LIBRA

28

BENJY DIDN’T TALK MUCH on the way back, but Hetty wasn’t in the mood for chatter. With each step, all the events of the day tumbled like stones battering a roof. Eunice and the tea that wasn’t. Marianne and her troubles. Marianne’s betrayal and her belated apology. A key hidden in a pocket watch. That was all just today. This whole week had her rushing from one moment to the next with not long to pause, with nothing but questions. Every time she’d thought she found an answer, she turned around and there were five more questions left to ask.

“Is something wrong?”

Hetty looked up from the lamp that she hadn’t turned on yet to see Benjy watching her from the other side of the room.

“I want to take a bath tonight.”

Her announcement was met with a nod. “I’ll get the buckets.”

To fill the tub took fourteen buckets of water, and there was no easy way to get it into their room from the pump downstairs. It was well worth the trouble. The tub, made by Benjy when they agreed that buying one outright was too costly, was Hetty’s one indulgence. She had a bath each week, and more often if she could manage it. She even carried on the practice in the wintertime despite nearly catching a cold one night. While they had a system for flying the buckets up through the window, the simplest solution was Benjy carrying the buckets himself. A task he did when she asked, but not without complaints every step of the way.

This evening she heard no complaints.

He remained quiet, and even his footsteps were muffled as he reentered the room, dumped the water into the tub, then headed back to repeat the journey several times more.

When Benjy poured the last bucket, the water came to a rest at the sigil notched inside. Aquarius glowed, and the water began to heat up.

Hetty sat by the tub, waiting for this process to finish.

There were words she could say. A conversation she could start. But she said nothing, did nothing more than nod when Benjy collected the empty buckets and left the room.

Submerging herself, she sank into the tub until the water reached her shoulders. Curled up there, Hetty felt the knots in her belly uncoil. Her troubles, both those of her own making and those beyond her control, still remained of course. But for now all the death and confusion was behind her.

Hetty scrubbed, using the soap to rub away her intruding thoughts as much as dirt. When she got every bit of skin she could reach, she washed her hair too, thinking of her dip in the river. For a day meant to be a break from the excitement, Hetty would have never expected such an adventure at Marianne’s. Or even that it would prove without a doubt that Marianne wasn’t involved. Marianne and her secret husband. What a shocking and devastating piece of gossip this was! Marianne might move just to avoid hearing the whispers that will arise. Yet there was nothing to fear. Hetty would never speak of such things, not even to Penelope. Hetty kept such secrets. Still, she could imagine Marianne at another tea, with Darlene and Penelope giggling over this gossip, glad to finally have something to lord over the other woman. Except for Eunice, who sat there sewing a doily so big, it was like a blanket in her lap.

Eunice looked in Hetty’s direction and then tossed her a large brass key. Hetty reached out to pluck it from the air, but it slipped between her fingers, turning into thread. One strand looped around Darlene and George, entangling them with an empty cradle. Another dangled around Geraldine and her collection of dodgy potions, her expression a bit too innocent and scared to be genuine. There were threads that tangled around Clarence Loring and Isaac Baxter with a banner and a box of money in hand for an election that would never come. The threads thickened to ropes as they choked the tree branches, where, like pendulums, Charlie, Alain, and the unknown stranger dangled, turning in small circles.

Lurking in the tree’s shadow was Alice. She pulled at a strand that connected her to a young woman. Judith, Hetty thought, until the young woman turned and her face was Esther’s. Esther smiled at Hetty even as blood dripped from the thread around her neck, bright red and burning hot . . .

With a gasp, Hetty bolted upright in the tub, awake before she was completely aware. Water splashed everywhere as she did, including on Benjy kneeling at the tub’s side. The fading light around gave her one answer out of the three that occurred to her.

“Are you trying to boil me alive!” Hetty splashed more water at him. He ducked out of the way this time, but didn’t completely escape the line of fire.

Hetty slid over to the tub’s rim to peer down at him. “What are you doing?”

“The charm on the tub fell apart,” he said, not looking at her as he picked up the charcoal he dropped. “I rather you not catch your death in cold water. Or drown. It’d be the second time in nearly as many days.”

“Three,” she corrected as he finished marking the tub’s side. “I fell twice into that river.”

“So you did,” he said with equal seriousness. He looked up then. “You were muttering about threads. Are you being haunted by dresses?”

“No dresses, just threads. In my dream, there were threads connecting everyone involved with the case. People had different colors. It explained everything, so many things—I’m not sure how I can explain.”

“Explaining can wait until later.” Benjy jumped up, walking away from her.

“Later? I’ll forget all the details.”

