The agony was so great, Amelie just didn’t think she could take it anymore. Each day, she thought maybe, just maybe it would be the day she decided she was done. But she was almost certain today was the day. She’d even dressed for it, wearing a walking suit of black. The jet beads on it caught what little light managed to filter through the clouds, but she barely noticed.
Her mother had asked her how much longer she’d insist on wearing mourning colors. Amelie had answered, “When I no longer feel as though I’m in mourning.”
That time would never come, although she knew she’d have to stop soon. Her parents indulged her, and secretly, she suspected her mother and father were pleased to see her small defiance of Richard. They cared for him as little as she did.
She hoped they’d forgive her if she . . .
No. She wasn’t going to think about it yet.
There had been a great deal of rain lately and the water level was higher than normal. Even now the rain fell in a slow, steady drizzle from the leaden skies. An echo of how she felt inside, she thought. How she’d felt ever since that awful day two months earlier. When she’d watched as Richard lifted a gun, pointed it at a man’s back. Pulled the trigger.
The day he’d killed the man she loved.
It had been here. Odd that she still found comfort here, in this place where he’d died. Where Richard had his men throw the still, pale body of her love into the lake. No body to be buried, no grave for her visit.
All she had were her memories.
Memories that continued to burn so brightly even after two months.
Two months . . . yet it felt like an entire lifetime.
“I told you to stop coming here.”
Looking back, she saw Richard dismount from his horse. A frisson of fear shivered through her, but it passed quickly, and that numbness settled over her once more and she went back to staring at Thom’s resting place.
Perhaps it was fitting, though. He’d always loved it on the water . . .
“Did you hear me? I told you to stop coming here. And enough with the mourning rags,” he snarled. “You were not married to him. You’ll stop this nonsense, Amelie.”
Hard hands grabbed her, forced her around. With dull eyes, she stared at him. “You cannot stop me. You cannot dictate how I dress, where I choose to go.”
He let her go, but the relief she felt lasted just a moment—pain replaced it and she cried out as he struck her across the face. She fell, tumbling to the ground. “You foolish woman. Haven’t you learned yet?”
Learned . . . oh, yes. She’d learned. Through the tears, she stared at him, hoping he could see just how much she hated him. “Learned what?” she spit out. “How much I hate you? Yes. I’ve learned that.”
As he drove his booted foot into her belly, she cried out. Her stays didn’t offer much protection, and her breath gusted out of her in rush. Wheezing, gasping for air, she huddled there, tears leaking out of her eyes as he crouched at her side. “Are you such a silly girl that you don’t realize what I could do to you? I could kill you. As easy as that and not a soul would say a word . . .”
Kill me, then, she thought. Just do it. End this.
But even as she thought that, another thought came to mind. The knife. Thom’s knife. Tucked inside her beaded reticule, almost too large for the pretty, delicate bag she carried on her wrist.
How she longed to grab the knife, use it on Richard.
Did she truly want to die?
Or did she want to see him die?
* * *
STARING at the reflection of her dull face, Dru rested her hands on the counter and tried to think past the headache pounding behind her eyes. The nightmares had been bad, and getting worse lately, but this one . . . bloody fuck, it had been worse than normal. And she couldn’t even grasp a thread of the dream this time.
A sense of grief. Loss. And then hatred. A blinding, unending hatred . . .
But nothing real. Nothing solid that she could grasp.
It terrified her, those black, uncertain nightmares. She dreaded sleep.
Feared closing her eyes. But at the same time, it was almost like she had to poke at those dreams. Had