Chapter 2
Emerald felt the bones in her body loosen as soon as she closed the door between Beau and herself, but the breath she’d been holding wasn’t expelled in one relieved exhale. It came out in short, uneven huffs as she tried to steady her panicked heartbeat. For years, that man had moved through Oakmoss like a ghost. Lady Avon would reference some joke he’d made. Lord Avon had so often sung his son’s praises, Emerald felt as though she knew the tune by heart. Louisa shared memories of a doting older brother, one who would tease and spoil and take tea with her in the schoolroom whenever he was home. Even in her mind, he was only ever ‘Beau’, the son and brother who moved in and out of other people’s lives but not her own. She would catch the sound of foreign boots on the marble as they faded around a corner or detect a movement—swift, dark, elusive—at the edge of her vision. Then he’d disappear completely.
When Beau had come striding into the drawing room, moving with the innate grace and certainty that came from being born to his position, it’d been as if Emerald were a girl in the schoolroom all over again.
She could remember exactly how hot and clammy her hands had felt, feverish almost, when she’d last seen him nearly five years ago. At the time, she’d said a silent prayer the book she’d been holding wouldn’t slip from her grasp and had licked her suddenly dry lips as she’d waited for him to notice how grown up she’d become. When his crystalline blue eyes had eventually flicked her way, the look had been so quick, so cold, a chill had rolled down her stiff spine. Then he’d turned away, left the drawing room with his father, and she hadn’t been sure he’d even seen her at all.
Emerald shook her head to clear away the memory as she gained the safety of her own rooms. She slumped against the heavy door at her back, feeling foolish for her reaction to his return. It was not as if she were desperate to have his smile turned upon her or wished for some sign that distance had softened his rough edges and hard feelings.
At her hairline, beads of sweat gathered. She raised her hand to wipe away the moisture, noticing as she did so that she was trembling. Emerald stared, detached, curious, almost as if her hands belonged to another person. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh, and Emerald worked to pull in more air as her vision narrowed at an alarming speed. Her role within Oakmoss Manor suddenly felt uncertain, her future skidding along a wave, waiting for it to break.
There were several months after the passing of the previous Lord Avon during which the dowager couldn’t bring herself to leave her bed, and with Beau far from home, the natural hierarchy of the house had fallen apart. In the end, it was Emerald to whom the staff had turned: the steward with a question about an irrigation technique Lord Avon had wished to implement; the housekeeper with an appeal to increase a charitable donation; even the butler, reluctant at first, with requests to replace a footman or order more wine.
With Beau home, she no longer had utility, a purpose, something to tether her to the estate.
Dropping to the floor, she tucked her head between her knees, trying to focus on her breathing. When a knock on the door startled her a few minutes later, Emerald could at least rise and answer with an imitation of composure.
Louisa’s fair, knowing face peered through the wide crack. ‘You would never tend to correspondence or do anything which might whisk you from a room when sweets are present.’
Emerald tipped her head in acknowledgement and opened the door further so the girl she’d long thought of as a sister could enter.
‘You looked peaked,’ Louisa said, smoothing the back of her dress before taking a seat in one of the two chairs upholstered in plush cream velvet and set a comfortable distance from the low fire burning in the grate. ‘His arrival is a shock to us all. After you left, Mama asked why he didn’t write.’
‘And?’ Emerald barked the word and immediately chastised herself. Lou was not the cause or target of the ire stirring inside her.
Louisa pinched her lips before responding, a tell-tale sign she was displeased. ‘He changed the subject.’
‘Of course he did.’ Beauden Calverleigh thought of one person and one person only. Not that Emerald would have said so aloud, not to his sister anyhow. Instead she settled on an ambiguous ‘Hmm’ and sunk into the other chair.
‘You need not be closed with me, Em.’
‘He’s a veritable stranger to me, but he’s your brother.’ A stranger whose beautiful face had haunted her dreams before she even understood what attraction was. All those years ago, the only thing she’d known with any certainty was that his face would echo in her mind for as long as she lived.
‘Yes,’ the younger girl replied, reaching across the space to Emerald and giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. ‘But I also consider you as much of a sister as I’ll ever have.’
‘What about when he marries?’ teased Emerald. ‘His future wife may wish to have some say in your sentiments.’
‘She’ll be some diamond—a superlative beauty with connections and a dowry to make one’s eyes water, no doubt—but who could ever usurp you in our shared experience if not also in affection?’
A little laugh escaped Emerald’s lips, even as her eyes fell to her hands, her fingers fiddling with one another in her lap. An odd sadness settled in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t wish to think about the upsetting things they’d been through together or about the woman Beau would one day marry. Emerald crossed her arms, running a hand up and down the soft velvet sleeve of her dress although she wasn’t cold.
