"What was it?"
All three boys froze, immortalized. A tableau of mutiny. Sunlight flooded the parlor and wrote each of Mare's suitors in silhouette, shifting and unreadable. But Mare no longer wished to read them. There would be no more guessing or playing, no more wanting or wisting or yearning or dreaming. After this, after the answers, there would be no more of this love story to tell.
Was it ever love? Mare swallowed her tears. She had cried enough these last months. She was tired; her resolve worn thin, fissured like porcelain, one touch from total demise.
It was Teddy who stepped toward her first, pale and imploring. Mare simply raised a hand, directing her eyes from his as she might a too-bright flame or loaded gun.
"Please," he said softly. "Let me explain."
"Do." Mare faced Geoffrey, whose handsome face was uncharacteristically pained. His mouth was a tight line, his brow furrowed. Whatever sense of aloofness he'd practiced the last few months was corroded by clear guilt. "All of you."
"I wanted to tell you," began Teddy. His voice cracked. He clenched and unclenched his fists at his side; one was red, two knuckles split clean. Mare's eyes went to Camden's face, where a bleeding lip answered her question.
"Is..." Mare was ashamed of how soft her voice came. How clearly wounded. She shook her head. Out for blood. Teach me to bite. Falling. Taking aim. "Why?"
Teddy's eyes fluttered shut.
She supposed she did not require him to answer. She'd heard enough. "You knew it was me. How?"
"We guessed," said Camden softly. "The letters—"
"His letters," Mare said. The words cracked like a whip from her lips, and she savored the confidence, angry and powerful, that coursed through her. When she looked to Camden this time, she didn't look away. She held his black eyes. Demanding. "Not yours. Teddy wrote them. Teddy is my writer."
"I never suspected," Teddy said, taking a step toward Mare that felt all too familiar, all too bold. "Not until..."
"He found them." Geoffrey, seated, stood. "Camden found them at Almagest and stole them."
"Geoffrey," warned Camden, eyes flashing.
"He proposed a game between us," Geoffrey continued, looking to Mare. He stood at her shoulder, facing the others. Us against the world. "It began with the roses."
"To humiliate me," Mare said softly. She meant it to be a question, but she already knew it was an answer.
"No," snapped Camden. "To..."
"What?" Mare held his eyes again. "Why? All of the boys?"
"It was a game," said Camden. He had the good grace to flush slightly in the dazzling morning light. It made him look like the cruel, spoiled, petulant child he truly was. "It was to be a challenge, among all of the boys."
"To what?" Snapped Mare.
"To..." Camden's eyes drop.
"To see who could make you fall in love with them," supplemented Geoffrey. His hand was on Mare's arm and she wanted to slap it away. But she was calcified, rooted in place. Unmoving and unfeeling and going nowhere. "But we decided after the ball it would be between the three of us instead."
Mare closed her eyes. Her heart raged. She was a breath from tears, and she would be damned if she cried in front of these monstrous, heartless boys. I won't waste the salt. But it was a promise on pinkies and dandelions and it meant nothing, even to her.
A tear slipped and Geoffrey's fingers tightened on her arm. Mare struck his hand away. "Bastards," she whispered, and each boy had the audacity to look aghast. "Cruel and vile. Abusers of power. Bored with yourselves and playing games with everyone else. Just like your fathers."
Teddy's eyes were bright. In the blinding sunshine, she couldn't tell if they reflected her tears. "It is not that simple."
"When did you agree?" Mare asked. She held Teddy's eyes, because this was the true question. This was the wax on the envelope; the nail in the coffin.
His expression was pleading. "Mare."
"When?"
He closed his eyes. "After we figured...after we realized..."
"That it was me," she said softly. "You loved me until you knew my name."
"I was a fool." Mare didn't imagine the tears that filled Theodore Bridge's eyes. "I was a bastard, Mare. A coward."
"And a selfish man." Mare shook her head, hands clenched into fists at her sides. "The school paper? I went to Miss Cressida and found a paper you—or one of you—wrote. I believed it was..." Mare looked to Camden, bitterness rising in her like a gale off the sea.
"I forged papers in school," admitted Camden. He straightened his coat jacket, eyes narrowed. "Had Teddy write them."
Lord above. Mare touched her lips, eyes closed. I am a fool. Star-crossed and tragic. My vices are my poison and this is how I die.
"And you," she said, turning to Geoffrey. He retreated a step, cowed no doubt by the scorn in Mare's eyes. "Why did you publish them?"
"I was protecting you," Geoffrey answered quietly. "I thought I could lead you back to them—"
"It was all a game," Mare said. She held Geoffrey's tawny eyes and refused to blink. "None of you cared for me. You followed me like hounds to see who might run me to ground first."
Teddy flinched. "Mare—"
"How was one to win?" She demanded, looking between them. "How did one become the victor?"
Teddy pressed his lips together. Camden crossed his arms.
"A kiss," Geoffrey finally said, voice fragile. "The first to kiss you."
Mare's eyes went to Teddy's. His jaw was tight, eyes pleading. "And the prize?"
"The letters," Teddy said.