Already he had shuffled to the other side of their small room. Instead of the map, he settled on the bed, lying on his side as if to go to sleep, but couldn’t turn away fast enough to avoid Hetty seeing his face. She might not understand what her dream was telling her, but she understood the distraught expression spread across his face.

“I did not see any threads tied to you,” she said. Hetty braided her wet hair as quickly as she could. “You weren’t even there. I don’t believe you killed Alain.”

“Penelope did. Sy did,” he said softly.

Hetty grabbed her nightgown off the chair beside the tub, and dressed as quickly as she could.

“They don’t. Sy has an overexcited imagination.” Hetty settled on the bed next to him. “And Penelope . . . she was in shock. You know how she can get after a bit of excitement.”

This should have brought a smile to his face. Instead, he looked as if she’d tossed his favorite hammer into a blazing fire.

“You did believe it, if only for a moment.”

“It was designed to be the first thought to cross any mind. Why, even Sy thought it, and he hangs on to your every word!”

“And you?” he asked. “What was your first thought?”

“That it was you that Sy found.”

Benjy sat up, and several different emotions flickered across his face, but confusion won out. “That’s an odd thought to have.”

“You haven’t had the conversations I had this week,” Hetty said. “Charlie died, and everyone talks about burial societies and planning for unexpected deaths. And they bring up your name.”

“Which explains sewing protection spells into all my clothes.”

“Not all of them,” Hetty said. “Not yet, at least.”

“Why are you the one fretting? You’ve been in far more perilous situations than I have. Not even counting this week.”

“I am sorry about that.”

“It’s nothing less than I expected,” Benjy replied. “It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you.”

It took Hetty admittedly far too long to realize not only the words he said, but the emphasis he put on them.

When you’ve known someone for a very long time, you gain a certain understanding of what they will say or do. You know how they speak. You know when to really listen; you know what course of action they’ll take when there’s a decision that makes them choose between their life and yours. This happens with people you like, people you hate, and people you once called a friend but now speak with only once in a blue moon. But just because you know this person so well, it doesn’t mean they can’t still surprise you.

His words were such a surprise. Because as much as she desperately hoped to hear them, she’d never expected it to actually happen.

“ ‘Always’?” she echoed, when the power of speech returned to her.

“Well, maybe not always,” Benjy said, and he appeared to have been struck by the same paralyzing spell as she had, frozen where he sat on his side of the bed. “But for quite some time. I was worried if I said something it would upset things.”

“How could it upset things when I’m in agreement?”

His eyes widened, and there was such astonishment on his features, it was stunning.

She might have elaborated more, might have spun some elegant sentences that she’d read in books, savoring the turns of phrase that captured emotions so well. She might have shared the details of her own revelation, and they would have a rueful laugh at how terrible things drew them together. She might even say how foolish they had been, and how silly they were to be dancing around a simple truth that they should have both known already. She might have said all those things.

But before she could, Benjy kissed her.

It was pure impulse. Something about the way his hands slid clumsily over her arms and the awkward fumbling that followed as he attempted to enfold her in an embrace told her he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

This brought a smile to her lips. She took pride in it whenever she found herself even a slight step ahead of him, but rarely had she had the pleasure of catching him fully unaware.

She savored that pleasure as much as she did the kiss, which completely altered her definition and understanding of the word.

There was honesty in that kiss. Honesty and openness that made her realize that all the little kisses she had collected from him over the years had been counterfeit—token gestures too full of uncertainty to be the real thing.

“How long have you felt like this?” Hetty asked when they pulled apart.

“A little bit after New Year’s,” he said easily. “We snuck into a party hosted by one of Charlie’s friends purely because you wanted to peer through a telescope. You had me out on the roof, chilled to the bone for the excess of an hour, but there was no other place I wanted to be.”

Hetty remembered that night—he had been quiet and thoughtful when she looked over at him, but outwardly no different.

“It’s not really a moment, but a realization. One I ignored until I couldn’t deny its truth. I should have told you earlier. I know I’ve gone about this all wrong.”

“No, you didn’t,” Hetty said, taking his hands in hers. “Time helps with everything. A year ago I might have laughed at you. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. Every past moment led us here. Changing even the slightest thing could mean risking a different possibility where we never even met. Or where we disliked the other. Or one of us died. Or you moved to Canada.”

A smile pulled at his face, a familiar teasing smile, but there was tenderness she hadn’t yet seen and his eyes were softer than before as he gazed down at her. “That is a big risk,” he said. “It does nothing but snow in Canada.”

He kissed her once again, putting to an end one conversation as they began another.