An Honorable Deception (The Imposters #3)

Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

T he rain hadn’t stopped in the three days it had been since Lord Fairfax and Lavinia departed for London. The sun hadn’t shown its face. The ground had turned to a morass of mud that would have stolen the jutti slippers from her feet had she dared step foot outside, and Alethia couldn’t help but feel a little safer.

Foolish. An English rain offered no safety. No promises. She knew that. Knew it wouldn’t slow anyone’s travel if they’d found out where she was, knew that the trains were still running and carriages and cars still driving. She knew the rain wouldn’t keep the monsters away here.

India’s monsoon season, however, had been the only time of year when she’d known that she could laugh. Play. Listen to Samira’s stories. And know that when she curled up to sleep beneath her mosquito net, she wouldn’t wake up in a wardrobe, those whispered warnings in her ears.

In monsoon season, the viceroy’s household traveled—everyone but her and her ayah, because who wanted to be bothered with a child on a long journey? Not her parents. Off they would go, and home she would stay.

Those two-and-a-half months were the happiest of every year.

She lifted a hand and pressed it to the cool glass pane. She could manage the stairs without Zelda’s assistance now, so she’d been spending most of her time in the drawing room, looking out over the drive.

Looking for Fairfax and Lavinia to return.

Looking for the monsters to find her.

Praying. Reading. Pacing, and telling herself it was to regain her strength and not to keep the nervous energy from undoing her.

“They’ll be here soon.” Marigold’s voice came from the chaise on which she’d stretched out, one hand rubbing her stomach and the other holding open a book. “Any minute, I’d say.”

Fairfax and Lavinia and Sir Merritt. That was all. Marigold’s family. Alethia’s new friends. People she trusted because they’d proven in their short acquaintance that they were worthy of it—far more than nearly everyone she’d known.

Samira? Would they have Samira with them? The last telegram they’d sent had simply said that Mr. A expected to recover her tomorrow—yesterday—and that they’d arrive on the two o’clock train the day after that. Today.

But there’d been no other wire. No assurance she’d been found. No confirmation that they were, indeed, on that train. She folded her arms over her middle and clasped her hands to her elbows. The rain came steadily down. What if the men who shot her realized they were helping? They could be hurt. Dead.

And it would be her fault.

“You tell our secret, little darling, and Samira will be the first to be hurt, but not the last. And it will be all your fault. Is that what you want?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. So many years, the voice had been silent, the bruises had faded from her memory as they had from her arms where he’d squeezed his warning. Because for so many years, she’d thought the danger had passed. It had all changed when they got to England—all of it. The day she said farewell to Samira, Mama had whisked her off to a boarding school. From there, finishing school. They were always traveling for holidays, so she’d never even gone home. Mama visited her regularly. She’d never even insisted Alethia write to anyone but her.

Then she had graduated. She’d had nowhere else to hide—and had to prepare for her debut. But the fear she’d felt when she first stepped back into Barremore House had quickly fizzled. Mama had exclaimed over how beautiful and grown-up she looked. Father had given her a stiff peck on the cheek and said she had much to live up to if she meant to honor the family name. Uncle Reuben had given her a once-over and asked her how she’d enjoyed her various schools, then returned to the newspaper before she’d uttered more than a sentence in response.

Maybe it was her fault it had started up again. She was the one who had put the beaded shoes on under her coming-out gown. She was the one who had chosen the pashmina shawl. She was the one who had fastened Samira’s jewelry to her ears and throat and wrists. Was that what had led them back here? Had her rebellion—an infuriated response to Father’s offhanded comment about how she’d shaped up well enough after they got her away from the Indian chit—started it? Reminded him of the past?

If she’d done what was expected, maybe Samira never would have disappeared. “ First I’ll hurt Samira.” That was what he’d always said. “ Stay quiet, do as I say, or she’ll pay the price.” Had she disobeyed? Was that why Samira had vanished? Why Alethia was recovering from gunshot wounds? Why she was wondering now if new friends or old monsters were in the carriage that had turned up the drive? Or the car behind it?

Wait—a car? The Fairfaxes, so far as she knew, had no automobile.

Perhaps Mr. A had. Perhaps he was coming himself to report—to return Samira.

Perhaps it was him , coming to ruin it all.

