Renegade Read Online Free PDF Page B

knew were her psychic visions—intensified.
    “Can you tell me, honestly, that you have not withheld anything about your past life from me?”
    William’s words stung me now.
    There was no possible way I could tell William about Roddy. I had barely allowed myself to think of Roddy during these past months. I wiped the tears from my eyes and took a deep breath as I remembered how our friendship evolved after we both turned sixteen. Something almost imperceptible had grown between us, and neither of us knew how to accommodate its presence. Our friendly touches had become awkward. Part of me wanted to embrace these feelings, and part of me wanted to ignore them; a large part of me wished for our old endearing relationship where we were nothing more than friends.
    During those years, Roddy had stopped by our cottage at the edge of the Edgeworths’ estate nearly every day, most often in the late afternoons after he finished his work in his father’s shop. But after Mother was diagnosed with dysentery, I had to care for her, and I feared that he would catch the illness. At least we all thought she had had dysentery—I clenched my fists so tightly that my fingernails cut into my palms. Max, I now knew, had murdered her—most probably poisoned her.
    The pain she had endured … I shut my mind against the thought.
    I heard the grandfather clock strike eleven, but I could not even consider trying to sleep. I thought about how awful I had felt upon learning that the Conclave executed her, of how that knowledge had driven me to kill. That night at the Montgomery Street house, I became a different person … murderous. I wanted nothing more than to kill each and every one of them. And ever since that night last autumn, I had been forced to rewrite, reassess, my last days with my mother in Dublin. And now I was finally allowing myself to think of my last day with Roddy, of his fate and the mysterious circumstances under which my life had been saved.
    The day Mother’s illness came upon her, she had been giving the Edgeworth children their lessons. One of Sir Edgeworth’s servants brought her back to our cottage and laid her in bed. Fear gripped me as throughout the day as her fever increased and she began vomiting. Then, by the late afternoon, her excrement became bloody. Roddy stayed with me until Sir Edgeworth’s physician arrived, and then he had to return to his work in the blacksmith shop.
    “Dysentery,” the physician announced dryly after examining Mother. He stood, rubbed his nose, and put his stethoscope back in his bag. “I’ve recently seen a couple cases in the city. I will inform Sir Edgeworth that she should not be around his family for the time being. She is highly contagious.”
    “But what about her? Will my mother recover?”
    He had only shrugged wearily before leaving.
    The moment he left, I felt a terrible worry and then the beginning of an aching loneliness.
    I cursed quietly through my tears, unable to imagine life without her. I loved her and could not even begin to comprehend the possibility of her death. I had always wondered why she had fled London—why we never went back. She had told me essentially nothing about her previous life there; all I knew was that London was the place where her estranged mother lived. She rarely discussed Jacque Sharp, my father—at least, the man I had thought was my father.
    The evening she fell ill, the storm winds and rains slammed loudly against the cottage’s shutters. Roddy had come that night; I still remember him standing on the doorstep, soaking wet, the strong lingering smells of metals and of smoke from the shop upon him.
    “Roddy,” I said quickly. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dysentery. She’s contagious.”
    “I don’t care,” he said. “Yer know I never git sick anyway. How is she? How are ye?”
    Unable to answer him, I had left him momentarily to check on her. When I reached her room, she lay amid the blankets, her face still flushed with