Chapter 26 #2
“At least she’ll be alive,” Adam added.
That did it.
Dominic’s expression shifted into harsh disbelief. “You are worse than I thought.”
He stepped aside, not to grant entry to Emily’s room, but because there was no longer anything to guard. Adam went in anyway and saw that two maids were already there.
One stood at the wardrobe, folding dresses into layers of paper. The other had opened drawers and was wrapping little personal objects in cloth. Hair ribbons. Gloves. Bottles. Books. Things she must have brought with her to keep herself company.
The sight stopped him harder than Dominic’s words had.
The maids caught him staring at that exact moment and froze.
“Your Grace,” one greeted.
Adam looked at the half-emptied dressing table. The spaces where Emily’s things had been. The open trunk. Some stupid part of himself had thought the morning might still offer another chance to speak before anything became real.
It was real now.
“Carry on,” he said.
His voice sounded strange to his own ears.
He turned to Dominic and gave him a slow nod. There was no point in staying to hear anything else.There was no point in staying in the country house.
After he finished his morning bath, he bade goodbye to the people he could afford to do that to, exhaled, and climbed into his carriage.
The ride back to Huxley Manor felt like an eternity, thanks to the silence and absence that had followed him in the first place. Even when he stepped out of the carriage, breathing in the familiar air of his estate, it was obvious to anyone looking that something was wrong.
When the footmen unloaded his trunks, he could hear the question burning on the tips of their tongues, but none of them asked.
None of them could.
Though he knew that would change once he ran into Harriet in the hallway. When she asked for Emily and he told her she was gone, he knew what he had to deal with. One minute, she had Gilbert in her arms, excited and ready to see her; the next, tears were streaming down her face.
“No,” she cried. “Why didn’t Emily say goodbye?”
The question struck him with the cruel force only a child could manage.
Gilbert squirmed and whined as if he understood enough to dislike the whole house. Theodore stood a few feet behind her, quiet, pale, and watchful.
Adam crouched in front of Harriet. “She had to leave early.”
“Why?”
“For family business.”
“That is stupid,” Harriet said, fresh tears spilling over. “She always says goodbye.”
He took a careful breath. He could comfort a child in the moment. He could still do that much.
“She did not want to have to come over to wake you.”
“I would rather have been awake.”
“I know.”
Harriet looked at him with misery and indignation tangled together. “When is she coming back?”
Adam could not answer that, and he could tell Theodore knew it from the way his shoulders tensed.
Harriet’s mouth trembled. “Did I do something?”
“No,” Adam said at once. “Nothing of this is because of you.”
“Then why is everyone acting so strange?”
He put a hand on her head and smoothed back her hair. “Because this is a matter between adults. It has nothing to do with you, dear.”
She looked down at Gilbert. “He misses her too.”
Gilbert made another little distressed sound, which was enough to make Harriet cry again.
Adam took the dog from her before he was crushed by grief and pulled her into him with his free arm.
“Hush,” he crooned. “Come here.”
Theodore stepped close at last. “I will take her upstairs in a minute.”
Adam nodded.
Harriet cried against his coat until the worst of it passed. When she finally pulled back, her face blotchy and exhausted, he handed Gilbert to Theodore and watched the boy settle the dog against one arm with competence.
“I will stay with her,” Theodore offered.
“Thank you.”
The boy nodded and led the little girl away.
Adam stood alone in the hallway for a moment after they had gone. The house felt altered now in every visible way. The rooms were emptier, and the voices, for some odd reason, felt wrong.
He exhaled anyway and went to his study because there was nowhere else to go.
The door clicked shut behind him, before he crossed the room and stopped before the looking glass above the mantelpiece. His own face stared back at him, pale from lack of sleep, mouth set hard, eyes too old.
He lifted one hand as if to brace himself and instead struck the glass with the side of his fist. It shattered, and the crack rang through the room. A shard of glass hit the fireplace, and another slid across the desk.
He stood breathing hard, hand throbbing, feeling no better. Before he could think too hard, a knock sounded at the door.
“Adam?”
He closed his eyes. Theodore . “Come in.”
The boy entered, looked once at the broken mirror, then at Adam’s hand, and chose not to comment on either.
“Is all well?” he asked.
“Yes,” Adam uttered.
Theodore gave him the flat look of someone far older than his years. “Harriet will be hard to console.”
“We will have to do it one way or the other,” Adam said.
Theodore scoffed and turned around.
Adam blinked. “What?”
Theodore looked back at him. “What is what?”
“Why did you do that? Why did you just make that sound?” Adam asked.
The boy turned to face him. “Well, you make it sound like a good thing, consoling Harriet, now that Emily is gone.”
Adam braced one hand on the desk, careful now with his uninjured one. “Well, maybe it is.”
Theodore let out a laugh, but there was no mirth in it.
“It is not,” he said.
Then he left, and the door closed softly behind him.
Adam stayed where he was, surrounded by broken glass and Emily’s absence.
He was alone.
Why in God’s name did that feel so terrifying?