Page 90 of A Single Thread of Moonlight

“Yes,” I said simply. “Iris Scott-Holland.”

“So it is you.”

“Yes.”

He took a step towards me and then stopped. “I wondered, when Agatha mentioned your name … but then they said that she had died.”

I shook my head. “They just let everyone assume. It’s much easier that way. In a couple of weeks it will have been seven years and Iris Scott-Holland really will be dead – legally, at least.”

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “And this is your home,” he said finally.

“It is,” I agreed. “Or it was. I’m not entirely sure.”

He looked at me then, his eyes flicking across my face as though I was a book he was trying to read.

“I think,” he said heavily, “that you had better begin at the beginning.”

I nodded, then felt around for the words to do so. “When I was nine,” I said, “my mother died. It was terrible, but I was close with my father. Then, around a year later, he married Helena.”

The words felt rusty as I forced them out, but Nick nodded encouragingly.

“At first, I tried to be excited about having a stepmother and two new sisters, but it didn’t go well. Helena and Agatha took an instant dislike to me. Agatha made my life unpleasant. She began to tell her mother stories about my behaviour. They were lies, but it didn’t seem to matter.

“As far as my stepmother was concerned, I was trouble. I was difficult. My father defended me when he was there, but more and more he was called away by business on the estate. Often, it was up to Helena to decide if I was in the wrong, and when choosing between me and Agatha, there was never a chance I would go unpunished.”

Nick made a noise then in the back of his throat, and I glanced up at him.

“It was bad,” I admitted. “I was bewildered by it, I suppose. I didn’t know what I had done to make them both hate me so much. Then, about a year after they were married, my father had a riding accident and died. My father was an excellent rider. He taught me when I was young, we rode together all the time. I didn’t believe it could have been an accident. I thought Helena was involved somehow…” I trailed off. After all, it seemed I had been wrong on that front.

“And then?” Nick asked.

“And then things got worse.” I shrugged. “Father’s estate was unentailed, and he left everything in his will to his ‘daughters’ – Agatha, Cassie and me, to be held in trust until we were twenty-one by Helena. I was eleven years old. Twenty-one was an unimaginable age.” I cleared my throat. “Helena moved me out of my bedroom to a smaller room near the servants’ quarters, just while she redecorated, she said, but we both knew that was a lie. She asked if I would be more comfortable eating my meals with Mrs Chambers, the housekeeper, rather than in the dining room with her and the girls, since I had known Mrs Chambers all my life. I was actually much more comfortable, but the servants didn’t know what to do with me. I don’t think Helena did either.” I smiled grimly.

“Finally, she began to talk about sending me away – somewhere that would ‘correct’ my bad ways.”

This time there was no mistaking the noise that Nick made. It was low, like a growl.

“Well, exactly,” I agreed, smiling ruefully up at him. “I had read Jane Eyre and I knew how that story ended. When a man came to talk to Helena about my new school, my fears were confirmed. I remember everything about him. He was tall and gaunt, like a skeleton with wicked black eyes that lit up when he spoke about just punishment, and the path to meekness.” I looked back down at my hands. “I was frightened. It was the last straw. I thought Helena had rid herself of my father, and I assumed she wanted to do the same with me. I felt sure that if I went away with that man, that something awful would happen. That I wouldn’t come back.”

I hesitated for a moment, my voice trembling despite my determination to deliver the facts calmly. That day had been perhaps the most frightening experience of my life. I still had nightmares about that man coming to take me away. I remembered that moment as the one in which I had finally realized that I was alone. Utterly alone.

“And so,” I continued briskly, pushing those thoughts aside, “I ran away to London, found work as a seamstress, and there I’ve been ever since, until the day you walked into the shop.”

“How long ago was all this?” Nick asked. “How old were you when you ran away?”

“I was eleven, almost twelve.”

“Almost twelve,” Nick repeated mechanically.

I nodded.

“And then I appeared, with a plan to bring you here of all places,” he said slowly.

“Yes. I was getting desperate. Like I said, it’s been almost seven years since I disappeared, at which time Helena can have Iris Scott-Holland declared legally dead, and my share of the inheritance passes to Agatha and Cassie. It seemed like my last chance to try and find some answers, it seemed almost like…”

“Fate.” Nick finished my sentence.

“Yes,” I said again.