‘I wish I were surprised by his lack of consideration, but I am not and cannot pretend to be.’
‘No,’ Louisa said after a thoughtful pause. ‘Nor am I. I’m sure Mama isn’t either.’
‘Nevertheless, you must be pleased to have him home.’
Louisa shrugged. ‘We’ve got on all right without him. I quite like our little life. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel that way again after Papa.’
‘Yes, well, I daresay much will remain unchanged,’ Emerald lied through a small smile of commiseration.
Louisa cocked her head a little to one side and lifted her brows.
‘What?’ asked Emerald. ‘Why do you give me such a look?’
‘Because you don’t believe that and cannot convince me to either.’
Staring across at the younger girl, Emerald considered her next words carefully. Unlike Louisa, Emerald had not been born to this life, nor had she chosen it through marriage like the dowager. Coming to Oakmoss hadn’t been Emerald’s decision; neither had running the estate. After Beau failed to return following his father’s death, and weeks had turned to months, and months to years, Emerald had begun to feel as if her role as caretaker of the estate was immutable. She’d let go of the grand visions she’d built up of an exhilarating London season, beautiful gowns, dance after dance with charming partners. The one dream she’d kept closest to her heart—finding a husband and having a family of her own—had seemed to slip further and further from her grasp. She’d let it all go without comment, without protest, and it had always been for nothing. Oakmoss wasn’t hers and could never be, but as long as Beau had remained away, she’d been able to focus on the work and not on the truth.
‘You are right, of course. Change is inevitable. Your brother was bound to take up the reins here at some time or other.’
‘Only we all went on as if he’d never do such a thing, and now?—’
‘And now…’ repeated Emerald on a gusty exhale.
Together, they were quiet for a long moment.
‘Oh, is that the time? Goodness. I’m late for a lesson with the music master.’ Louisa flung herself from her chair and out of the room without another word, leaving Emerald in an oppressive silence that threatened to crowd all the air from her lungs and make it impossible to fill them back up.
It was true Emerald didn’t have any correspondence so demanding it necessitated her fleeing Beau’s presence, but there was one letter on her writing desk she’d been avoiding which did indeed require a reply.
After staring at the closed door a moment or two, she walked over to the solid mahogany writing table. Her fingers glided over several lines of the diamond box pattern in the polished wood veneer with a kind of careful reverence. With its crossbanding around the edges and brass oak leaves inlaid in each corner, it was one of the most beautiful pieces of furniture Emerald had ever seen. It had been a gift from Lord and Lady Avon not long after she arrived. A private place to write her family or collect her thoughts.
Emerald took a seat and picked up the letter from her stepmother. She sighed, or perhaps it was simply the air releasing around her skirts when she sat. She couldn’t tell.
The letter was very much the same as all the others she received. Rose, the elder of her two half-sisters, excelled on the pianoforte, while Agatha showed an interest in watercolours. Mrs Doubleday went to Mrs Jenkinson’s for tea, Mrs Cotterel’s for a card party, and she had received a visit from Mrs Standage. Emerald reread the few lines discussing her sisters’ accomplishments, rubbing away the soreness in her heart that came on every time she thought of them.
The date at the top of the page may change, but the content of the letters never varied. There was never an invite to visit or inquiries into Emerald’s interests and her life at Oakmoss. Mrs Doubleday was unaware Emerald had thrown herself into music after her father died and by now had the entirety of Haydn’s, Beethoven’s, and Pleyel’s catalogues committed to memory and was well on her way to knowing several others by heart. Nor did the woman have any idea Emerald veritably managed Oakmoss, that she’d developed insomnia after the death of her father, or that she hadn’t had her favourite white cake with strawberry rhubarb compote for her birthday since before she left her childhood home.
The letters had always been impersonal and infrequent. In the beginning, Emerald had hoped, if not for a wish that she might return, perhaps for words full of a mother’s concern: Was Emerald eating well? Keeping up with her French and Italian lessons? Making herself useful to the family? But no, her stepmother wrote without any real interest—all obligation. Still, Emerald always replied.
She smoothed out the folded page before her—it had been sitting for more than a sennight already—scanned it once more, and opened one of the frieze drawers, withdrawing a fresh sheet of elegant, hot-pressed notepaper. If Beau’s arrival was good for anything, it was forcing her to finally pen a reply.
When her own missive was finished, signed, and sealed, rather than retreat to the study to review the ledgers or to the music room to practise, she climbed upon her bed. She didn’t sleep, or even close her eyes. She lay there, ankles crossed, hands folded right where her ribs began to sew together, her eyes open, and her mind focused on everything and nothing all at once.