Page 60 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
"Pending, of course, an explanation," she added hurriedly. "For I am as confounded as you are by my aunt's presence here tonight and the unnecessary dance of futility she orchestrated."
"Oh, nonsense," Zelda snapped. "I gave you both exactly the amount of information you required, and the outcome has been ideal."
"Ideal?" echoed Nathaniel, a quaking aura of rage seeming to emanate from his collected composure. "Your manipulations of your own niece and, presumably, the son of your dead friend have beenideal?"
"So far," Zelda replied casually, shrugging her shoulders. "You no longer want to destroy me and my enterprise, damning countless souls to a fate worse than death, and I now have the means to reopen our access to the Channel,ifyou can get a grip on your temper. I'm certain that Therese and I can shine light on a great many questions you have, and perhaps a few that you would never have thought to ask."
Nell inhaled a shaky breath, her skin flushed with the desire to flee or perhaps simply to burst into tears. "Was it you?" she managed, her voice thin and cracking. "Were you involved in the death of the Atlas family?"
"Would it matter if I was?" Zelda asked, tilting her head curiously. "Apparently a few murders in one's history is no obstacle to your love and devotion, my darling girl."
That was the moment he released her. His hand dropped from her waist with a dead, listless weight that seemed far more defeated than any gesture of anger. It was as though all the life had slipped from his body from this abundance of horror and implication.
"I am going to return to Meridian," he said flatly, his eyes fixed on empty space rather than any of the three women. "Eleanor, you are welcome to return with me or to stay on to spend time with your aunt."
The implication was apparent. Nell was to make a choice. Immediately.
Zelda actually seemed amused by this test, as though she never would imagine herself the loser in a battle for Nell's affections.
Perhaps it was because of that, the wry and thin smile on the face of the woman she thought she'd really known, had trusted for her entire life, that Nell did not hesitate. She turned her back on her aunt, slipping her arm into her husband's, and said with the last dregs of her strength, "Let's go home."
Chapter 26
They hadn't spoken on the carriage ride home.
Nathaniel knew that this was his fault.
On the drive, her teeth chattering from the cold, Nell had begun to say something to him that had sounded much like an apology, and he had silenced her with a plea to wait until they were home. When they arrived back at Meridian, he had purposefully lingered downstairs while the maid helped Nell out of her beautiful gown, and the mask that had only been worn for under an hour at a ball they'd anticipated for months.
He thought perhaps he just needed some time to sit in silence before facing her. He had hidden the truth from her about his intentions. This much was true. But, considering what she thought him capable of and already hiding in his past, it seemed obvious now that he could have been completely open with her without driving her away.
She had chosen him tonight.
The thought of it made his throat constrict and his eyes burn. And so he poured himself a second glass of whiskey and closed those eyes against the press of reality upon his skin.
He knew she was waiting in their bed, likely rigid and anxious and full of so many words he was not yet ready to hear or respond to. The truth of the matter was that things had been so peaceful and idyllic, so completely unexpected, that he'd begun to think perhaps the mystery surrounding his parents was not as important as he'd believed it was.
He looked up at the portrait of his family, hanging over the fireplace in the sitting room, and frowned.
They were familiar to him and not, like a half-remembered dream.
His father looked approachable, kind even. They had the same eyes. Nathaniel's only memories of Walter were from a young boy's perspective, when a man grown appears impossibly large and strong. He had believed his father invincible, and the painting was a reminder that he had only been a man, in the end.
His mother was much as he remembered her, a faint smile of affection on her face as she held Alice bundled in her arms. Evidently she had not been the simple, maternal figure he had spent his life remembering. She had been far more mysterious than that. She had hidden treasures in the ground and nurtured friendships with the likes of Therese Dempierre and Zelda Smith.
There was no telling who Mary Atlas was at her core. Certainly not now.
He set his glass down, pushing himself to his feet and crossing the room to get a closer look at the thing. Lady Dempierre had been unusually fixated on it, hadn't she? It was suspicious, to say the least.
It took some maneuvering without a stepping stool or assistance, but after a moment, Nathaniel was able to wedge the thing off the wall and tip it forward to ease onto the ground without risking it being damaged by the flames in the hearth.
He set it face down, running his hands along the seam where the frame met the canvas. It would have been easy to miss, had he not been searching for something odd. If it had been more obvious, someone would have noticed it before now, but Aunt Susan had held on to this for years, and Kit had transported it with nary a raised eyebrow.
He was careful popping the frame loose, first spreading his jacket on the ground to cushion the painting beneath and then working bit by bit to separate wood from fabric. When he finally lifted it away, the small bulge he had felt was now visible, sitting against the rear of the frame, inside a small slot that had been split in the wrapping.
He reached inside, his heart hammering against his ribs, and closed his fingers around a small, leather-bound book, which he withdrew from inside the canvas frame with breath suspended in his lungs. It was black, wrapped in a strip of leather, and just a touch larger than a deck of cards.
The paper was warped and yellowed on the edges, and when he began to unwrap the leather holding the book closed, it was hard and brittle. Still, the book did open, and within it were pages and pages of his mother's tight, clean penmanship, arranged into the unmistakable columns of a business ledger.
