Chapter 7: What Camille Did Next
Camille had not gone quietly to the drawing room where the detective had asked her to wait.
She had gone to the coat room instead.
The staff member stationed near the entrance had assumed she was retrieving something.
She was composed, unhurried, moving with the particular confidence of a woman who had spent her entire life in rooms where no one questioned her.
By the time anyone realized she was heading for the side door, she was already through it.
Garrett caught her at the garden gate.
She had her phone in one hand and her car keys in the other.
Her silver gown had a tear at the hem from the gravel path.
She looked at Garrett the way she looked at everyone who worked for someone else — as though his presence was a minor inconvenience she would address in a moment.
"I need to make a private call," she said.
"I'll be back inside in ten minutes."
"Ms.
Prescott." Garrett didn't move from the gate.
"The detective asked you to remain in the drawing room."
"The detective can wait."
"He can't, actually." Garrett held out his hand.
"I need your phone."
Camille's composure cracked at the edges.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
"You cannot take my phone.
I have rights—"
"You're not under arrest.
You're being asked to cooperate." Garrett kept his hand out.
"If you'd like to discuss your rights, the detective is inside and he's very happy to explain them."
Camille looked past him at the gate.
The grounds beyond it were dark.
The police vehicles were parked at the front of the house, not here.
For a moment, Julian could see her calculating.
He had come around the side of the house in time to watch it.
"Camille," he said.
She turned.
Whatever she saw in his face made the calculation stop.
"Who were you calling?" he asked.
"My attorney."
"You have his number memorized?"
She didn't answer.
"You were calling Malcolm," Julian said.
"To tell him what we found.
To coordinate the story before the police had a chance to separate you." He walked toward her slowly.
"How long have you known?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"How long have you known about my mother?"
"Julian, I am standing in a garden in an evening gown after being humiliated in front of two hundred people, and you are asking me—"
"How long?"
She stopped.
The garden was very quiet.
Somewhere beyond the wall, a car moved along the road.
The sound faded.
"Malcolm told me before the engagement," she said.
"He said there was an old situation involving your mother's d3ath.
He said it had been handled.
He said the only remaining risk was a woman who might surface eventually with something Helena had given her." Her voice had lost its social polish.
What was underneath it was harder and colder.
"He said if she appeared, I should deal with it quickly and quietly."
"And the riding crop," Julian said.
"That was your idea of quietly."
"I panicked." The word came out stripped of anything defensive.
Just a fact.
"She was wearing the locket.
I recognized it from the photograph Malcolm showed me.
I didn't think.
I just—" She stopped.
"You just reached for a weapon," Julian said.
Camille looked at the ground.
"Did you know what was on the memory card?" Julian asked.
"No.
Malcolm said it was financial records.
He said if it ever surfaced it would create a scandal but nothing criminal." She looked up.
"He lied to me."
"He lies to everyone," Julian said.
"He's very good at it.
I didn't see it for thirty years."
Something moved across Camille's face.
Not guilt, exactly.
Something more like the particular vertigo of realizing you have been used by someone you thought you were using.
"I didn't know about your mother," she said.
"Not the full truth.
I want you to understand that."
"It doesn't change what you did to Nora."
Camille's mouth pressed into a line.
"No," she said, after a moment.
"It doesn't."
Garrett was still standing at the gate.
Julian looked at him.
"Take her inside.
Give her phone to the detective."
"Julian—"
"The engagement is over, Camille." He said it without heat.
"Whatever you knew and whatever you didn't know, it's over.
Tell the detective everything Malcolm told you.
All of it.
It will be better for you than protecting him."
She looked at him for a long moment.
The silver gown caught the garden light.
She had been, Julian thought, genuinely beautiful tonight.
She had also been, in the same evening, genuinely cruel.
Both things were true and neither of them mattered now.
Garrett opened the gate and gestured toward the side door.
Camille walked past Julian without another word.
Her heels on the gravel path were very precise and very controlled, right up until she reached the door and her hand shook slightly on the handle.
Julian watched the door close behind her.
He stood alone in the garden for a moment.
The night air was cold.
May you like
He had given his jacket to Nora and hadn't thought about it since.
He went back inside.
