Chapter 4 #2
Perhaps they had struck at a wound she had not known he carried.
The moment stretched between them, separate from the murmured responses of the other guests. Someone was saying how wise that was, how true, while another began to share their thoughts on forgiveness and its difficulties. But Alice paid no mind to it.
She focused on Crewe's hands resting on the arms of his chair, noting the tension in his jaw and the rise and fall of his breath. He seemed detached from the conversation around them, as if they were two people in a crowd who had recognized something in each other that no one else could see.
A peculiar warmth surged through her as the game continued.
The tone had shifted and when Alice answered the remaining questions, her usual wit came more slowly, her deflections less polished.
When she glanced at Crewe again, she found him deliberately looking away, as if he too had sensed a change and was unsure where to find solid ground.
Clara announced the end of the game with the relief of a hostess who had pushed her luck far enough. Guests began to stir, gathering shawls and mentioning early mornings and fresh air. Alice rose from her chair, grateful for the movement and something to occupy her hands and attention.
But she felt Crewe's gaze on her back as she moved toward the door, heavy and inescapable.
The corridor dimmed as Alice stepped away from the drawing room, shadows gathering between flickering wall sconces.
She moved with the departing guests, nodding goodnights and offering mechanical courtesies that required no thought.
The baroness climbed the main staircase, cheerfully bemoaning her joints, while the twins linked arms, whispering as they vanished around a corner.
Ancestral portraits loomed from their gilded frames, generations of Oakfords captured in oil, their expressions shifting from stern disapproval to the blank affability of subjects eager for the sitting to end.
Alice felt their painted eyes tracking her progress, convincing herself it was only the wavering light that made them seem to follow her.
She almost reached the turn toward the east wing when a hand gently closed around her elbow.
"A moment, if you please."
Clara's voice barely broke the silence, her fingers pressing with the insistence of someone unwilling to be dismissed. Alice allowed herself to be drawn into the shadows beneath a portrait of a long-dead countess.
"Clara." Alice kept her voice light. "If this is about the brandy I poured into Mr. Davenant's coffee, I assure you it was purely medicinal."
"Alice." Clara’s expression, usually warm and animated, had turned serious, the candlelight accentuating the concern in her eyes. "I need you to listen to me."
Something in her tone made Alice's practiced levity falter. Her spine straightened, breath caught, and that familiar prickle of unease surged, one she had spent years learning to disguise.
"I'm listening."
Clara glanced down the corridor and Alice followed her gaze. The passage lay empty. Even the footmen had retreated to the shadows.
"Be careful with him," Clara said quietly, her hand still gripping Alice's arm. "Lord Crewe, I mean. Samuel."
The use of his first name startled Alice more than the warning itself. She had never thought of Crewe as someone who had once been a child. Someone called something softer by those who knew him well.
"Careful in what sense?" Alice’s voice cracked, and she hated the brittleness in it. "I was merely redirecting a parlor game. It's hardly a declaration of intent."
"I know what I saw." Clara's grip tightened slightly. "And I know you, Alice. Better than most. You were not merely redirecting."
The corridor suddenly constricted, air thick with beeswax and the faint must of old tapestries. Alice wanted to pull away, to retreat behind the armor of wit and carelessness that had served her well for so long. But Clara's steady gaze held her fast, that unwavering look that always saw too much.
"He is a good man," Clara continued, her voice softening. "Truly. But he carries too much regret. It weighs on him. I’ve seen it over these past years. Whatever happened to him, whoever hurt him, he has not moved past it. And I do not think he knows how."
Alice's fingers found her bracelet, the thin gold chain with its single pearl that her mother had given her before her first Season. She turned the pearl between her thumb and forefinger, a gesture she had not made in years.
"You assume I have any intention of—"
"I assume nothing." Clara finally released her arm but did not step back. "I am only asking you to be careful. With him and with yourself. He is not the sort one can engage in harmless flirtation.”
The words lingered in the air, settling like dust after a carriage had passed. Alice wanted to make a bright remark to dismiss the warning with the ease she applied to everything uncomfortable. But the pearl continued to turn beneath her fingers, and her tongue felt thick and clumsy in her mouth.
"He watches you," Clara added quietly. "When he thinks no one is looking. And you watch him the same way."
"I watch everyone." The protest sounded weak even to her own ears.
"Not like that." Clara's lips curved into a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Goodnight, Alice. Sleep well."
She was gone before Alice could reply, slipping back toward the drawing room where the servants were extinguishing candles, leaving Alice alone with the countess's disapproving gaze.
Alice stood for a moment, collecting herself. The pearl had grown warm against her fingertips. She released it, and adjusted her posture into something resembling composure.
Then she walked toward her chamber.
The corridor was dim and quiet, her footsteps muffled by the soft carpet.
Clara's words echoed in her mind about regret, about watching, about wounds that did not heal because their bearers would not let them.
She recalled her own answer during the game, words that had slipped out before she could stop them.
Refusing to forgive both others and oneself.
Had she been speaking to him? Or to herself?
At the far end of the passage, where the corridor opened onto the gallery overlooking the great hall, she paused and turned.
Crewe lingered there.
He was alone. The servants had moved on, the other guests had vanished, and he remained like a figure in a painting, silhouetted against the fading candlelight.
His posture was as rigid as it had been all evening, but there was something different in the angle of his head and the set of his shoulders.
Their eyes met, and Alice felt the weight of it—something vulnerable. Something that resembled the uncertainty coiling in her own chest.
For a long moment, neither moved.
Then Crewe turned away, stepping back into the shadows. Alice lingered in the dim corridor, enveloped by the night and the faint scent of extinguished wax.
She walked to her chamber, entered without summoning her maid, and stood at the window, gazing out at the grounds below.
What wounds lay beneath Crewe’s carefully maintained facade?
And why did she find herself yearning, against all better judgment, to know?