Chapter 22
The nursery, at last, was quiet. Not the brittle hush of dread and illness, but a silence built of gentle things.
Lizzie babbled, contented, giving the occasional pat-pat of a wooden rattle against the muslin coverlet as the nursemaid hummed a low murmur while sorting linens by the window.
Rose sat on the edge of the daybed, arms wrapped around her knees, unable to look away from the sight of her daughter—yes, hers, by every definition that mattered—alive and, if not unscarred, at least returned to her familiar self.
The hours after dawn had been a slow march to safety.
The fever faded bit by bit, and she kept a careful watch of each of Lizzie’s breaths and swallows, feeling a half-crazed elation after every sign of the baby’s improvement.
Rose had wept so much that her eyes were dry, each new tear nothing more than a salt sting on already-raw skin.
Now, midafternoon, the clouds had parted, and the nursery windows were bright with spring sunlight.
Rose drank it in as if she could multiply the hope, at least enough for Lizzie to feel it as well.
She smoothed the wisp of hair that curled over her daughter’s brow, marveling at how the child could sleep so soundly after such a hard illness.
At intervals, Lizzie would rouse and gurgle, then lift the rattle and whack it against the bars of her cot with a strength that seemed almost defiant.
The sound was ugly, metallic. Rose adored it.
She was so focused on this small, shattering miracle that she barely registered the soft tap at the nursery door or the way the nurse straightened, her spine aligning with years of drilled obedience.
“Rose?” The voice was lower than usual, quieter.
It was Felix, and the effect of hearing him addressed by that title, so soon after the vigil, nearly undid her again.
She did not look at him, not at first. Instead, she ran her hand down Lizzie’s arm, felt the coolness there, the blessed return of ordinary temperature.
Rose allowed herself to meet Felix’s gaze. He was different. Not in dress, as he wore his usual black, crisp linen and silk waistcoat, nothing out of place, but in the set of his jaw, the softness around his eyes.
He looked as if he’d fought a war and barely survived.
“May I?” he asked, voice so careful it sounded as though someone else was speaking through him.
Rose nodded, and he crossed the room to stand at the foot of the cot. For a moment, he simply watched Lizzie, lips pressed thin, hands behind his back in a way that seemed designed to keep them from trembling.
“She’s a stubborn thing,” he said. “I admire it.”
Rose wondered if he meant the child or herself. “She takes after her father’s line,” she replied, unable to summon any malice. “And her mother, I suppose.”
They stood in a silence that felt heavy enough to bruise. All the things they had left unsaid over the past weeks seemed to crowd the room, vibrating between them like a held breath that neither was brave enough to release.
At last, Felix cleared his throat. “I would like to speak with you,” he said, glancing at the nursemaid, who stood quietly at the corner of the room. “Alone, if you can spare the time.”
Rose’s first impulse was to say no. She had given him everything, and in return, he had left her to the wolves. But then she looked at him and saw that he was as ragged as she was, his composure held together by nothing but habit and need.
“Very well,” she said. “Five minutes, then I must return to her.”
Felix nodded, as if accepting terms in a negotiation.
After Rose had handed the child to the nursemaid, he gestured for her to precede him from the room. As she passed, he lingered, watching Lizzie with a tenderness he would never admit to possessing.
They made their way down the corridor, the hush following them, until they reached Felix’s study. Rose tensed. She had not been in this room since before her confession, and the thought of returning to a space so fully his made her throat close.
Felix must have sensed it. “It’s neutral ground,” he said, apologetically. “I thought you would prefer it to my rooms.”
Rose said nothing, but she followed him inside.
The study was unchanged, with its books stacked like barricades along the walls, the smell of ink and old tobacco clinging to the upholstery.
A decanter of sherry gleamed on the sideboard, untouched.
Felix moved to the hearth, stoked the fire though they did not need it, then poured two small glasses.
He handed one to her but did not sit. Instead, he paced before the empty grate, as if gathering the fragments of himself before laying them at her feet.
Rose watched him, waiting for the performance to begin. She had seen him do this before: the careful arrangement of facts, the manipulation of mood. This time, though, he seemed unable to summon the usual artifice belonging to his bloodline.
