Page 7 of Atone, Adonis

His fingers curled around the arm of the chair until the leather creaked. And then, very deliberately, he loosened them. He didn’t want to do what he always did. It was time to put this silly notion of Thomas’s to rest.

But he wouldn’t do it by letter.

He was an adult now, not a reckless young man just on the cusp of it. Tomorrow, he’d go to Dorset and look Thomas in the eyes when he told him no. He’d pay him off and then walk away, a new start for them both. Which should have been done years ago.

He’d tried of course with that annuity and Tom’s response had left no room for misinterpretation or for trying again. It had been Fred’s last attempt at anything as maudlin as feelings.

So Thomas must certainly be joking. The idea of Fred marrying Jules was just too preposterous otherwise.

But if he wasn’t…if Tom was truly dying…Fred shook his head. No, he couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let himself think about that.

He pulled a fresh sheet of vellum toward him anyway and wrote two short lines to Gilbert, the ink stark and final on the creamy expanse of the paper:

Have the traveling trunks brought down.

We leave for Dorset at first light.

He sanded the page, sealed it, and rang the bell before he could change his mind. And then, because he could not resist pressing his thumb to his own wound, he pulled from his desk drawer the yellowed, frayed issue of The Poisoned Quill that he’d kept all these years. As if reading it over and over might make it hurt less. It never, ever did.

THE FALL OF THE LOCAL ADONIS

The Poisoned Quill – May 12th, 1850

Printed on Cheap Paper for the Dearly Interested

DISGRACE IN DORSET! THE LOCAL ADONIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN DORSETSHIRE’S DARLING, BUT HAS THIS CARRIAGE-DRIVING CALAMITY GONE TOO FAR?

It is with a quill quivering in moral indignation that we bring you the latest and most ruinous tidings of one Mr. Frederick Sedgewick, formerly of Dorsetshire, known to many a simpering debutante and too-trusting mother as “The Local Adonis.” And oh, how the mighty have fallen! Though truthfully, we were never quite convinced he stood all that tall to begin with, except in his own looking-glass.

This week, London and Dorset alike are ablaze with word of the ghastly midnight accident upon the Weymouth Road where a barouche carrying none other than the Local Adonis himself, Frederick Sedgewick, collided most tragically with the landau of the late Mr. and Mrs. Ignatius Farrow, killing both parents and leaving little but twisted iron, bloodied lace, and whispered scandal in its wake. Miraculously their children, young Master Thomas Farrow (bosom companion to Mr. Sedgewick) and his twelve-year-old sister Julianna, survived the wreck with injuries deemed “non-fatal.”

What happens now you might ask? We certainly did. But the mystery only deepens. No official charges have been brought. No trial has been called. And the Sedgewick estate stands shuttered. Horses sold, servants dismissed, and, here’s the true kettle-boiler, Frederick and his dearly beloved stepmother, Eva Sedgewick, have vanished across the Channel, making a quiet, rather cowardly escape to the Continent.

To Mr. Sedgewick, if this rag reaches your perfumed pocket: your secrets are safe only until we find them out. And we always do.

Yours in Disgust & Delight,

E.S. Mallory

Editor-at-Large, The Poisoned Quill

Chapter

4

Farrow Cottage

March 18, 1860

Julianna braided her thick, dark hair as well as she could and donned the same walking dress she’d worn nearly every day this spring. And then she went about her morning chores. Gathering the eggs, milking their single dairy cow, and testing the soil to see if it was still frozen. Early April was well past the time she began to plant the spring crops—she had double checked her notes from last year to be certain—but it was still too bitterly cold despite being two weeks overdue.

When she made her way back inside the stone cottage she shared with Thomas, she brewed tea and then carried it up the stairs to his small room. They really ought to move him downstairs as navigating steps had become increasingly difficult for him, but it was draftier on the first floor than in the cozy nook he now used as his sickroom on the second. And she didn’t want him to be cold.

“Are you up, Tom?”

“Yes,” came his weak, phlegmy reply. Julianna closed her eyes against the sound of it. The longer the cold weather wore on, the worse his condition became.

She opened his door and deposited the tray on the table beside the bed. “How are you this morning?”