“Ah, there they are.” Marigold put a marker in her book and pushed to her feet. The baby must have kicked when she stood because she gave a little laugh and rubbed at the spot. “That’s right, little one. Your dada will be in here saying hello to you in a moment.” She frowned, though, when she spotted the auto. “Merritt must have borrowed it,” she mused, seemingly to herself. “Though I do wonder why.”

Alethia told herself to follow her hostess out of the room, toward the doors. To greet whoever arrived, friend or foe, with her chin up. She managed to put one foot in front of the other, but she’d only made it to the drawing room doors by the time the front ones opened.

She must have been holding her breath because her head went light and she had to clutch the doorframe for support. But it was Sir Merritt who jogged in first, tossing an umbrella heedlessly to the marble floor and scooping his wife into his arms with a laugh.

Sir Merritt. Friends, then. She sucked in a long breath as the others spilled in. Lavinia. Lord Fairfax. And then...

She straightened, her eyes going wide. “Mama?”

Her mother’s face lit when she spotted her, and she rushed her way with arms outstretched, nearly blocking her view of the final figure. Nearly. Not quite.

Alethia was enveloped in silk and heavy perfume and arms she’d never felt hold her quite so tightly—and yet carefully, as if she knew where not to squeeze. “Mama? Is that Lord Xavier with you? Why?”

Where was Samira? That was what she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t think her mother would have that answer.

She couldn’t think why her mother was here .

She couldn’t think what it meant that she was. She’d sent her the letters, yes, because she knew for a fact her mother never shared with anyone else anything that Alethia wrote. She’d never been certain, truth be told, that her mother even gave them more than a glance. Whenever talk turned to what she’d written home about while she was at school, the facts her family thought they knew bore no resemblance to what she’d reported. She’d gone with a friend to Sheffield—Father asked her how she’d liked Scotland. She’d spent the last Christmas before she’d come home in Cornwall—Uncle Reuben thought she’d been in Paris.

She’d never corrected them. It only would have made them scowl at her mother and insult her intelligence—a familiar refrain. Better to be silent. To send her notes to Mama, resigned to the knowledge that she gave them only the most cursory of glances and then tossed them into the grate. That when it came down to it, her mother didn’t care where she was.

A theory in stark contrast to the way Mama held her now. “My precious girl.”

“Mama?” She hugged her back, new thoughts, worries—hopes?—pummeling her. “What’s the matter? Has something happened to Father? Uncle Reuben?”

Mama pulled back, her eyes damp—and fierce. “We can only pray so.”

Her mouth fell open, but if there was a proper response to that, she didn’t know it.

Her mother’s hand cupped her cheek, nostrils flaring. “They did this—one, the other, both. I don’t know—I don’t care. They sent those men after you. To kill you. They’re lucky they’d left Town on their latest business trips before your friends told me that or I’d have killed them .”

The idea was laughable, on the one hand—Mama had never so much as swatted her own flies. But the subject was anything but humorous. Her gaze flew to the others, who still stood in a solemn knot inside the doors. Even Lord Xavier had made no move to greet her, his usual smile absent from his face.

Her stomach dropped to her toes. She took her mother’s hand from her face and held it as she stepped away, so that she could see Fairfax and Lavinia. “What happened? Where’s Samira?”

Mr. A was supposed to have found her. Rescued her. Sent her here with the others.

But there was no Samira in this sober crowd. Please, Lord. Don’t let her be dead. Please. Please, not Samira.

Lord Fairfax stepped forward, apology in his eyes. “We don’t know.”

Her breath held. Released. We don’t know was at least better than We found her body. “What happened? I thought you said the investigator—”

“He...” He glanced over at Lavinia, sighed, raked a hand through his hair. “He’d found her. At the Empire House. But it isn’t a charity, not after the doors close to the public in the evening.” He hesitated, looked now at her mother, seemingly for permission. At her nod, he grimaced and said, “It’s a brothel. Catering to the aristocracy.”

She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut. But she didn’t. Not looking at the truth wouldn’t fix it. “You said he had a plan to get her out.”

Mama’s hand slipped out of hers. “You’re not even surprised.”

Her words brought silence down upon them. Alethia’s breath came too fast, but she caught it, slowed it. Had she known that the charity was a farce? No. But it didn’t surprise her. Nothing surprised her. Not since she was six years old and went crying to her ayah because she’d known— known —that he wanted to hurt her, known the way he trailed his hands over her wasn’t right, even if she hadn’t understood how.

