Page 2 of Hazard a Guest
She had left. She had come to London. And London was hers now. It was hers, and she would not be giving it back. They could take everything else, but not that. Not the only thing she’d really claimed in her short life.
She tore open her vanity table, clawing through it. She heaved into the wall the pack of playing cards Mr. Withers had put there in all his stupid, blind optimism that he’d live to see another day.Just last week, he’d put them there. He’d chuckled at her. He’d walked out of the room. And then he’d died.
He’d just … died!
The bastard.
Not a single word of warning. Not a flicker of respect as Ember had raged and screamed and clawed at his body. Not a single word of advice as he’d been carried out of their home, silent as the grave.
She didn’t know when she started crying, only that her face was wet. She threw the jewels, the combs, the bottles of cosmetics, sending each thing crashing into the stone and wood around her, all of it just as cold as her husband. Just as dead.
Until the only thing left was a silly little thing, cheap, worthless, and older than her marriage.
She’d forgotten she put it there, in truth. Forgotten she’d even brought one from home. Her mother had packed it in her things when she’d left, and Ember had laughed to find it. She had only put it here to age enough that she would not feel guilty throwing it away.
But there it was. A brooch made of rushes, a bit browned, a bit bent, woven into Kildare’s own cross.
It was a bit of fluff for pilgrims and lookyloos and children. It was cheap.
And it was the only thing she could not bring herself to throw.
She picked it up with a gentleness far greater than was necessary and slumped to the lush carpet on the floor. She sat with it cradled in her hands for a long time, silent and frozen.Eventually, she felt herself move and found the scattered deck of cards rebuilding itself in her hands.
She felt guilty about throwing them, about disrespecting that last little moment she’d had with her husband before he’d wandered off ’cross the pearly gates.
Her husband, a silver-haired man who’d chosen a bride of seventeen because she had a head for numbers, who’d treated her as more accountant than wife, had been delighted to test her talents in so many new and funny ways.
For the two years they’d spent married, he’d have her plot routes home using only street numbers. He’d have her read long sums and recite them back. He’d ambush her with puzzles and calculations and scenarios. And most recently, he had taken great delight in having her cheat at cards.
“They say the house always wins,” he’d said to her. The last thing he’d said. “But Ember, my dear, you would topple the house right over.”
And after all, she thought as her heart started to slow back down, that was all she wanted right now. To knock a house over. To kick it until its walls buckled and it fell to dust.
“Sorry, my friend,” she said aloud to the dead man. “I know you didn’t mean it when you died.”
She wished her mam were here. Wished she knew that in her darkest moments, Ember had found that cross and that it was exactly what she needed.
She imagined her voice, crooning softly, “Brigid always knows, my love. That’s why we remember her.”
She never saidSaintBrigid. Cara Donnelly never had. And Ember thought sometimes she was the only one who’d ever noticed.
She’d asked her about it once, when she was little.
“Mam, do you mean the saint or the goddess?”
“What do you mean,A stóirín?”she had answered, insisting on familiarity as though Brigid were her old friend. “They’re one and the same.”
Ember, despite herself, felt a smile cracking through the iron veil of her rage. Leave it to her mother to comfort through heresy.
It was enough. Enough to get her up off of the floor and over to the deed she’d been handed.
She didn’t bother bracing herself. There weren’t enough braces left in her anyhow. She knew those four, the Withers brood, had chosen the absolute worst, most insulting, lowest-value thing they could give her without breaking the law.
She was ready for that.
“Sparrow’s Tail,” she read aloud, baffled. “St. James.”
There was a little note from the barrister tacked to the document.
