Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

“He knew about what?” I watched her follow Ewan down the path with her eyes, and then the truth began to connect. “You and Ewan.”

“David found out when he started meeting with Jack that Jack’s son was in love with a gentry girl. We each had something the other needed. I needed him to keep his mouth shut about Ewan, and he needed the appearance of being a normal gentry boy. He needed to look happy and carefree, and I could help him with that. In public, of course, which ended up backfiring once Ewan heard that we were dating. You saw him at his house. I thought he was going to throw me into that laundry vat. He wrote me a letter telling me never to speak or write to him again. After that, I—I was upset. I didn’t care about anything else if I didn’t have Ewan.”

Cara and Ewan. The idea was ridiculous, and yet it fit together with everything that had happened this year. “How did you meet?”

“The first time he came to change the Westoff charges, he couldn’t find his way into the house, and we met face-to-face on the patio. I didn’t realize he was Rootless at first because he was so healthy and strong. I thought he was a servant and I teased him a little about being so quiet. He told me that it was because he had heard I talked enough for an entire city. Then I dared him to kiss me.”

“Did he?”

“Of course.”

“Like that poor servant boy when we were girls.”

She shrugged. “Ewan’s the only person who has never treated me like a princess or a concubine. He made me feel strong. He made me feel like I could do anything I wanted.” She sighed. “He made every boy that wasn’t him seem frivolous and spoiled. After we ran into each other two or three more times on my estate, we started meeting in secret.”

I struggled to imagine Ewan—the tense revolutionary, the angry rebel—falling in love with a spoiled girl like Cara. And Cara—who had never once expressed any sympathy for anyone less fortunate than her—how had she found herself craving the company of a charge changer?

She noticed my expression. “What?”

“It is just that you two… do not seem to have much in common,” I said delicately.

Ewan was long gone, but Cara continued staring out the window, as if she had vision that could penetrate through all the snow and houses and trees that separated the sight of Ewan from her eyes. “You know, at first, I think we hated each other. There wasn’t much, um, conversing when we were first meeting up, and neither of us wanted to talk about it or us or anything at all. And not only would I walk away resenting him, but I would feel ashamed of myself. All those things they tell us as children, about our responsibility to marry someone of good gentry stock, about how purity of breeding is what kept our world from sinking into another war—” She shook her head, brushing away the echoes of her memories. “I believed it my whole life. But there was nothing weak or craven about Ewan—not at all like how they describe the Rootless in school. He was strong and gentle and before I knew it, I wanted to do more than touch him. I wanted to know him. And you know what? I don’t think anyone, not even one of his fellow Rootless, had ever wanted to know him. To them, he was a soldier. A strong body. But to me, he is so much more.”

I felt a heaviness weigh on me as I thought of all the unfair things I’d thought—and said—about Cara. This whole year, she’d been risking everything to see the man she loved.

“So you were meeting secretly. And then you were going to see him at the Wilder debut. Wearing your pink coat.”

“It was supposed to be easy,” she said, suddenly flaring into emotion. “He took a friend’s job that day to collect the Wilder charges. No one would miss me at the ball, and I had already hinted to a few people that I would be occupied with Philip Wilder. We would be able to spend a few moments alone together, while the rest of the city was occupied.”

“What happened?”

Cara sat down on the bench under the window. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wet. “Mother.”

“Addison?”

“She followed me. She had noticed that I’d been acting differently, sneaking out at strange times. She followed me to the grove and found me with Ewan.” Tears clung to her eyelashes and dripped down her cheeks. “I made him run as soon as we heard footsteps, but he left his bag, and he still had my coat in his arms… . Mother was so angry. Said I was destroying my chances of having a healthy gentry heir. Said I was disgusting. That Ewan was vermin. She hit me, and I fell into the brambles nearby. She hit me again and again.”

I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine living with someone who had hurt me so viciously, who continued to hurt me afterward. And I couldn’t believe that there were times when I had almost liked Addison, with her acerbic wit and keen observations. But then again, there were times when I loved my father, and he left lacerations of his own, even if they couldn’t be seen.

“Cara…”

“I was too surprised to fight back, and then she left after I screamed, and you came. It all happened so fast. Your father was so intent on hunting down the Rootless, and the bag was right there and I knew my mother would…”

“But they could have hurt Ewan,” I pointed out.

“I was hoping they wouldn’t. There are so many other Rootless…”

“So it was okay if lots of innocent people got hurt as long as it was not the one you cared about?”

Her voice was fierce. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know what to do or what to say, and no matter what I did, my mother would be able stop it.” She drew a shuddering breath.

I put my hand on hers.

She brushed a lock of hair away from her face, the tear tracks still glistening on her cheeks. “Ewan was furious that I lied, that I protected my mother. He wanted the whole world to know how corrupt and violent the gentry could be. He wanted to go to the constables or to your father. He knew that he would most likely be arrested, but he accepted that, too. In fact, he told me he would rather be arrested and killed than watch his people suffer.”

“So why didn’t he step forward?”

“Jack,” she whispered. “He forbade Ewan to speak. He said that the more the Rootless suffered at the hands of the gentry, the more it primed them for their great revolution. He said that it was a pain akin to a birthing pain and that the pain was necessary for a new world.”

I saw with some surprise that my hand had tightened around Cara’s; my fingers were white and bloodless.

An echoing clunking and shuffling announced Jack coming down the hallway, and Cara and I both started, dropping each other’s hands. I swallowed back this new uneasiness and met his gaze with what I hoped was a composedly polite expression.

He smiled at Cara and me. “Hello, ladies,” he said. “I see we are all relieved that yesterday’s unpleasantness is over?”

“Yes,” Cara said.

“My son seems especially happy,” Jack mused. “I wonder why. Hmm.”

“Jack?” I asked. “I was wondering if I could speak to you?”

“Of course,” he rumbled.

I stood up and took his arm. “Miss Westoff,” he said with a tilt of his head. She inclined her head in response. He steered me back south, the direction of the foyer.

“What would you like to talk about?”

“You.”

We walked slowly to accommodate his limp.

“If I am not mistaken, you want to ask why I went to the trouble of running away and spending years among the Rootless planning a revolt with foreign help, only to come back to the very place I left.”

Or why you let your people suffer to encourage their hatred of the gentry. Or why you let my father be maimed in the name of vengeance.