Her gaze dropped. This is your fault , the voice hissed in her head. But she forced her eyes up again. It wasn’t. That was what Samira had whispered far more often and with the truest kind of love. It wasn’t her fault. She’d done nothing wrong. He was the one with the sickness in his soul. He was the monster. Not her.

Why had those words always been so much harder to believe than the accusing ones? Why was it easier to believe in evil than in good? Why did the devil’s arguments sound so much more logical than God’s?

She drew in another breath, let it out, and met Fairfax’s gaze again. “I didn’t know. But I’m not surprised. He always treated her like his...” She couldn’t say the word, though he’d tossed it around like both a curse and an endearment, depending on his mood. She shook it off. “But where is she now ?”

Fairfax went silent.

Lavinia eased forward. “She was gone before Mr. A could get his people in place. He’d known she was likely to be moved, so he gathered people to watch—but she was already gone. We spent yesterday looking, but ... Mr. A is following the trail. He’ll find her.”

Mother was all but vibrating with anger. “They had her at the house , Alethia. And I didn’t even know it—I swear I didn’t. I didn’t know until your friends came pounding on the door the next morning, saying an investigator had followed clues she’d left there, and we went searching. She’d left a shoe in the corner of that unused maid’s room—that’s where they had her. But they were gone.”

“They.” She felt numb. Cold. Fuzzy.

Mama shook her head. “Your father was gone, too, on another of his trips. It had already been planned, but the timing looked right for him to have moved her when he left. The investigator is checking the train schedules—the car is still there.”

Alethia pivoted, not caring that everyone was staring at her. Not caring what they thought. She moved to the closest chair in the drawing room and sat before she fell. Her father .

“I’m sorry.” Lavinia was the first to reach her. She crouched at her side and took her hand. “It isn’t over, not by a long shot. But I know that’s little comfort right now.”

No. It was no comfort at all. Her gaze felt like a weighted, heavy thing as she lifted it, sought out her mother. “Where’s Uncle Reuben?”

“With your father, presumably. You know they’re inseparable.”

Not quite. Not always.

“And that’s good news. More people traveling together means more chances they’ll be spotted.” The cheer in Lavinia’s voice was false, but Alethia still appreciated the effort.

She ought to be comforted by the fact that her mother was here. That she’d come. That she’d said, for once, that she was sorry. That she’d admitted that something horrible had happened right beneath her nose, there in her house. It was a first.

Her throat closed off for a minute, and new guilt twisted her chest. She’d lied to Lavinia last week when they’d first spoken outside on the balcony. She’d said she didn’t hate her parents, not anymore. But she did. Oh, she did.

She hadn’t known, then, that it was a lie. But now it gurgled up. Every old fear and betrayal. Every tear she’d shed in that darker-than-night wardrobe. Every time she had begged her mother not to make her come down to say good night, not to make her give him a kiss hello, not to make her turn in a circle in her new dress to show him what a pretty little girl she was or play for him the violin he’d given her.

She was her mother . She should have stopped it, if she’d opened her eyes to see. But all she’d ever done was frown at Alethia, scowl at Samira and blame everything on her . As if the fourteen-year-old had been any more to blame than the six-year-old. As if she’d gone willingly to his arms in return for the baubles, as if each gift hadn’t been a shackle, a reminder of the words Alethia could still hear him breathing like a threat through that shielding wooden door. “You’re mine, my little lotus blossom. You’ll always be mine.”

All her mother had done for years was close her eyes to a truth she didn’t want to believe and let the horrors happen. To accept the horrid whispers of her horrid friends who claimed that Indian women like Samira were temptresses, that it wasn’t his fault if he’d been ensnared. It was Samira’s doing, she was a vixen in disguise. When Mama came to her other side now and reached for Alethia’s shoulder, she jerked away. Lurched to her feet, and then two steps away.

“Alethia?” She had the gall to look hurt.

Alethia’s fingers curled into her palms, and she was suddenly aware of the audience. Not just Lavinia, who had recognized the shadows so quickly because she had her own versions haunting her. Not Marigold, who she’d so quickly learned hid behind an ostentatious disguise to protect the truth of who she was underneath. Not even Fairfax, who she so wanted to think the best of her, who had demonstrated in countless ways since he saved her life that he’d continue to do that as long as she needed him to.

