He had not merely preferred her. He had faked his own death. He had stolen his dead brother's name, his identity, his place in the Family, and worn it like a second skin so that he could sit beside her at the table every Sunday and call her sister-in-law while the real sister-in-law wept upstairs over a man who was not even gone.
I could not breathe.
I ran. Out of the study, through the service corridor, past the soldier posted at the garden gate who called after me and got no answer. The rain had started without warning, the way it does on the coast, sudden and vicious, and I went straight into it. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't care. The sound that came out of me did not sound like crying. It sounded like something being torn open from the inside.
I stayed in the rain until dawn. When the sky finally turned grey enough to see by, I walked into the nearest hospital, soaked through, shaking, looking like something the tide had refused.
"Doctor. I need the procedure."
The physician studied me over the rim of his glasses. "Miss Bellandi. Are you certain?"