"Worth ruining a woman's reputation over, I suppose?" Mare didn't care anymore that she was crying. She vowed on each tear that it was the last she would ever waste on a man. "Worth ruining a woman's prospects and dismantling her future? Why?"
All three boys lowered their gazes, but Mare was not asking for the sake of hearing the words spoken. She wanted God damned answers.
"All of it," she said. "Why? Why me? Why take my letters? Why make a game of me and my life? My heart? Was I so vain? My reputation so sullied by my name? Was I too cold or too sharp?" Mare's voice rose with every word, tears streaming from her eyes. Her momentum was only gaining, but she found she could not stop herself. "Tell me! Tell me what would compel three rich, handsome, powerful men to destroy the life of one woman!"
Mare was answered with silence, and she filled it with a laugh, as heartbroken and anguished as she felt. "All of you are cowards. I am lucky to be free of you. I would choose a life of condemnation and ridicule over marriage to any of you. You are not men. You are children. Boys given too much power. Boys given the world for nothing but your name and black hearts, while women receive nothing for all that they are. I pity your wives, and you daughters and your sons. I pity you."
Mare spun on her heel and made for the door.
"You are not blameless."
She froze. Turned to appraise Camden over her shoulder. He didn't flinch, his handsome face twisted with indignation. "Oh," Mare whispered, "do go on, Mr. Doores. Tell me my trespass."
"You played along," he said, lifting a hand in accusation. "You are not a helpless girl—"
"Woman," Mare sneered, unsure why the word girl set off a blaze of fury in her heart.
"You are not helpless, Mare Atwood," said Camden. "And you are not heartless. I know there was..."
"What?"
"Something. Between us."
Mare laughed, turning to face him. "If you were the last man on this earth and I the last girl, I would choose a coffin over your ring on my finger."
"We still have your letters," he hissed, black eyes narrowed, snakelike. "If I were you, Mare Atwood, I would watch my tone."
Mare's heart turned to coal in her chest. She did not think before lashing. Her palm connected with Camden's cheek with a deafening crack. His head jerked to the side, his jaw and neck taut as a bowstring.
"And to think," he growled, "I thought I'd found something in you worth marrying."
Mare pressed her lips together, resisting the urge to slap him once more. "And to think," she said back, "I thought I'd found something in you worth saving. Give your future wife, whoever she may be, my sincerest condolences."
"Mare," said Geoffrey as she turned back toward the door. "It was never meant to harm you."
"No. I don't suppose it was." She held his eyes, unflinching. There was nothing in his familiar face that felt lovely anymore. He was just a selfish boy with a wandering heart and an apathetic mind. "But that is always the answer for you men, isn't it? I spend my life tiptoeing while you stride, and for my caution I am the one wounded."
Mare made for the door, but stopped. Teddy had not said a word. And she knew in her heart this was the last she would see of him, of Camden, of Geoffrey. Of this estate and this life she'd glimpsed: opulence and wealth, passion. Possibility.
She looked at him over her shoulder. "I told you my secrets," she said. He looked up and held her eyes, his own shadowed, anguished. "And I thought you told me yours. But you never did. And how could you love me when you loath yourself?"
Mare turned from him.
"Mare."
It was Camden who spoke, and Mare bristled, looking at him over her shoulder once more. His expression was steel and ice, his black eyes like bullets.
"Speak of this to no one," he said softly, "and we shall all carry on as though it never happened."
"Our courtship is broken," Mare answered, cocking her head. "You have condemned my reputation by turning your back, yet expect me to protect yours?"
"To be fair," Camden said, unblinking, "yours was nothing to begin with; it has not so far to fall."
"As yours."
"We have lives ahead of us," said Camden, no hint of satire in his tone.
"And I do not."
"Not as we do. And do not blame us for it," Camden lifted a brow, and he looked so like his father Mare nearly said so. As it was, her tongue felt like stone in her mouth. She was so stunned by the words of this boy, this man, who she'd considered marrying. A man she thought herself capable of falling for. "You entered this game with lower stakes."
"An unwilling player," Mare said, and her voice sounded like a warning though she did not bid it to.
"A player nonetheless."
"I will tell who I please," hissed Mare. "And you shall never threaten me again, lest you wish to be threatened in return."
"I am not afraid of you." Camden's lips turned up in a smirk, and Mare wished she'd slapped him again when she'd been close enough.
"Well, Mr. Doores," she said quietly, refusing to look from his eyes, "perhaps you should be." Without a word she turned and strode into the hall. Camden's footsteps followed her.
"Do not court ruin, Mare," he called after her. "Pride cometh before the fall."
The fall? Oh, we are far past that.
"I will see to it if any word of this breaks, Atwood."
Rage pounded through Mare, in tandem with her steps down the hall.
"Keep quiet and no harm shall come of this."
Mare whipped on her heel. Camden, Geoffrey, and Teddy stood in the hall. Three shadows. Mare was not afraid of them. She intended to say as much, but before she could, an all-too familiar voice shattered the tense quiet.
"What a man."
Mare pivoted sharply, the blood draining from her face. At the end of the hall stood her mother, expression wrought with fury. They were right.
Hell had nothing like it.