But Sir Merritt was there, who she scarcely knew, apart from what Marigold told her of him. And, worse, Lord Xavier. Society’s favorite charmer, the man who had made her heart flutter in London, standing witness to how unworthy she was of anyone’s respect. How unworthy her family was of any alliance. Fairfax, she knew instinctively would never breathe a word about it—but Xavier? Charming, lighthearted Xavier? Why had they let him come?

Her mother shifted, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Dearest.”

Alethia edged away. She could hear Samira’s voice in her head telling her that love was the only way to defeat hate. That forgiveness was the only balm to the pain.

But Samira wasn’t here .

Alethia shook her head. “You may not have known she was there in that maid’s room the other night. You may not have known that he’d kidnapped her and taken her to a place like that. But you knew what had happened before. You knew what went on in India.”

Her mother’s cheeks flushed scarlet. “I thought it one of so many shameful stories among the English households there. Do you have any idea how common it was? A British man with an Indian mistress? I didn’t know it had anything to do with you . Not until—until she told me what would happen to you if I didn’t take action. When we sent her back to Calcutta. Why do you think I sent you away? Never brought you home? Why do you think I lied about every plan you made?” She took a hesitant step forward, the tears streaming now, hands grasping for Alethia again. “But she said you’d never been hurt, that he’d never touched you. She said...”

Never been hurt? Those wouldn’t have been Samira’s words. He’d never forced himself on her like he had Samira, had only bruised her now and then when she screamed or cried too loudly—but he had hurt her in a million other ways, and Samira knew it.

And Mama—Mama had never once talked about it, even after Samira apparently warned her. They’d never had a conversation. No apologies, no questions. Alethia had, as always, been left alone to battle the fears. But her mother would bring it up now , in company?

Mortification swept over her, pairing with the old hatred and the new awareness that she wasn’t the girl she thought herself. Wasn’t so forgiving. Wasn’t so faithful. Wasn’t what Samira had taught her to be. She glanced only once toward the corner of the drawing room, where Xavier and Merritt had taken up position.

Then she pushed past her mother, past Lavinia, past Fairfax, and charged as quickly as her injured leg would carry her out the closest door she could find.

The rain cooled her cheeks and made each step of distance seem three times as long as she put it between her and the house. She had no aim, no goal. She walked, letting the morass that had once been a lawn suck greedily at Samira’s shoes.

Some compassionate soul must have stopped anyone else from chasing after her because no voices called out, aside from the rain’s. No footsteps followed hers as she waded through the puddles of the lawn.

The copse of trees, when she finally entered it, at once caught the rain and sent larger drips splashing onto her shoulders.

Her side hurt. Her leg. Her chest. She moved to a fallen tree that looked every bit as soggy as the rest of the world and sat on it, not caring a bit that it would ruin her dress or that the bark was rough against the palms she pressed to it.

As her heart rate slowed, as she filled her lungs with damp English air, the press of memories faded. Not much, but enough that she could remember the peace in Samira’s eyes as she’d hold her close in the mornings and dry her tears.

“He cannot steal my joy, sweetling,” she would say. “That is beyond his power. Because it is our good Father who gives it. Who loves us so much that He gave all for us. His suffering was so much more than ours can ever be. So when we suffer—and we all will, in this life—it can make us more like Him.”

Alethia hadn’t understood that as a child. And now, as an adult, she knew how much those words must have cost her friend. Knew that Samira must have doubted and railed and sobbed to God when she was alone. That Alethia could understand. She hadn’t wanted to suffer—who did? She hadn’t seen how it could possibly be for any good purpose, because evil was so clearly at work. But Samira had always smiled that away too.

“Do you think the men who killed Jesus meant Him anything but harm? Do you think He did not feel the pierce of it when all His friends abandoned Him to death? Do you think, when He willingly took our sins upon His sinless back as He hung on that cross, that being separated from the Father for the first time wasn’t the worst agony of all? But from that suffering came salvation for the world.”

She could very nearly feel Samira’s fingers in her hair as the rain dripped down. Smoothing it back, promising one thing, at least, that was safe and secure. “My love is imperfect, little sister. My suffering can save only your body, not your soul. But I offer it freely because He showed me the way. I offer it because then He can redeem the pain. He can use it. It can shape me in His image.”

