Chapter 13
E mily felt his alertness sharpen beside her, the private charge of the kiss collapsing back into what they had come here for in the first place.
They could not stride across the room and seize Theodore. He would bolt. Any boy old enough to run to Whitechapel on wounded pride was old enough to take public humiliation badly. Emily knew that instinctively now. He had to be reached from within the room, not against it.
The dance solved the problem for them.
Someone caught her by the wrist and pulled her laughing toward the center before she could protest. Another hand clapped Adam on the shoulder and shoved him after her.
The crowd had already decided what they were—newlyweds too devoted to stay seated—and the whole place meant to enjoy the sight of it.
Emily stumbled once, then found her footing.
This was not a ballroom dance like the one she was used to.
A ballroom, she could conquer. No, this one felt rougher and faster, and the turns felt less polished and sharper.
Everyone seemed to move on instinct rather than instruction.
Her skirts brushed her ankles as couples spun apart and found others.
She adjusted because there was no other choice.
One man swung her through a turn too quickly and laughed when she nearly collided with his wife. The woman only grinned and pushed Emily onward. Someone clapped to the beat, and boots struck the floorboards as loud as possible.
For one strange, breathless stretch, the wildness of it all felt almost liberating. No one here cared whether her curtsy was pretty or measured what her dress or smile looked like.
She felt Adam once at her side, then lost him to the shifting partners again. The loss should have startled her. Instead, she understood with quick relief that being separated from him in the dance was exactly what Theodore needed.
She kept the boy in sight.
That became the whole work of her body, letting the dance carry her without losing him. One turn brought her nearer. Another sent her wide again. She did not force it. The room’s chaos concealed intention better than any careful approach would have.
Theodore glanced up once, saw only dancers and noise, and looked away again.
Emily let herself be moved, redirected, and swung through the crowd until at last a rough hand released hers, and the next proffered palm belonged to Theodore.
He looked as startled as she felt.
For one second, he almost pulled back. Emily saw the instinct in him and answered it at once with lightness.
“What are you—” His eyes went so wide that Emily almost panicked. “What are you doing here?”
She looked at him, her eyes sharp. “Why did you run without telling us? I could have used some dancing.”
The line landed exactly as she had hoped.
Theodore stared at her, then at their joined hands, then somewhere over her shoulder, as though checking whether Adam was about to descend upon him like a soldier.
The dance continued. If they stopped, the room would notice. So Emily moved with it, letting the turns remain rough and easy between them. Theodore followed because the rhythm demanded it and because not following would draw more attention than he wanted.
“I just…” He swallowed. “I needed a break.”
The answer came out stiff, but true enough to matter. Emily felt the weight inside it at once.
She let it stand anyway and let it sink in that she had heard him and was ready to listen. The room, on the other hand, spun around them, the people laughing and dresses flying around the room.
In the middle of it all, Emily kept her attention on Theodore with as much seriousness as she had given Gilbert and the silver tiara. The boy’s pride mattered no less because his method of expressing it was wretched.
Another turn brought them closer to the center.
Theodore looked less ready to run now, though still tight with self-consciousness.
His hand in hers felt all bone and adolescent awkwardness, his height not yet fully settled into manhood and his temper still showing the injury that had grown with him since childhood.
Emily chose patience again.
“From what?”
He looked up at her. “What?”
“What did you need the break from?”
Theodore looked at her then, really looked at her, and for the first time since they had reached him, the moment stopped being about his retrieval and became about something more important—his well-being.
His hand tightened once and then relaxed again. Around them, the room continued to shake with noise, and inside that rough, spinning motion, his answer came low and reluctant, as if he hated the words he was about to say even though they were true.
“When you and Adam decide to start a family.”
The words hit Emily more cleanly than anything else he might have said.
For a moment, she simply looked at him. He did not mean the marriage. He meant replacement . A newer family. Legitimate babies that would have a stronger claim than he and his sister.
The dance swung them apart and back together again. Theodore looked away as soon as he had spoken, color touching his face as if he were ashamed to have admitted something so raw.
Emily did not answer at once.
