Chapter 28
I see now that I should have spoken. I waited too long. With my silence, I let you think that I did not love you, when love for you was the marrow of my bones. If there is one thing I regret above all others, it is that. That I let you believe, even for one instant, that you were less than everything to me.
—from the unsent papers of Arthur Baird
He had wasted a fortune in paper, Arthur reflected as he stared blearily about the downstairs drawing room at Strathrannoch Castle.
He’d started the first letter to her within hours of buying his fare on the mail coach. He’d been surrounded by letters—had watched the mailbags fill and empty and fill again as the post was delivered—and he’d thought, Yes. Write to her. Tell her how you feel.
He’d started to write on a fragment of an envelope dropped by a grandmother in the seat beside him, which seemed to him an unfortunate metaphor for the state of his suit. What a prize for the woman he loved beyond measure: a torn piece of paper, used and discarded by a stranger.
But he’d taken up the scrap and put his pencil to it right there in the coach, desperate to find the words to tell her—everything. The declaration that had frozen, time and again, upon his tongue. The words he did not know if she would welcome or spurn.
He wanted, foolishly, for her to have letters from him. Real letters—not his own words in Davis’s hand. Nothing but the truth of his heart, plain and painful and unvarnished.
He tried to summon forth the words—again and again he tried, scribbled apologies and confessions and avowals.
But everything came out wrong. With each mile the mail coach put between them, his sense of apprehension grew. He’d thought—
Oh God, he’d thought he was doing the right thing. Leaving her there. Removing the impediment of his presence.
But as the carriage took him farther and farther in the direction of his home, every revolution of the wheels felt wrong. He’d wanted to give her the gift of time and freedom, had wanted her to have the chance to know her own mind—to sort out whether or not Davis was the better match for her.
But that was not the whole of his motivation. He could admit that to himself now.
When he’d heard her soft words of forgiveness, heard Davis’s heartfelt proposal, the only thought in his mind had been to flee. He had not wanted to know what her response would be. He’d seen her cheeks grow pink—with embarrassment? With pleasure? He had been afraid to find out.
She was loyal beyond belief. He knew she would not want to throw him over, not when she’d given him her word. He’d been terrified that when she looked up and met his eyes, her face would be written with nothing so much as horrified regret.
And he—
God forgive him, some part of him had wanted to protect his little brother from pain. He couldn’t separate out his tangled emotions—his regret over their past, his years of resentment. Somehow, he had not wanted Davis to be hurt—even though the very thought of losing Lydia made him feel scorched inside, hollowed-out and desperately alone.
So he’d fled.
But it seemed to him now, as he tried to find the words to write, that what he’d meant as a noble gesture—pulling away, freeing her from obligation—was more cowardice than generosity. He’d left her there without a single word—and he could not sort out how to ask her forgiveness, not when he was still five hundred miles away.
As he dipped his pen again, the door to the drawing room came open. He looked up, blinking at the figure silhouetted against the rectangle of light.
What time was it? He had arrived at the castle at twilight and had gone straight to the drawing room to try to finish—begin?— finish the letter of explanation and apology he meant to send to Lydia. He had not thought so very many hours had passed, but the amount of light pouring in through the threshold suggested otherwise.
He glanced at the room’s moth-eaten drapes, which were, he supposed, limned with wintry sunlight. Was it midday ? Of the next day?
And then he looked back at Bertie, who still stood framed dramatically in the doorway.
“Yes,” he said, “come in.”
Bertie crossed to the desk and seated himself. “I did not realize I required permission.”
Arthur pressed the heel of his hand to one eye, behind which a headache had gathered several days earlier. “You don’t. Of course you don’t. This is your home as much as it is mine.”
Bertie glanced down at the papers spread haphazardly across the desk, written and cross-written, the words scratched out and started again.
I have made many mistakes in my life born of fear or desperation or the desire for safety…
You stagger me…
I should never have let you go…
Arthur dropped his hand, intending to sweep the inchoate mass into a pile, then gave up on the notion and let his fingers splay open across the ink-spattered words.
“Strathrannoch,” Bertie said bluntly, “what the devil is going on?”
Arthur’s hand closed into a fist and then loosened again. “I scarcely know where to begin. I—”
“When did you return?” Bertie’s voice was curt, almost distant. Arthur felt uneasiness curl inside him at the sound.
“Last night. I’ve been here in the drawing room. I wanted to… finish something I’d started. I—”
“And you did not think to let me know that you had arrived?”
He had. Of course he had. Only he’d been half-paralyzed, desperate to finish his letter to Lydia and afraid—still afraid—to finally put his feelings into words.
But he had forgotten, somehow, in all the turmoil of his anguish and his desires, that he was still Strathrannoch, and that he could not abandon the people who relied upon him. He had been gone from Strathrannoch for nearly a month. He ought to have thought about something other than himself.
