Royally Matched(56)

“The fugues,” I begin, “when she ‘blinks out’—she called it a quirk. It’s not a quirk, is it?”

The tightness in Penelope’s face dissipates, softens, and something like sadness rises in her eyes. “No.”

My heart jackhammers in my chest and my breath skips. Because I knew it before I walked in here—but to hear someone else say it, to hear her sister confirm that there’s something wrong with Sarah—something I may not be able to fix, some broken part of her she won’t even show me, let alone give me the chance to mend . . . it’s horrendous.

“I’ve seen it happen to men—soldiers with PTSD. They slip away and get trapped in another place, another time . . . a bad time. Is that how it is with her?”

Penelope’s lips fold together, her chin trembling. “Yes.”

A hundred horrific headlines flash in my head at once. I squeeze my eyes closed but I still see them.

“What happened to her?” My voice sounds tortured even to my own ears. “Please, Penny, I have to know.”

Her pale blond hair sways when she gives a little nod of her head, almost to herself, then motions for me to sit on the sofa. And I have to force my knee to stop bouncing with unspent energy, bracing for what’s to come.

The fire pops and her voice is gentle when she speaks, like a nanny reading her charge a bedtime fairy tale. Did you ever notice how genuinely fucked up fairy tales actually are?

“Our mother was traditional when it came to marriage. Very old school—“till death do us part,” a trousseau she stitched herself, a virgin on her wedding night—the whole damn thing. She was . . . innocent . . . only just eighteen when she married our father. He was thirty-five. Her parents, our grandparents, were cold arseholes; I already told you that. They were pleased to be rid of her. After the wedding, he took her to his estate in Everly.”

Everly is more moor than town. Jagged mountains on one side, cold ocean on the other—the weather as harsh and hard as a castle’s stone.

“My very first memory is the sound of my mother screaming . . . begging him to stop. He would go into rages for no reason at all. And he was merciless. Sadistic. Things would be quiet for a few weeks after, sometimes a few months . . . but then it would happen all over again. Sarah and I didn’t attend school; we had tutors. He said it was because it was the best education, but I think he just wanted control. The handful of servants we had were completely devoted to him—whether it was because they were loyal or terrified, I’ll never know.”

Penelope stares down at the gray and mauve rug, her eyes glossing over—seeing something I can’t.

“We used to hide in the wardrobe. Sarah had read The Chronicles of Narnia and I think some part of her prayed it was real, that we could be transported somewhere—anywhere but where we were. We would cover our ears and hold Mother’s dresses over our heads to try to muffle the sounds. You wouldn’t think you could hear so clearly,” she says and looks up at me with tears glinting like ice drops in her eyes. “I mean, it was a fucking castle. But the sounds carried and we heard every slap, every cry.”

Her brows draw together and her forehead crinkles. “I was . . . five the first time Sarah did it, so she would’ve been about seven.”

“Did what?” I rasp out.

“The first time she left the wardrobe.”

The words drop like lead in my stomach. Like shrapnel.

“She couldn’t stand it. I held onto her hand and I begged her to stay. She told me to stay put—no matter what happened, no matter what I heard.” Tears fall silently, one after the other, down Penelope’s smooth cheek. “And then she went out of the room and started breaking things.”

“Breaking things?”

Penelope nods. “A vase in the hallway, china plates in the drawing room—once she pulled a gold-framed mirror right off the wall. Anything that would make a crash. That would take his attention away from Mother. She would go from room to room, until . . .”

It’s only when Penelope stops speaking that I realize I’ve stopped breathing.

“Until?”

Her light brown eyes look directly into mine. “Until he caught her.”

My mind is blank. Black. Like the heaviest curtain has come down, blocking out any light or thought or image.

“Caught her.” I roll the words around on my tongue. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

Penelope gazes back at me. “I think you do.”

The air expels from my lungs.

“Are you . . . are you saying he hurt her? That he . . . beat her? Sarah?”

“Yes.”