And yet, he was gripped by the images glittering through his mind, flashing like the sunlight on open water: the memory of her melting beneath his hands, how she’d tasted of rain and earth and sweetness—
There were countless mirrors and portraits to be uncovered, all of which had been taken from their hooks and leaned against the wall, frames and all. English ladies from his time, powdered and pouting; French princesses whose silk gowns seemed to drip from their bodies; fierce Spanish ladies. So the owner clearly recognized beauty when he saw it—tried to collect it and hoard it. He—or she, he supposed—also seemed to love nothing so dearly as landscapes of green pastures. Nicholas made a disgusted face as he turned the next painting around to reveal…yet another scene of sheep idling in a flower-spotted field.
Leaving the paintings for a moment, he turned to a large bench-size object covered with another cloth; upon whipping off the cloth, he found himself staring into the snarling face and exceptionally long, talon-like teeth of a tiger.
He fell back onto the ornately woven red rug beneath them and lay on his back, stunned, as a shower of fine dust fell over him.
“You get that out of your system?” Etta asked, stepping around his prone form. His hand lashed out, closing around her ankle like an iron. The woman was mad if she thought he’d let her take another step forward—
“It’s dead,” she said, looking down at him with an amused smile. “As gross as it is, it’s been preserved and stuffed to be displayed. Look.”
He inhaled sharply through his nose as she reached out a hand to stroke its head. As promised, it did not move. It did not blink. The tiger was dead.
“What are the chances your mother killed and stuffed it herself?”
“Pretty good, I think.” Etta held up a framed photograph of an older man in the garb of an early twentieth-century explorer, who was holding a rifle. The tiger lay dead at the toes of his boots, and beside it was a grinning, tiny, blond girl—a younger version of the woman in the other photograph he’d seen. Rose.
And he’d wondered from whom Etta had inherited her casual disregard for danger.
She hesitated before reaching out to run a hand along its curved spine. The coat was orange, striped handsomely with black all the way down to its clawed paws. Having missed the tiger that Etta had seen in the jungle, Nicholas allowed himself to marvel. He’d read of Europe’s menageries, seen descriptions and etchings of the exotic beasts, but to see one for himself…
And yet, what right did a man have to take the life of such a powerful creature, to prop up his own esteem?
“I guess this explains Mom’s connection to Cambodia. And here I was, hoping Benjamin Linden was a Buddhist. I’m going to yell at her for this,” Etta vowed, giving the thing an affectionate pat on the head. “Tigers are endangered now, you know.”
Well…all right.
“The older gentleman in this photo is likely your great-grandfather, given what we know about how your mother was raised,” he said, passing it back to her waiting hand. She squinted at it, rubbing a thumb over its dusty face.
“I can see it,” she said quietly, studying Benjamin Linden’s face. “He has her eyes. Her mouth.”
Features she had inherited herself. Etta seemed both intrigued and rattled to finally have proof of him—proof that her family existed beyond her and her mother.
“Alice is right. They should have destroyed it,” Etta said.
He hesitated a moment before clarifying. “The astrolabe?”
She nodded, and the now-familiar poison of guilt and dread worked its way through his system; he would have preferred to avoid the topic altogether rather than think about his own deceit, how it would crush her to know he had to bring it to Ironwood.
“You won’t be able to use it if you do,” he was quick to point out.
And Ironwood will never let you or your mother escape.
“I know you’re right, but I can’t see a way out of this without huge consequences. I still have a few more days…not that many, but a few. I just need to figure out how to avoid giving it to Ironwood, but save Mom.” Etta said, sensing his thoughts. “And then, I guess we’ll…disappear.”
His heart clenched at the word.
“What about the violin? Performing?”
“What about a different future, one I never could have predicted?”
He drew his legs up, bracing his arms over his knees. Some part of him knew the truth of what Chase had seen—he felt an equality between himself and Etta. But now and then, in moments like this one, when she casually tossed out ideas he didn’t understand and was too ashamed to ask about, he fully realized the differences between their upbringings—how much their worlds had been shaped by where and when they’d been born. She knew things beyond his imagining—what could he give to her, other than history lessons?
He’d lied to her, of course, about not wanting to know. Nicholas did. Even if it meant living with the knowledge of all that his life lacked. A part of himself he did not recognize, one he’d learned to silence as a boy, began to demand the attention he’d always denied it.