All Chapters of THE HEIRESS BEHIND THE MADNESS: Chapter 61 - Chapter 63

KaelI set the cup down very slowly, because if I didn't, it would have rattled.Beatrix watched me do it. She had the patience of a woman who'd spent sixty years waiting for other people to blink first. The clock ticked. A lily in the vase by the window dropped one white petal onto the polished wood."You're not going to deny it," she said."Would it change anything?""No.""Then no." I leaned back in my father's chair and made myself look bored. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. "Thorne-Vane is on my certificates. I assumed Julian's people had read them. I assumed you had, too.""I didn't hire you, Doctor. Julian did, because a bored fool signs what he's handed." Her mouth thinned. "I've spent the last month reading your life instead. Hampstead. The scholarship. The little flat above the chemist where your mother died of her grief. It took me longer than it should have, to put the eyes with the name."My mother's name hung in the room like smoke. I didn't let it touch my fa

KaelI read my own name on that glowing screen and felt the floor go out from under me.Wren hadn't moved. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hair loose and her hands in her lap, looking at me the way you look at a door you've been told is locked. I'd seen that look once before, on the night she'd first asked me for the truth. I had given it to her then, and it had nearly cost me everything."Wren." My voice came out scraped raw. "That isn't mine.""I know.""I signed three blank pages. I told you—""I know what you told me." She stood. She crossed the carpet in her bare feet and stopped so close I could smell lavender and sleep. "Oswin says two doctors signed. Pryce and you. And I asked myself, in the ten seconds before you came through that door, whether I believed him or whether I believed the man who stood on a balcony for five minutes because he was afraid to climb over to me.""And?""And I'd rather be wrong about you, Kael. I told you that already. I meant it."I couldn't