Claire knew this routine well by now.
Resistance wouldn’t get her anywhere; the old estate had no shortage of staff and security who’d happily “correct” her if she tried.
She gathered her skirt, folded the knit fabric as thick as she could beneath her knees, and knelt.
Margaret pulled her shawl tighter and stepped closer, voice like ice.
“Where’s Ethan?”
Claire kept her head down.
“Business trip.”
“Business trip?
Call him yourself and ask!
Ask him who he’s with right now!”
At one glance from Margaret, the maid beside her snatched Claire’s bag, pulled out her phone, and handed it over.
Margaret dialed Ethan’s number and put it on speaker.
It rang for a long time before someone finally picked up.
“Claire?
Ethan’s in the shower.
Is it urgent?
I’ll pass along the message.”
Rosalind’s voice.
Claire’s head dropped lower, humiliation crawling through every inch of her.
Knowing something privately was one thing.
Having it laid bare in front of someone else was another entirely like being stripped down and put on display.
Margaret held the phone up, eyes burning a clear message into her: answer.
Claire parted bloodless lips.
“I have a fever.
Tell him to come home tonight.”
“Of course.
Take some medicine, don’t push through it.”
Rosalind kept up two full minutes of hollow concern before ending the call.
Margaret hurled the phone down at Claire’s feet, so furious her shawl slipped off.
She yanked it back up hard, the tassels catching Claire across the eye, sharp enough to sting tears loose.
“Back when Ethan forced this marriage on the family, threatening to run off and settle abroad with you I only went along with it because he’s my only son.”
“I thought you’d be impressive, at least.
A deaf girl talks him into throwing away his family, his inheritance and three years later, you’ve given him no children, and you can’t even hold onto him.
How exactly did you worm your way into this family?
We couldn’t shake you loose as a child, and now you’re grown and useless.
Tell me, how good are you?”
Margaret paced, her voice raw from screaming, and turned to find Claire kneeling perfectly still, silent as a carved statue, seemingly deaf to every word.
Her temper spiked even higher.
“Go kneel outside the family shrine.
Stay there until your husband comes to collect you himself.”
Claire rose without a word, turned, and walked out.
Margaret nearly went dizzy with rage at the sheer defiance of it.
She snapped at her assistant.
“Find out where Rosalind is staying.
Bring her to me now.
I let it go before, because Julian wasn’t my blood son, and I told myself as his stepmother it wasn’t my place to interfere in who he married.”
But Julian’s gone now, the old woman’s too sick to leave her bed, and I can’t even handle one little schemer under my own roof.
A widow, chasing after my son.
She’ll walk in on two feet and leave on a stretcher.
The rain came down hard that night like the sky itself had caved in.
Claire’s clothes and coat soaked through completely, clinging heavy against her back.
She curled her arms around herself, hunched small, forehead nearly touching the ground.
She’d knelt like this more times than she could count over the past three years.
Through blistering heat.
Through snow.
But rain was always the worst.
Terrified that the rain would ruin the external processor of her implant, she always removed it first and sealed it carefully in a waterproof pouch before kneeling.
Which meant on nights like this, she could feel the rain hitting her skin but heard absolutely nothing.
The world went utterly silent.
She was completely alone in it.
Just like the night she’d almost been sent away from the Ashfords for good.
She hadn’t had the implant yet, back then.
She’d knelt in the rain and begged, clumsy hands stumbling through sign language she barely knew.
“Mom…
I can talk…”
“Don’t send me away, I can work…”
“I won’t eat meat anymore…”
She never understood why they’d taken her in only to cast her out.
She’d assumed it was because she couldn’t speak right.
Because she ate too much.
But if they threw her out, she had nowhere else to go.
The accident had taken her hearing and most of her memories from before age five, along with it.
Just as her vision started to blur, she saw him, a boy, warm as winter sunlight, running down from the house.
He was arguing with Margaret about something, pointing out at her kneeling in the rain, then holding up his piggy bank, gesturing wildly.
Finally he sprinted out to her, umbrella in one hand, piggy bank in the other, grinning ear to ear.
“You’re staying.
I’ll take care of you.”
That was what he’d said.
It was the very first sentence Claire ever learned to read off someone’s lips.
She became the daughter of Gordon Whitman, the Ashfords’ groundskeeper.
Her name changed that day from Claire Ashford to Claire Whitman.
Twenty years later, though, no boy was coming to save her with an umbrella and a piggy bank, to tell her she finally had a family.
In a guest room in the estate’s annex, Marcus glanced toward Weston Shaw standing at the window and elbowed his younger brother, Graham.
“The boss has been standing there for ten minutes.
Say something already.”
“You know exactly what’s going on between the CEO and Miss Whitman.
I’d like to keep living, thanks.”
“Since when are you such a coward?
You think he’ll actually bite your head off?”
“Could happen.”
Weston turned from the window.
“I’m not deaf yet.”
Marcus cleared his throat.
“Sir it’s pouring out there tonight.
Maybe mention that punishment ought to have limits?
You’re her brother, your word carries weight”
“Half-brother,” Weston corrected, clearly irritated.
“I’m here representing the Shaw family for the funeral.
I’ve been a guest under this roof for two days.
Family matters are the family’s business.
It’s not my place.”
Marcus went quiet.
After a long silence, Weston finally asked, “Where’s Ethan?”
Graham gave a dry laugh.
“Cozied up with his sister-in-law, alone together in the middle of the night.
You’d think they’d worry about Julian’s ghost showing up at the foot of the bed.”
When Claire woke again, she was back at Ashford Manor.
Whisper lay curled beside her pillow, glass-bead eyes fixed on her with something close to worry.
Claire reached out and touched the kitten’s small head, her voice hoarse.
“It’s fine, baby.
Mommy’s tougher than she looks.”
Meow
She got up, opened a can of food for Whisper, and made her way downstairs.
Aunt Nora brought her ginger tea, wincing at the blood-soaked gauze still taped to Claire’s forehead, her face gone paper-white beneath it.
“Ma’am, you shouldn’t have to go through this.
When your husband gets back, you need to tell him he cannot keep letting them punish you like this.
Kneeling in that storm last night, your body can’t take it.”
Claire sipped the tea, still lightheaded, and managed a small, forced smile.
“Don’t bother him with it.”
Aunt Nora had no idea about Ethan and Rosalind.
She assumed this was simply Margaret making trouble again, like always and that Ethan would step in on Claire’s side, like always.
Claire had only just learned better.
He wasn’t standing beside her anymore.
He was standing beside Rosalind.
The tea cleared her head a little, though her nose stayed stubbornly stuffed.
She got dressed, planning to head to the research institute to get Professor Wren’s signature.
On her way out, she noticed a neatly folded black coat on the sofa, a hot water bottle resting on top of it.
“Aunt Nora, who brought me home last night?”
“Security carried you back.
I heard Mrs.
Ashford saw you’d collapsed and finally agreed to let them bring you in.”
“And the coat?
The hot water bottle?”
“Isn’t that the master’s coat?” Aunt Nora asked, puzzled.
“You had it on when they brought you in.
The hem was damp, but the rest stayed dry.
That bottle was still warm too otherwise you’d have frozen solid out there.
Someone from the old house must have slipped it to you quietly, probably worried what the master would do if he found out how badly you’d been punished.”
Claire had Aunt Nora bag up the coat, then picked up the hot water bottle and turned it inside out.
There, stitched into the fabric small, clumsy, unmistakably handmade.
A sleepy little sloth.