Page 111 of The Bargain

She meets my gaze head-on.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier, Elias.”

I squirm in my seat, dropping her gaze. For some reason, her apology is a thousand times more unsettling than anything I expected her to say.

“You don’t owe me anything,” I say, glaring at the floor, mortified to feel my cheeks getting hot, my heart lurching in my chest.

“I do. I owe you quite a lot, in fact, but you should know that even if I didn’t, I would still have come.” She smiles, a rueful expression that makes her seem suddenly more human and weary than I could imagine someone like her to be. “It would seem that you, Elias Lennox, have made quite the impression on my family.”

I shake my head. “Not for the reasons you think.”

“No?” She glances down at her nails: they’re short and painted black. “In the past forty-eight hours, my youngest daughter has come to me confessing to a secret she’s kept all year, just because you agreed to help her with the problem and she feels responsible for your arrest.”

My heart lurches. Ophelia told her mother about Birnam?

It was the last thing she wanted to do.

“She told me you were the only person she knew who could help her,” Sophie continues, “and she begged me to save you. She told me things I’m certain she would have taken to the grave, had it not been to help you.”

A shadow passes over her face. I wonder what she really feels about what Birnam did. If I were her, I would want vengeance—but she’s a creature of justice. How do you reconcile the two?

“As for my foolish sons,” Sophie says with a long-suffering sigh, “they’ve both admitted to their crime, just because they can’t bear the idea that you’re paying for what they’ve done. I’ve never seen them so upset. Until you’re a parent, you can’t imagine what it’s like, to see your children in distress.”

I stare at her and realise she’s a sight I’ve never seen before.

A mother.

There’s a thick lump in my throat, and I know I couldn’t speak if I tried, but Sophie doesn’t wait for me to do so.

“And if I ever expected all of them to get themselves into this kind of situation,” she says, her voice softening, “then the last thing I expected was for my eldest daughter, the apple of mine and her father’s eyes, my firstborn, beloved child, who’s only ever been a paragon of virtue, to get herself suspended from school right in the middle of her exams.”

My heart sinks. I finally speak, squeezing my voice through the lump in my throat.

“Desdemona’s been suspended?”

“Oh, yes, and she’s probably going to get expelled, and she’s certainly going to fail all her qualifications. She’s already lost her opportunity to attend the law programme she’s worked for years to get accepted into.” Sophie shakes her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “I love my daughter, but I cannot defend her this time. She deserves all of this.”

“She doesn’t,” I snap.

“She absolutely does, given all the things she very publicly admitted.”

I swallow hard. I feel sick, my stomach lined with acid.

“What things?”

“Admitting to beating Birnam Hastings, for one. Threatening to kill him. Revealing that she bribed you to take the fall for what she did.” Sophie Sutton-Knight raises her eyebrows and gestures in a crisp, professional manner. “In legal terms, we’re talking… well, assault occasioning actual or grievous bodily harm. Perverting the course of justice. Bribery, criminal damage, intent to harm. And the Hastings, knowing them, would probably even throw in damages, defamation and emotional distress.”

My heart is beating so hard it hurts. What the fuck did Desdemona do?

“So, I mean—expulsion is pretty generous,” Sophie concludes. “All things considered.”

“She’s going to get arrested?” I ask hoarsely.

Sophie laughs, and there’s that familiar edge of cruelty in her laughter I know so well from her daughter.

“They would have to be on an entirely different level of stupidity and recklessness trying to go anywhere near my daughter.”

Goosebumps ripple down my back at the tone of her voice, a ferocity so intense it feels like it could melt iron.