She sat there until Samira’s words of love were louder than the ones of hate in her mind. She sat there until the rain washed the heat of resentment away. She sat there until she remembered that Christ was not far off, that her true Father hadn’t turned His back on her. He hadn’t abandoned her. He hadn’t chosen himself above her good.

She’d been praying long enough for her hands to turn to ice in the summer rain when Penelope’s chatter warned her someone was coming. It could have been one of the Caesars, and she’d have let them lead her back to the house where Zelda could scold her and help her change into dry clothes and wrap her in a blanket.

It was Fairfax, though, and he sat on the log beside her instead, looking straight ahead rather than at her face. Penelope moved from his shoulder to hers, and Alethia stroked her wet fur for a moment before the monkey jumped onto a nearby tree branch.

“When Mr. A went into the Empire House,” he said after a moment, “he found Samira protecting a little girl who had managed to break out of her own room a few minutes before, but who didn’t have a way out from there. Samira was hiding her in the wardrobe.”

How long would he insist upon talking about “Mr. A” as if he were some other person? Part of Alethia wanted to invite him to drop the charade. She wanted to point out that his eyes, as he said those words, were not the eyes of someone who had only heard the story. They were the eyes of someone who had seen. Seen the horrors. Seen the sacrifice. Seen Samira for themself.

But they all had their secrets, and holding them tight was sometimes the only way to get through a day. She inclined her head. And she smiled. “That sounds like Samira.” So exactly like Samira. Though the smile faded again. Samira had been able to protect her —but they hadn’t been in a brothel. “The girl...?”

Lord Fairfax smiled. “Her name is Lucy. She’d only been in that place for a day, and no one had—she was untouched, praise God. She’s safe now, back with her family.”

“Thank you, Lord.” She tilted her head up as she said it, knowing the same God who sent the rain to bathe her face was watching that little girl too. Watching Samira. “The fact that she could help another—she’ll say that makes the suffering a joy. She’ll say that she’d do it again, willingly, if it meant salvation for Lucy. Or if she could speak an encouraging word to someone. Or if she could remind hearts filled with despair that there’s a reason to hope.”

She closed her eyes, letting Samira’s words fill her anew. Letting her own faith brush its soothing hand over the pain. “A God who loves them, even when they can’t see it. A Savior who will welcome them to His table and will turn away unrepentant hearts, no matter how supposedly noble or nominally Christian.”

“She sounds like the best kind of teacher. The best kind of family.”

Alethia nodded.

He sighed. “She thought she was protecting you still too. That if she went along quietly, you wouldn’t be harmed. It’s why she wouldn’t leave right away.”

Of course she wouldn’t, not if he’d said what he always had before. “I’ll spare her. If you...” Alethia shook her head. “Samira is resourceful. Clever. And stronger than anyone else I’ve ever known. She’ll be all right. I don’t—I don’t blame Mr. A for how this played out.” She snuck a glance at his profile.

He didn’t glance back. “Will you blame him for telling your mother?”

The resentment wanted to pound its way to life again, but Alethia swallowed it back. “I am perhaps a bit surprised that he trusted her enough to tell her what is going on. That he sent her here with you.”

Now he looked over. “One of his people heard her lying to your father about where you are. They realized that she knew something already, and that she was doing all she knew how to do to protect you. It may not seem like enough to you, my lady—and perhaps it wasn’t, objectively. Perhaps she looked away too long. Perhaps she was too ready to blame someone other than herself. But she loves you. And she did what she knew to do, once she knew to do it. That’s more than many people can say about their parents.”

Lavinia, as a prime example. And him? Marigold? She knew so little about the family that had given them their blood, their name, their pedigree. She only knew the one that had parked their vardo in the courtyard and claimed them as their own.

She glanced toward the tree that had held his gaze. “I was too hard on her back there. I’ll apologize. I think ... I think it was more the company than her, really. So long we’ve protected these horrible secrets—then she blurts them out, there with Sir Merritt and Lord Xavier looking on.”

“Sir Merritt had already heard Mr. A’s summation of events. As for X ... I tried to tell him he wasn’t invited, but the moment he overheard us mention your name, he was as single-minded as a bloodhound on the hunt.”

