When it had once more receded, Sesily spoke, one hand over her eyes. “If I did not feel as though the insides of me were soon to be outside of me, I am sure I would find this whole scenario terribly diverting.”
Sera swallowed an inappropriate hiccup of laughter. Sesily’s motion sickness was not amusing. “Sesily,” she said, attempting calm collectedness. “Why did you bring a”—she smirked, unable to stop the amusement—“cat?”
“Why not? People bring animals to the country,” she said with a weak wave of the hand.
“Of all the mad—” Seleste interjected. “Animals like horses! Like hounds! Not cats!”
“Why not cats?” Sesily asked.
“Because it’s not as though you can saddle up a cat and ride out for the afternoon, or toss it a stick. They’re terribly antisocial.”
“Not Brummell.” They all blinked as the enormous white cat in question meowed and bumped his head against Sesily’s chin. “Brummell is all charm.”
“Oh, yes. That’s the very first descriptor I would use.”
Brummell narrowed his yellow eyes at Seleste and meowed in what could only be described as feline affront.
“Brummell,” Sera said.
“Quite.”
“I, for one, think he does his namesake proud,” Sophie said.
“Thank you,” Sesily said. “Seeing as the rest of you are paired off, I thought it was only right that I be allowed a handsome gentleman suitor of my own.” She paused.
“None of us are paired,” Seleste pointed out.
“Not in this precise moment, but you’re practically songbirds the rest of the time. Like squawking doves.”
“Doves coo,” Sophie pointed out.
“Whatever.” Sesily waved a hand. “Perfectly paired. Like a damn oil painting.”
“Sounds a terribly boring painting,” Seline said.
“Enough. You know what I mean.”
And Sera did know. “I am not paired like a dove.”
Sesily looked to her. “Then why are we headed to your husband?”
“Because he’s forcing me to go there.”
“Just as he forced you to return to London? As he forced you to storm Parliament and demand a divorce?”
“Sesily.” Sophie’s gentle warning went ignored.
“Just as he forced you to leave?”
Defensive, Sera narrowed her gaze on her sister. “What are you saying?”
For a moment, it seemed as though Sesily might answer the question honestly. As though she might say all the things that she must have been thinking. That they all must have been thinking. Instead, she sighed and leaned her head back against the seat. Brummell took that moment to climb down from his perch and settle on her lap. “Only that it seems you are poking a bear, Seraphina. Why else arm yourself to the teeth?”
“How have I armed myself?”
“How else does a Dangerous Daughter arm herself?” This, from Sophie. “With the rest of us.”
Like that, the humor was gone from the moment, and Sera was returned to the present. To the fact that she was not simply out for a summer’s ride. To the fact that she was headed to the country, to the place she’d once loved as much as she’d loved its master.
The place where she’d lost herself. Left herself. The place she’d fled to begin anew.
Not anew. Again.
“And a cat, it seems,” Seleste added.
Sera ignored the attempt to lighten the mood. “I owe you all so many answers.”
Sophie shook her head. “You do not owe us anything. But if you would like to tell us what you desire, we are here to help you get it.”
Except they could not give her what she desired. They could not return her to the past, or catapult her into the future.
They could not restore what she had lost, or gift her with the only thing she could imagine would heal her wounds. Or make her forget she’d ever been married.
The only person who could do that was her husband, ironically. And so she careened toward him. To find her replacement. And fetch her divorce.
She would get her freedom. She would own the Sparrow. She would sing, and live a new life. And she would move forward.
She did not deny it seemed slightly easier with her sisters at her side, because of their loyalty. And there, in the shifting, clattering carriage, filled with stifling heat and an ornery cat, she resolved to tell them the truth.
“I have not been with Caleb.” Lord knew why she began there. But it seemed an important point. “I haven’t been with anyone since . . .”
Her sisters nodded. Understanding.
They didn’t understand, of course. But she appreciated the effort.
“Well,” said Seleste. “Once you’ve received your divorce, you’ll find another and build a life. Husband, children, the whole lot.”
They didn’t know. This was the secret she kept. The one she’d fled and would never forget.
“When I left, the day I left . . .” she trailed off. Tried again. “I cannot have another child.”
The silence in the coach was deafening, and Sera hated it. Hated that her sisters, who never seemed to be at a loss for words, could not seem to find them.
She looked up, refusing to cower. Sophie’s eyes glistened. Seleste’s mouth was ajar, her shock clear. Even Seline, the least emotional of them all, seemed horrified by the confession. Sera nodded. “Now you know. My future—it’s not a family.” Still, silence reigned. Sera looked to Sesily, wanting the confrontation that only a sister could give. “Come now, Ses. Not even you can find something to say?”
Sesily met her gaze without hesitation. “You didn’t deserve any of it.”
Six words, and somehow no one had ever said them. Sera had never even thought them. And now, there they were, like a perfect, welcome wound, stealing her breath. She pressed her lips together, regaining her composure. “No one does.”
Sesily nodded. “God knows that’s true. But you didn’t. And I think you ought to know it.”
Without a reply, Sera looked out the window, surprised, somehow, to see the chimneys of Highley peeking over the horizon. “We are nearly there.”
Her heart began to pound.
The last time she’d been in a carriage approaching Highley, she’d barely noticed the house, the way it rose up in stunning, stately magnificence, speaking to the venerability of the dukedom to which it belonged. It was massive—a sprawling estate house with grounds that spread over hundreds of acres of lush green countryside.
It was designed to impress. To intimidate. To separate the haves and the have-nots. She’d at once loathed it and loved it, because it was this place that had sired her husband, as though he’d sprung not from man, but from manor.
When she’d tempted Malcolm to smiles here, she’d felt more powerful than at any other time in her life.
She touched her fingers to the window, leaning toward it, imagining she could catch the sweet smell of the earth beyond. Imagining she could catch the past. The future it had promised.
She shook her head.
That future wasn’t possible. But that did not mean that a new one wasn’t.
A new one, where she was free. Where she cared for herself. Where she succeeded on her own merit and not the whim of her aristocratic husband. No matter how different he seemed. And he did seem different, though she could not put her finger on how.
She supposed she was different as well.