Page 24 of The Beautiful Ones

I seized his sleeve. The damp wool felt cold beneath my fingers.

“D-d-don’t—”

My father threw open the door.

For one terrible moment, neither man moved.

Then Father looked at my hand upon Nathaniel’s coat.

“Take your hands off my daughter.”

Nathaniel did not obey immediately. His eyes remained upon mine.

“Being heard is not the same as being safe, Cécile,” he said quietly. “Remember that.”

My father crossed the room and tore us apart.

He called for servants. He accused Nathaniel of trespass, dishonor and madness. Nathaniel answered none of it. He allowed Father to drive him into the gallery without resistance.

I followed as far as the schoolroom door.

“I b-b-believe—”

Nathaniel looked back.

The rest of the sentence struck glass.

Father shoved him toward the stairs.

I tried again, forcing breath against the closed passage of my throat until pain spread across my chest.

“I b-believe y-you.”

Whether Nathaniel heard me, I never knew.

He disappeared down the staircase, and the front doors closed behind him.

By morning, he was gone from the county.

I wrote him a letter that afternoon. It contained only four words.

I should have spoken sooner.

I hid it inside the music cabinet, intending to send it when I learned where he had gone.

No address ever came.

The memory left me with the same cruel truth: I had allowed my parents to mistake silence for obedience so many times that even I had begun to confuse the two.

Nathaniel had believed my voice was worth waiting for.

When his turn came to be heard, I had not made anyone listen.

And now he was gone. Disgraced, erased from our parlor talk, and vanished into the dark, leaving me trapped in this grand, hollow house with men who viewed me as a broken ornament.

From the gardens below, the sharp, shrill laughter of Warren Dewey echoed up through the open window, followed by the distant clatter of tea cups.

I pressed Nathaniel’s sheet music against my chest, staring at the closed rosewood lid of the pianoforte.