Every line of his body was as raw and unguarded as an open wound.
He did not drink. He set the glass on the mantel and turned to face her.
“I have been,” he began, then stopped. He tried again.
“When I was a child, I used to count the hours until my father left for London. The house would go quiet, but it was a kind of peace. My mother would bake tarts with the cook, and sometimes she would let me stay up late, and for a few days, it almost felt like a real family.”
Rose listened, unsure where this was leading.
“But then he would return,” Felix continued, “and everything would break. There was a tension, like a bowstring drawn too tight. My mother…she became someone else. Not sad, but brittle. She stopped looking at me, even when I was in the room. It was as if he took the air with him, wherever he went, and the rest of us had to learn to breathe something else.”
He stared at the fire; his eyes gone distant. “She loved him,” Felix said. “More than anything. Even when he ruined her. I watched it happen. I watched her go from loving him to hating him, and then to nothing at all. She died when I was seventeen, but really, she was gone long before that.”
He looked at Rose, his gaze steady but hollow. “I swore I would never be that man. That I would never let anyone have that power over me, or over anyone else. I thought it was a noble vow. I see now that it was cowardice.”
He took a breath, shuddered it out. “When you said you loved me, I panicked. Not because I doubted you, but because I believed you. And I believed that if I let myself love you back, I would destroy you the way my father destroyed my mother.”
Rose’s hand trembled. She set the glass aside, unsure whether to be furious or undone.
Felix moved toward her, slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal. “I could not say it then. But I have to say it now, before it’s too late.”
He knelt before her—actually knelt, as if supplicating—and took her hands in his. “I love you, Rose,” he said, voice breaking. “I love you in the only way I know how. I am terrified of it. I am clumsy and cruel and hopeless at the business, but it’s true. I love you.”
Rose could not speak. The tears she thought she’d exhausted came rushing back, hot and angry.
Felix pressed her hands to his lips. “I know I have no right to ask for forgiveness. But I am asking, anyway. I will spend the rest of my life asking if that’s what it takes.”
She pulled her hands free, but only to cradle his face in her palms. She traced the line of his jaw, the old scar at his temple, the wildness in his eyes. “I don’t want an apology,” she said. “I just want you.”
He closed his eyes, a silent benediction.
“Then you have me,” he said.
The fire crackled. Somewhere above, the sound of Lizzie’s laughter filtered down the corridor.
Rose leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his. “You are a fool,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“And so am I.”
They sat in front of the fire for a long time, neither willing to move.
Rose was the first to break, brushing her eyes with the heel of her hand and shifting to sit cross-legged.
Felix remained kneeling, hands fisted on his thighs, the image of a man who had trained himself to endurance and found it wanting.
He spoke quietly at first, as if to himself.
“When I was small, before everything… my mother used to read to me in this room. Always the same book: a Greek myth, the one where the king builds a labyrinth and then can never find his way out. She said there was a lesson in it, that sometimes the things you build to keep yourself safe are what end up trapping you inside. I didn’t understand then. I do now.”
Rose listened; her chest tight. She had not known this about him, the boy who’d been hidden under layers of bruised pride and studied arrogance.
“My father was a master of the polished surface. To the world, he was all wit and effortless charm; he had a way of making anyone feel they were the only soul in a room. But that warmth was a curated lie. He used it to beckon people in, and once the door was shut, he simply withdrew the light.” Felix’s voice dropped lower, rougher.
“My mother loved him regardless. Or perhaps she was simply caught in the snare. She would keep a candle lit for him every night, even when the whole of London knew whose bed he was truly in. She waited, and she made her pathetic excuses, and when he finally deigned to return, she would smile and pretend the house wasn’t freezing. ”
He paused for a moment, then let out a long breath.
“That was the lesson I learned: that love is little more than waiting for a door that never opens, and then feigning a smile when it finally does. It is a long, slow surrender, Rose. I vowed never to be the one waiting, nor the one who forced the wait.”
He laughed, the sound hollow as an empty shell. “I thought I could do better. I thought if I just refused to care, it would all pass over me. That if I never let anyone in, no one could use me as a lever, a weapon, or a shield.”