“I’m sorry, Bertie. I did not realize how long I had been in this room.” The words sounded inadequate to his own ears, unconvincing. He stared at the papers spread out beneath his hand. “I’d meant to come to you today. This morning. I know I should have found you immediately—I don’t doubt there’s much to speak of about the estate and the tenants after my absence.” There would be papers to sign and seal, small disasters to resolve. He’d missed Polly Murray’s wedding—he would need to make up for that. “I ought not have shirked my responsibilities to you or to Strathrannoch.”
“Arthur.”
He looked up, startled. Even after a decade, Bertie rarely called him by his Christian name.
Bertie had taken off his spectacles and begun polishing them with quiet aggression. “What have I done to convince you that my first reaction would be not to welcome you home, but to reproach you for your failures?”
Arthur said nothing in response to the other man’s words—could think of no possible answer. He felt arrested, somehow, his thoughts unable to keep up with the sudden painful acceleration of his heartbeat.
He could not quite seem to make sense of himself. Bertie rarely criticized him, and certainly never for lack of care to the estate.
And yet that had been his first thought. Bertie was here, and upset, and the only thing that Arthur could conceive of was that he was failing, again, as Strathrannoch. That he was not enough. That he would never be enough.
“I suppose I thought so because it is your position,” he said finally. It was an answer—and, somehow, underneath, it was a question he could not find the courage to ask. In the corners of his own foolish lonely heart, it was the same question he had not been able to ask Lydia. “That’s why you are here, you and Huw—for Strathrannoch. For the earldom.”
Is it? Is that the only reason you are here?
If you had the freedom to go anywhere, choose anything—would you still remain?
“Is that all it is, then?” Bertie’s voice was clipped, but his tone could not hide the hurt in his words, and Arthur felt their impact in his chest. “We are your employees and nothing else?”
“No. Of course not. Not to me. But I hired you—I pay your wages. I understand that I should not… that I cannot expect more from you.”
Bertie laid one hand flat against the desk, covering the papers with his deft slender fingers. “Expect more.”
“I—I don’t know—”
“Expect more,” Bertie repeated. “You deserve to expect more. Damn it, Huw and I deserve better than this!”
Arthur pushed back in his chair, away from the words, and looked blindly down at the desk.
Huw and Bertie deserved better. Better than Strathrannoch. Better than him. He had known it was true for a long time now.
Grief seized him, and he tried to push it back, tried not to let Bertie see. If they wanted to go—
He would not force them to stay on with him out of guilt or obligation. Or because they realized how much he needed them.
“If there’s something I can do,” he said hoarsely and then broke off. Jesus. He was tired from the trip on the mail coach, that was all. That was the reason his eyes burned.
He tried again. “If there is some alteration to your positions I can provide, I will do so. I would like—for you to be happy.” His voice had cracked on the words, and he wanted to say, Anything. Don’t go.
But he could not say that.
“If you have decided to move on”—his voice was thick, and it was so hard, sometimes, to do the right thing—“I will of course provide a character.”
Bertie fixed him with a keen-eyed glare. “Listen to me, Arthur Baird, and listen well, for I do not intend to repeat myself. We do not want to leave Strathrannoch. Not even when you are being very foolish, as you are right now.”
The words took hold inside him, a relief like the quenching of white-hot steel.
They did not want to go. They did not.
“I’m sorry,” he got out. “I’ve—”
“I am not finished.”
He closed his mouth.
“Despite what you seem to believe,” Bertie went on sharply, “we are not here only for the estate. We are here for you , and you are more than the title. You are more than the earldom. You may have been the heir to a blackguard, but despite his best efforts, you are not one yourself.”
Arthur took a breath, his lungs working in a chest gone tight.
He had spent so much of his life trying not to seek out approval. Telling himself he did not need affirmation or loyalty or love. But the words from this man—who had been more of a father to him than his own—came to him with the gentle devastation of a fresh-sharpened blade.
It was impossible to lie to himself now. He needed the words. He needed to hear it.
Bertie’s voice had softened, but his next words still landed with the force of a blow. “Your father may have believed that a man is made by tearing down others, but he was wrong. His hardness was not strength. It was brittleness. It was fragility.”
“I know,” Arthur said shakily. “I have learned that from—from the two of you.”
From Bertie and Huw he had learned the kind of manhood that he believed in: gentle and steadfast, loving and loyal. They were the pattern upon which he had tried to mold himself, the kind of person he wanted to become.
Arthur watched the black ink grow blurred on the papers in front of him. He tried to steady his voice before he spoke. “I did not mean to let you down. I am sorry that I’ve made you feel as though you were no more than employees to me. You’ve always been more than that. From the very first.”
“Then stop acting as though you do not have a family,” Bertie murmured. “Because you do.”
Bertie’s words pressed down upon him, scoring themselves along his skin. What had he told Bertie, all those weeks ago, when Lydia had first come to Strathrannoch Castle?
That he did not need love or family. That he did not want those things.
Because he had been afraid. Because wanting was dangerous.
Because he had wanted more from his father—and from Davis—and been hurt. Because it was easier to pretend that loneliness was contentment. That safety was indistinguishable from fear.
