Page 69 of The Beautiful Ones

My sentence broke in two places, but she understood it.

“You sent the heir of Le Champ des Fleurs away in a George carriage?”

“He is not an heir if there is n-nothing left.”

Mother crossed the foyer and slapped me.

Pain flashed across my cheek. The servants nearby looked away. Father did not. He watched us with the distracted irritation of a man whose property had begun quarreling among itself.

“Go upstairs,” Mother said.

“Father murdered Commander Vale.”

She went motionless.

I had expected denial. Its absence was worse.

“Who told you?” she whispered.

“You k-knew.”

“I knew your father had enemies. Men of consequence always do.”

“You knew.”

Her face hardened around whatever confession she refused to make.

“A wife does not dig through her husband’s affairs looking for reasons to destroy her children’s future.”

“No. She spends the m-money and asks no questions.”

Mother raised her hand again.

I did not flinch.

Something in my face stopped her. Perhaps she saw that I was no longer the daughter who measured safety by the softness of her approval.

“You are a Lebon,” she said.

“So are you.”

The sentence emerged slowly, each word scarred by effort, but it silenced her.

A bell began ringing beyond the rear windows.

It came from the abandoned glasshouse.

The glasshouse had no bell.

Father lifted his pistol.

“Fairhaven.”

He crossed the house toward the garden doors. Mother called after him, but he did not turn. He descended the terrace steps and strode across the lawn beneath a cloud of blue butterflies.

Elin appeared from the servants’ passage carrying a bundle wrapped in her gray shawl.

“Lucien?” she asked.