That made her blink in surprise. “Why?”

Fairfax breathed a laugh as he looked at her. “The fact that you have to ask likely explains it all. We tried sneaking away and telling him we were going somewhere else on another train, but he didn’t fall for it. He was waiting in his car at the station in Alnwick when our train pulled in, looking smug as a cat.”

He shrugged, facing forward again. “As to your greater point—the secrets you’ve been burdened with protecting. They’re not your guilt to carry. You have no cause to be ashamed.”

She understood what he was saying, why he said it, and she could appreciate the encouragement he tried to give. But he was wrong. “Before God, no. But before society?” She shook her head. “If the men of the Empire House are brought to the justice that is fitting, then it is their families, the innocents involved, who will bear the mark of it. Carry the shame for the rest of their lives. Their wives and children who will truly be punished.”

Fairfax’s eyes slid shut. “I know. We know. That’s why the plan the Imposters have devised doesn’t rely on the sort of justice that involves the courtrooms and the press.”

Relief warred with curiosity inside her. “What does it involve then?”

He opened his eyes again, and a grin played at one corner of his mouth. “A band of thieves with an axe to grind—Lucy’s family.”

“I ... have no idea how to respond to that.” She gave herself a moment to let the idea settle, but still she had to shake her head. “Can we trust them? I seem to recall an old adage about no honor among thieves.”

“Whoever came up with that hadn’t met Barclay Pearce, I suspect.” He stood, brushed off the bark clinging to the seat of his trousers, and held out a hand. “Trust me?”

“I see no reason to stop now.” She put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. Then paused. Because she hadn’t trusted him, not fully. Not with everything. Even now, when he’d discovered so much, she hadn’t been able to put voice to the last piece he no doubt needed.

“Whoever has told you never to speak of it—you let them win when you obey.”

She swallowed and let her fingers fall away from his. “My father...” Even those words felt big as marbles in her mouth, awkward and threatening to choke her.

Lord Fairfax waited, brow creased in expectation.

She had to draw in a long breath and try again, praying silently for the strength to break the silence. “I realize how my mother’s words sounded—and what she may even think is true, if Samira was too frightened to use names in her warning all those years ago. But my father isn’t the one who would have dragged Samira to that place.” He was likely complicit—and that made him guilty of much.

But not of the worst.

The crease between Lord Fairfax’s brows deepened, and something flashed in his eyes that looked horribly close to pity. He thought she’d lapsed into a state of denial. Perhaps even that she was scrambling to protect her own reputation from that sense of shame they’d discussed.

“It was my uncle, my lord—Mama’s brother. Lord Reuben Babcock.” The monster that haunted her dreams.

Fairfax’s face washed pale. “Babs. Lionfeathers—how did we miss that?” He spun on his heel and sprinted back toward the house.

She watched him go for a moment, a smile tempting her lips. Perhaps she ought to be offended that he’d run off like that, abandoning her again to the rain and her own company.

But he was trying to save Samira. Trying to stop Father and Uncle Reuben from harming anyone else. Trying, she hoped and prayed and knew , to deliver those still captive to the Empire House to a better life.

She didn’t begrudge him his haste.

Penelope chattered from somewhere above her, and Samira craned her neck until she spotted the monkey’s bright pink skirt in a branch over her head. “Come down, Penny,” she said, snapping her fingers like Hector always did.

She gave one more hoot and then jumped from branch to trunk to fallen log, then climbed back onto Alethia’s shoulder. Her little feet were wet, but so was Alethia, so she didn’t mind. She started back through the swampy lawn toward the house.

She’d covered about half the distance when Lord Xavier came into view, striding her way with a large umbrella in hand. And given that the moment he reached her the rain went from steady shower to punishing downpour, she greeted him with a smile. “Perfect timing, my lord.”

He nodded, offered his arm, and led her onward, only the rain speaking as they walked.

Strange. He had a reputation for always knowing the right thing to say, for taking such interest in everyone he met, for asking exactly the right question to draw them out and make them feel like the most interesting person in the room.

But it was in his silence that she felt as though she finally got a glimpse of who he was. Not a silver-tongued charmer, not a single-minded bloodhound, not a smug cat. But, without question, a faithful friend.

Never had a silent walk said so much.