The blood drained from my face. “You spoke to . . . William . . .” I swallowed “. . . a few weeks ago?”
“Yes,” Michael replied calmly as everyone else observed our exchange with avid interest. “In fact, I spoke with him just today.”
I wavered in my chair and slammed my hands down flat on either side of my plate to steady myself. It was so difficult to breathe, I wondered if my corset was too tight. Lord Keswick reached out to cradle my elbow, helping me remain upright.
“Perhaps this conversation should wait until later,” Gage argued, half rising from his chair, at the same time that Philip demanded, “Your brother is here?”
Michael’s gaze passed from Caroline, who was clutching her napkin to her chest, to Philip, and then to me. “Yes. He’s upstairs.”
Pandemonium broke loose.
Lady Hollingsworth shrieked and threw down her serviette. “You’ve allowed that madman into this house! While we’re visiting!” She shrieked again before almost toppling from her chair, which necessitated Lord Keswick to release my elbow so that he might attend to the marchioness.
Lord Damien turned to argue with Miss Remmington, insisting somehow she was to blame, while Laura tried to calm him. Caroline was weeping into her napkin, while Philip rounded the table to stand behind his wife. He clutched her shoulders and demanded an explanation from Michael, who had also risen from his chair, along with Gage, who urged the men to remain calm. Alana sat with a hand pressed to her mouth, as if she didn’t know what to say.
My eyes lifted to the ceiling, as if I could see past the layers of wood and plaster to the floors above to verify the truth of Michael’s statement. Will was here? And . . . alive? I could scarcely comprehend it. Could it really be true?
Ignoring the shouts and accusations swirling around me, I sought out Michael’s face. “Will is alive?”
Michael halted midsentence in whatever he was telling Philip and turned to stare at me.
“Will is alive,” I repeated, stronger this time. Some of the others looked up at me. “But I thought . . . that is . . .” I shook my head, as if I could clear away the confusion. “I thought . . .” I swallowed again, feeling sudden anger well up inside me. “This isn’t some kind of terrible jest?”
His eyes widened. “No! Of course not.” Then his gaze turned gentle, seeming to realize that, whatever the others had been told about the matter when William disappeared, my fifteen-year-old self had not been given the truth. And neither had anyone seen fit to inform me since my arrival at Dalmay House. “Kiera, I understand you must have been led to believe otherwise, but . . . Will is very much alive. And he has been for the last decade.” As I watched, his face seemed to age before my eyes, draining of all light and happiness. “Our father had him put away. Locked in a lunatic asylum.”
CHAPTER SIX
Ten years after the fact, I could not remember exactly what, if anything, I’d been told had happened to William Dalmay, or if I’d just been allowed to believe what I wished, for he’d simply been there one day and then gone the next. But in that moment I knew that whatever lie I’d been told, or told myself, would have been a far kinder fate than his reality.
I felt sick, in stomach and at heart. It was true that the man I remembered had been damaged somehow, scarred by his experiences, but he certainly had not been beyond reason, or in any way violent or dangerous to those around him. He had simply been trapped in his own private hell, and some days, as I had witnessed, had been harder than others for him to break free of it. To discover now that he had returned home to the bosom of his family only to be locked away in another kind of hell—one where there was even less hope of escaping—chilled me to the core.
I knew what lunatic asylums were like. Black holes of filth and degradation where the unfortunates were, at the very best, drugged and left to rot, but more likely tortured until they turned into the very beasts they were alleged to be. Sir Anthony had taken me to tour one about a year into our marriage, dangling the threat of incarceration when my cooperation in sketching his dissections had wavered. And upon his death, his colleagues had threatened to have me thrown into one when they learned the truth about who had completed the drawings for Sir Anthony’s anatomy textbook, and accused me of unnatural tendencies and desecrating bodies. Even after my husband’s death and the dismissal of the charges against me, the threat had never actually vanished, and neither had my nightmares that I might one day find myself caged inside such a place. Locked inside a cell where people could pay a penny to stare at me and laugh.