It was late when he walked me back. Pauline had left the lantern out for me. Our words just kept stringing on and on, always one more thing to say to keep us from parting, one more thing we needed to share. Finally I kissed him one last time and told him good night, but as I reached for the door handle, he stopped me.

“Lia, there’s one more thing, something else I need to—”

“Tomorrow, Rafe. We have all day tomorrow. It’s late.”

He nodded, then lifted my hand to his lips and left.

A perfect night … a perfect forever.

I was in that half-awake dreamworld all night long, until the early morning hours, when the first muted light tiptoed along the edge of the window, and my dreams finally gave way to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“Lia.”

A nudge on my shoulder.

“Lia, wake up.”

Another nudge.

“Lia! You have to wake up!”

I startled awake, sitting upright. Pauline sat on the edge of the bed. The room was bright. I had slept all morning.

“What is it?” I said, shielding my eyes against the light. And then I noticed Pauline’s expression. “What?”

“It’s Walther. He’s behind the icehouse. Something’s wrong, Lia. He’s—”

I was out of the bed, groggy, rummaging for pants, a shirt, something to throw on. Walther behind the icehouse? My palms were damp with sweat. Pauline’s voice was shrill. Something’s wrong. I threw down whatever was bunched in my hands and ran out of the cottage barefoot and in my nightdress.

I saw his tobiano first, lathered and snorting, as if it had been ridden all night. “Take him to the barn and wipe him down,” I called to Pauline, who was running behind me. I rounded the corner of the icehouse and saw Walther sitting on the ground, leaning against a broken overturned wheelbarrow that was stored there along with unused crates and a jumble of other castoffs:

“Lia,” he said when he saw me.

My breath stopped dead against my ribs. He had a gash on his forehead, but worse, his expression was crazed—this was a wild man pretending to be my brother.

“Walther, what is it?” I rushed to his side and fell to my knees. My hand went to his forehead, and he looked at me and said “Lia” again, as if it were the first time.

“Walther, you’re hurt. What happened?”

His eyes were desolate. “I have to do something, Lia. I have to do something.”

I took his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “Walther, please,” I said firmly. “You have to tell me what’s wrong so I can help you.”

He looked at me, almost like a child. “You’re strong, Lia. You were always the strongest of us. That’s what worried Mother.”

He was making no sense at all. His gaze drifted away, and his eyes were glassy and rimmed in red. “There was nothing I could do,” he said. “Not for either of them.”

I grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Walther! What happened?”

He looked back at me, his lips cracked, his hair falling in his face in filthy, oily strands. His voice was passionless. “She’s dead. Greta’s dead.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t possible.

“An arrow straight through her throat.” His gaze remained vacant. “She looked at me, Lia. She knew. Her eyes. She couldn’t speak. She just looked at me, knowing, and then she fell forward into my lap. Dead.”

I listened as my brother recounted each shattered piece of his dream. I held him, rocked him, huddled with him in the squalor and mud. When I saw Pauline and Berdi round the corner of the icehouse, I waved them away. My brother, my strapping soldier brother, wept in my arms. He straddled a line between tears and dispassionate belief and told me every detail, unable to separate the relevant from the inconsequential. Her dress was blue. She had braided her hair in a circle around her head that morning. The baby was moving. They were on their way to Greta’s aunt’s house. It was only an hour’s ride in the carriage from her parents’ manor. Her sister and her family were in the carriage just behind them. They were going to have lunch. Only an hour he repeated over and over again. An hour. And daylight. It was daylight. They were just about to cross the bridge from Chetsworth into Briarglen when there was a tremendous roar. He heard the driver shout, there was a loud thump, and then the carriage lurched. He was about to look out and see what had happened when he heard another sound, the thump, thump, thump of arrows. He turned to shove Greta down, but it was too late.

“They were there to destroy the bridge,” he said. His eyes were wide, his voice numb again, like he had replayed the scene over in his own head a thousand times already. “We came along just as it was going down. The driver shouted at them, and they killed him. Then sprayed us with more arrows before they galloped off.”

“Who, Walther? Who did this?”

“I took her back to her parents. I knew that’s where she’d want to go. I took her back, Lia. I washed her. I wrapped her in a blanket and held her. Her and the baby. I held her for two days before they made me give her to them.”

“Who did this?”

He looked at me, his eyes suddenly focused again, his mouth contorting in disgust as if I hadn’t been listening. “I have to go.”

“No,” I whispered softly trying to soothe him. “No.” I reached up to push his hair aside and check the gash in his forehead. He hadn’t told me how he got it. In his crazed state, he probably didn’t even know it was there.