Read Chapter 20: The Betrayal

The miniature painting trembled in my hand as I stood in the doorway of Merrick’s study. Rain lashed the windows behind him, streaking the glass like tears, and the firelight carved deep shadows into his face as he looked up from his desk.

“Elowen.” He rose slowly, his eyes fixing on the small oval frame in my fingers. “Where did you find that?”

“Inside my ring.” I stepped closer, my boots loud on the oak floor. “The ring you gave me. The ring my father apparently knew about. The ring that has a painting of you and my sister hidden inside it.”

Merrick’s jaw tightened. He made no move toward me, but his hand gripped the edge of the desk as if steadying himself. “You shouldn’t have opened it.”

“I shouldn’t have opened it?” A laugh escaped me, brittle and sharp. “You’ve been lying to me since the moment I arrived. You told me you barely knew Lillian. You told me she was just your brother’s fiancée. And yet here you are—in a secret painting hidden inside a ring that was left for me—looking at her like she was the center of your world.”

Silence stretched between us, thick as the storm outside. Merrick’s chest rose and fell with a breath he seemed to hold for too long before releasing it.

“She was,” he said quietly.

The words hit me like a wave. I steadied myself against the doorframe. “She was what?”

“The center of my world.” He met my eyes finally, and the weight of his gaze was almost unbearable. “Lillian and I were engaged. Secretly. For nearly a year before she died.”

The room tilted. I gripped the frame of the painting so tightly my knuckles went white. “You told me she was engaged to your brother.”

“She was. Publicly.” Merrick’s voice was low, rough with old pain. “My brother William courted her openly, with my family’s approval. But Lillian and I—” He stopped, swallowed. “We met first. At a gallery in Falmouth. She was standing in front of a painting of the Cornish cliffs, and she was crying.”

“Why would she be crying over a painting?”

“Because it reminded her of home. She told me she hadn’t seen the sea in three years, and she missed it like a limb.” His voice softened. “I fell in love with her in that moment. Before she even turned around.”

I shook my head, backing away from him. “So you courted her in secret while your brother took the public role? That’s monstrous.”

“It was survival.” Now his voice edged with steel. “My family is not like yours, Elowen. We don’t have ordinary scandals. We have secrets that can destroy people. I tried to shield her from that.”

“By lying to her? By making her pretend to love your brother?”

“She never pretended.” Merrick’s eyes blazed. “William knew the arrangement was a facade. He was my brother, and he loved me enough to help me protect the woman I loved. He courted her publicly so my father wouldn’t interfere—so the family’s enemies wouldn’t target her.”

“What enemies?” I demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“My father made choices. Bad ones. He owed people—dangerous people—who used debts to control him. If they knew I had someone I loved, someone I could be hurt through, they would have used her.” He ran a hand through his hair, and I saw the tremor in his fingers. “When Lillian and I became engaged, I thought I could keep her hidden. But my father found out. He threatened to ruin her. To expose her sister’s secrets, your parents’ secrets, everything. He said he would destroy her family unless I ended it.”

“And you did.”

Merrick’s face crumpled briefly before he forced it back to stone. “I broke her heart to save her life. I told her I never loved her. That it had been a game. A diversion.” His voice cracked. “She looked at me with those grey eyes—those same grey eyes you have now—and she said, ‘I will never believe you meant that.’ And she was right. I never did.”

The painting trembled in my hand. “So my sister died believing you had abandoned her.”

“Worse.” He closed his eyes. “She died believing I had chosen my family over her, when the truth was I was trying to protect her from them. She never knew. I was going to tell her. The week she died, I had finally found the leverage I needed to free us. I was going to come to her, tell her everything, and ask her to run away with me.”

“What happened?”

“She died before I could.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I found out from a telegram in Penzance. I was on my way to her. I arrived at St. Piran’s the morning after she passed. No one would tell me how. No one would tell me anything. And then her family—your family—made sure I could never get close to the truth.”

I thought of the asylum. Of Clara. Of Rose. Of all the secrets I had uncovered in a place Merrick had claimed he’d never visited. “You told me you’d never been to St. Piran’s.”

His silence was answer enough.

“You lied,” I said, my voice hollow. “You’ve been lying to me about everything.”

“I went there for Lillian,” he said. “I’ve been there a dozen times over the years. I paid for her grave. I maintained it. I—I visited her every year on the anniversary of her death.”

“Then why did you tell me you’d never been?”

Merrick’s jaw worked. He seemed to struggle for words. “Because I wasn’t ready to tell you the rest of it.”

“What rest?”

He stepped around the desk, moving toward me slowly. The firelight caught the side of his face, and I saw the lines of grief etched there—the years of carrying a burden he’d never set down. “Your sister didn’t die in London, Elowen. She died in Cornwall. In this house. In my arms.”

The words staggered me. I stepped back until my shoulders hit the wall. “What?”

“She came to me. The night she died. She had left the city, fled her engagement to my brother, and made her way here. She said she had learned the truth—that my father had been threatening me, that I had ended things to protect her. She said she didn’t care about the danger. She wanted to be with me.” Tears formed in his eyes, and he didn’t hide them. “I was so afraid. I told her she had to leave. She refused. We argued. She ran out onto the cliffs in the storm—”

“No.” I shook my head violently. “No. She died of a fever. That’s what the records say.”

“That’s what my family paid to say,” Merrick said. “She fell. The cliffs are treacherous in the storm. I found her at the bottom in the morning, still warm, still holding—” His voice broke entirely now. “Still holding the ring I had given her. The ring she returned to me before she slipped over the edge.”

The gold band felt impossibly heavy on my finger. I looked down at it, trembling.

“She wore it always?” I heard myself ask.

“Always,” Merrick whispered. “Even after I broke her heart, she wore it. And when she came to me that last night, she said she had one final request. That if anything happened to her, I would find a way to send the ring to you. She always wanted you to have it. She said you were the only person who ever truly knew her.”

The tears were coming now, hot and unstoppable down my cheeks. “Why didn’t you tell me? All this time—why?”

“Because telling you the truth meant telling you how I failed her,” he said. “And I couldn’t bear for you to see me the way I see myself.”

I stood there, the painting still in my hand—my sister and this man, their faces frozen in a moment of love that had ended in tragedy. And beneath the grief, a colder thought surfaced.

“Rose,” I said slowly. “The woman who’s been writing to me. She went to St. Piran’s, she knows about Lillian, she knows about Catherine. She knows everything.”

Merrick’s face went still. “What are you asking?”

“Is she yours?” I asked. “Did you orchestrate all of this? Did you bring me here?”

“No,” he said, and the word came with a force that made me believe him. “I swear to you on your sister’s grave—I did not bring you here. Rose contacted me, yes. But I have no idea who she truly is. And I’m as frightened of her as you are.”

I looked at him, this man who had loved my sister, who had failed her in the worst possible way. And I knew I had to decide whether to trust him or walk away from everything he represented.

That was when the letter slid beneath the study door.

White envelope. Neat handwriting. No stamp.

I crossed the room and picked it up before Merrick could stop me. The paper inside was thin, typed in the same font as every other anonymous letter I had received.

*She didn’t fall, Elowen.*

*She was pushed.*