And yet all this time he had not been alone. He had a family. He had Bertie—and Huw—and Fern and Rupert, and he loved them, and how had he gotten so turned around as to deny what they meant to him?
How had he come to be here, surrounded by helpless words and afraid to tell the truth to the people he loved?
He looked up, into Bertie’s open face. There was safety there, and care, and the steadfast devotion of family. He had been a fool to try to pretend he did not want those things.
“I need help,” he choked out. “Please. I’ve—I’m trying to fix things, but I’ve bollocksed it all up, and I don’t know what to do.”
Bertie’s gaze fell to the papers on the desk and then he looked up, pressed his hands together, and nodded. “Of course,” he said calmly. “Tell me what’s happened.”
The words were so familiar—so bloody reassuring—that Arthur had to look down very hard at the desk for a moment or two before he could compose himself enough to speak.
“Lydia,” he managed. “I left her in London. Davis—he wasn’t the villain we’d thought, Bertie. None of it was true. And he wanted her too, had wanted her all along. I thought it would be better for her if she had the freedom to make her choice.”
His voice wobbled on the words. He felt the sheer idiocy of his actions yawning before him like a great cliff, off of which he had leapt without a second thought.
“Oh, fuck,” he said hoarsely. “I shouldn’t have left. I know I shouldn’t have. Only I was so goddamned afraid to ask her…”
“Ask her what?”
“To ask her to choose me.”
He did not know how he would survive if she said no.
Bertie was regarding him from across the desk, his face gone unreadable. When he spoke, he almost seemed not to have heard Arthur’s incoherent confession. “Did I ever tell you why Huw and I left London all those years ago?”
Arthur hesitated, uncertain. “You said ’twas easier for the two of you to be together somewhere far from the city.”
Bertie inclined his head. “Yes, that’s so. We left the place of my birth—the place where we met—because the father of one of our friends accused us of having led his son into iniquity and threatened to press charges against us for our relationship with each other.”
Arthur gritted his teeth. He knew—of course he knew—that things had never been easy for Bertie and Huw, but he hated how helpless he was in the face of it.
“We lost our community,” Bertie went on, “when we left London. Other men and women who loved as we did. Jamaican immigrants whose voices recalled to me my own parents. It was a great loss, a terrible loss—it took years for us to find a new home and begin to rebuild.”
He paused a moment, nostalgia and grief twined in the gentle planes of his face. And then he fixed his gaze upon Arthur. “But even that loss, great as it was, was worth it so that we need not be parted. I would have given up anything to remain with him. Even the world.”
The words were slow and featherlight, and they landed in Arthur’s heart and made themselves at home there.
He knew what Bertie meant, knew it like he knew the color of Lydia’s hair and the texture of her laugh.
There was nothing he would not do to remain at her side. There was no sacrifice he would forbear to make. Even if what he had to give up was every shred of protection he had built around his heart—every piece of armor put into place over a lifetime.
The softness of recollection had fallen entirely from Bertie’s face as he looked at Arthur. “I had always imagined that when you fell in love, it would be the same for you.”
“It is,” Arthur said hoarsely. “It is that way for me.”
Bertie reached out and, in one quick movement, gathered the papers on the desk into a pile. “Do you know,” he said briskly, “where Huw is?”
Arthur leaned back, bewildered by the question. “I assumed he was here with you.”
Bertie shook his head, tapping the papers into a stack. “He’s on his way to London. We had word—well, my dear boy, we had word of Miss Hope-Wallace’s impending wedding in London. I must confess, we assumed it was to you. I was terribly sorry I had to stay with the estate and could not be there.”
The words came to Arthur as if from a very great distance. “A wedding?” His stomach performed a slow, swooping revolution. “ Lydia’s wedding?”
“Mm.” Bertie tipped his head at the papers. “You might want to finish your letter to her. Or”—he broke off, Arthur having leapt to his feet so quickly that his chair clattered to the ground—“you might consider speaking to her in person.”
“When?” Arthur managed.
Lydia’s wedding. To Davis? It must be. The sight of his brother on his knees, Lydia’s hands clutched in his, was as clear in his mind as if seconds had passed and not days.
Every corpuscle of his being revolted against the thought. He could not let it happen, not without speaking to her first. He had to try.
Christ! He had not told her how he felt before he ran from London. What if she had turned to Davis because she thought that he, Arthur, had abandoned her?
You did abandon her, you spectacular fool , some part of his brain was shouting. But he could scarcely hear it over the crashing rhythm of his heart.
“A few days hence,” Bertie said with maddening calm. “I suspect you’ll have time, if you go quickly.”
Arthur found himself halfway across the room. He had forgotten to right the chair. He turned back—dizzy, dazed—and Bertie was there, pressing the stack of blotched papers into his hands.
“What would you risk for love, my dear boy?” Bertie murmured. “Your pride? Your heart?”
Everything.
He was not certain he had even said the word aloud. But Bertie nodded as if he had heard.
And quite before he knew what was happening, Arthur was on Luath’s back, riding hard for Dunkeld and the mail coach.
And from there—bloody fucking hell —on to London, to try to break up a wedding.