The pause mattered. She felt that. If she rushed at him with immediate sweetness, he would only hear correction. He was old enough to know when adults said the comforting thing because they could think of no other. He needed to know that she had understood what he meant.
And she had.
He was not a sulking boy who had wanted adventure. He was a frightened boy who had run because fear seemed less humiliating if he could make it look just like defiance. He had looked ahead into the life she and Adam might build, and seen himself and Harriet pushed quietly to the edge of it.
The thought made something in her chest tighten.
When she finally spoke, she had to raise her voice because of the noise all around them.“Do you think that I’d ever ask him to cast you aside?”
Theodore looked at her. The question hung between them longer than the rhythm of the dance should have allowed.
It was direct enough to surprise him. It was direct enough to surprise her, too. Yet, once spoken, it felt exactly right. Being cast aside was his sole fear.
“Do you?” she prompted.
He swallowed. “No.”
The answer came quickly, almost defensively. As if he wanted her to know that this part, at least, was not her problem.
She wasn’t the cause of anything, and yet the fear had not vanished. Emily could still see it in him, lingering under the word.So she did not take offense.
She let the music carry them and, for the moment, let him keep his pride.
It wasn’t like they had anywhere to be, and it was clear his uncertainty was driving him towards edges he simply could not afford to get to.
In the meantime, she would let the uncertainty remain what it was and let him relax into her.
Theodore’s hand shifted in hers, awkward and boyish and trying not to be either of those things. Nearby, someone shouted for the fiddler to play faster. A woman laughed so hard she nearly lost her footing.
The room smelled of beer, sweat, and old wood, and none of it mattered as much as the expression on Theodore’s face when he thought she was not looking.
Emily softened her voice without making it fragile. “You know Harriet would never forgive me if I sent you away.”
That earned her the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“And Gilbert,” she added. “Though I admit his loyalties are mostly determined by sausage.”
Theodore gave a low breath that was almost a laugh. “That is true.”
Emily took the opening and stayed steady.
“I did not come into this house thinking of what children I might have later and what room I should clear for them. I came into it and found you and Harriet already in it.” Her hand tightened slightly around his as the dance turned them once more.
“That matters. The house belongs to you first and foremost. I know that, and you must always remember that.”
His eyes dug even more into her now, and the boy in that look struck her harder than the sharp-tongued watchfulness she had first known. He was old enough to understand more than anyone wanted him to, but still young enough to need reassurance that he was wanted.
She thought, suddenly and fiercely, that Adam ought to have heard this part. He cared so much and still did not know how to speak to his brother without using authority first. It should have been him in her place. However, a part of her began to wonder whether it would have gone smoothly.
Theodore drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “What if Adam does not think the same as well?”
“Trust me, he will,” Emily assured him.
He looked down. “Sometimes people mean things, and then everything changes anyway.”
There was no self-pity in it. That made it hurt more.
Emily answered with the only truth worth giving him. “Then we had better make sure this does not happen.”
The words steadied something. It didn’t matter that the fiddle blared loudly around them or that the steps quickened.
Another set of dancers cut between them, and Adam appeared briefly at the periphery of her vision, broad-shouldered and alert, moving through the crowd with all the contained force the room had no idea how to read. Then, Theodore was before her again, still here, still listening.
Emily nodded toward the edge of the room, where the light was a bit dimmer and the air fresher. “We should go home.”
A part of her hoped home no longer felt like a punishment to him now, but rather a place where Harriet was waiting, where the panic would ebb, and where he still felt he belonged even after a night like this.
He understood the difference. She saw that, too.
He hesitated for only a second. Then, he nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Emily smiled, not brightly, but warmly enough for him to trust her. “So am I. Whitechapel smells terrible.”
That earned her a genuine laugh at last as the dance began to break apart around them, the music losing shape as couples spun off and drink reclaimed the room.
Emily looked toward Adam and found him watching. Even from this distance, through the noise and press of bodies, she knew he had seen enough to understand that something important had changed.
She had come to Whitechapel to help him find his brother. And she had found him. More than that, she had found the wound that sent him running, and Theodore had chosen to come back with her. Not because he had been caught, but because he had been heard .
Emily tightened her fingers once around his hand and led him toward home.