Camden began to shake, her shoulders trembling. “You’re a beast. An unforgiving beast.” She appealed to Sara. “I tried to get away with the children as much as possible. I didn’t want to stay, the situation made me physically ill, but my choices were limited.”
Before she’d known the truth, Sara would have given anything to be Theo’s wife, to be beside him day and night. Her toxic envy had made her blind to the truth.
Mrs. Camden was still holding the knife, her grip fierce. “I was never bright enough for him. He brought me books and newspaper articles and insisted I read them. Quizzed me on politics and Tolstoy, and I tried at first but it was never enough.” When Sara stayed mute, unsure of what to say, Mrs. Camden swiveled back to Theo, her fury at full pitch. “I could never please you. You never loved me, then punished me when I sought comfort elsewhere.”
“Calm down, Minnie.” Theo eyed her right hand. “Look at what I’ve done.” He gestured at the room around him. “I’ve taken care of you and your children. We live in this grand palace, where you can get anything you like with a ring of a bell. We were both weak at times, but I’ve finally succeeded. I kept both of our scandals out of the limelight. I have everything I want. Now both of you do, too. It’s a relief, in a way.”
“Everything I want?” Mrs. Camden erupted. “I live with a tyrant, across the sea from my country. My family is fractured, broken, and I can’t even retreat to the safety of a private home. Instead, we live in this monstrosity, where your lover lives down the hall and every tenant and servant knows that I am not enough. Done in by the man who swore to love and protect me.”
At first, Sara thought that Mrs. Camden was running out of the room, away from his venomous tone. But she was headed right for Theo, knife raised. He lifted up his hand as she approached, and for a second they looked as if they were about to begin some kind of macabre quadrille. Until she slashed at him hard, wildly.
Sara screamed for Mrs. Camden to stop, but at the sound of the knife cutting through flesh, she instinctively turned her head, sickened. Theo cried out, clutching one hand with the other, as blood seeped between his fingers and onto his white shirt, staining his waistcoat within seconds. Mrs. Camden pulled her arm back and lunged at him again, this time aiming for his chest.
“Mrs. Camden, stop!”
Sara ran to her and wrenched the knife out of her hand.
Theo fell sideways, onto the drafting table. The entire structure crashed to the floor below him, pens scattered across the room as he landed on his stomach with a thud, his face turned to the side, mouth partly open.
He blinked once. And then went still.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
New York City, July 1886
Still waiting. Biding time.
But this was a different kind of waiting because there was no hope. And that was freeing, in so many ways. In the past eight months, Sara had mastered the art of doing nothing, of letting her mind wander while her body sat still. Her mind could go anywhere it liked. Down the dark hallways of the Dakota, into the children’s nursery, along the walkways of Central Park. She’d close her eyes and see the world outside, the one that she would never see again, only in her mind.
Mind’s eye. It was better than reality. If she tried hard enough, she could remember the scent of Christopher’s baby breath, the sound of his cooing. The way he’d wiggled around inside her belly when they were one person.
A bell rang. The door to her cell clanked open. Then she was walking down the cellblock, to the jeers and yells that she usually could shut out. The cacophony of the incarcerated.
She hadn’t been sent back to Blackwell’s after her trial. Instead, she’d been put on a wagon, shackled hand and foot, and carted a hundred miles north of the city, to a prison in the woods.
Sometimes, Sara revisited the day Mrs. Camden killed Theo, in her mind’s eye. Where she’d gone wrong. If she could have made it right. But she’d been caught off guard by Mrs. Camden’s attack. Then she’d made mistakes.
After Theo had fallen, Sara and Mrs. Camden had stared at each other for what seemed like ages, before Mrs. Camden began to shake, trembling as if she was about to fly off into the air and out the window. So Sara took over. She told her to go to the children, close the door to the nursery while she figured out what to do, what to say.
There was no way to make it look as if Theo had accidentally fallen on the knife. But the night with Daisy and the intruder came to mind. Yes, that would work. An intruder had broken in. They’d found him here, dead. She left the library, closing the doors behind her, and directed Mrs. Camden and the children to go up to the roof promenade. Take the stairs, stay there. Don’t come back down until I say so.
Back in the library, the stolen knife lay in the very center of the rug, where Mrs. Camden had dropped it. That wouldn’t do; it would raise too many questions. She slipped it into the pocket of her dress and walked downstairs, through the courtyard, and into the park, where she buried it beneath a thicket of bushes. No one must find it.