Chapter 16
The morning light was already strong when Nathaniel turned from the window. He had not slept much. He had not minded.
He was dressed, though he did not remember the act of dressing with any particularity — his valet had come and gone at some point, and the result was a coat and cravat that were presentable, which was all that mattered.
The world outside the window was the same world it had been yesterday: the same street, the same carriages passing, the same grey London sky pressing down over the rooftops.
It did not feel like the same world. He had made his decision in the night, and it had settled into him past all undoing, so that he stood in the altered version of it with his hands resting at his sides and no desire whatsoever to clasp them behind his back.
He was going to call on her this morning. That was all he knew and all he needed to know.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. "Yes?"
The footman stepped in, standing to one side to allow another gentleman to come into the room.
"Brother, is it true?"
Nathaniel greeted his brother with a lift of his eyebrows. "James. I did not expect to see you today."
"And I did not expect to hear that Miss Fairleigh's inheritance has been given to her," came the reply.
James did not sit down. He stood in the centre of the room with his weight shifting from one foot to the other, his gaze darting around the study rather than landing on any one thing. "Has that taken place?"
Nathaniel nodded. "It has."
His brother exhaled through his nose, a short, sharp breath, and his hands went behind his back before he caught himself and brought them forward again, pressing them together in front of him.
"I see. Then might I ask if all that you said about our aunt and her connection to Miss Fairleigh was correct? "
With a half smile, Nathaniel spread out his hands — palms up, fingers open. "It seems that I was."
With a huff of breath, James dropped his head and shook it.
"Then I am come to apologise to you, with genuine regret and sorrow.
On the night of the ball, I apologized to Miss Fairleigh and to her aunt, but I did not apologise to you.
" He took a deep breath, then lifted his steady gaze to Nathaniel's.
"I doubted you, Ashcombe. I believed that you were being foolish, that you were caught up by a young lady when you ought, instead, to be stepping back from her.
I see now that your attention to her and your dedication to understanding our aunt's motivations was right.
I feared you had entangled yourself in a situation where our own good name could be damaged, the very thing that you set out to prevent — but I allowed my own concerns to push my own fears to the fore.
" He took in a deep breath. "You acted with honor, Ashcombe, and it was I who chose to behave with dishonor.
I have already apologized to Miss Fairleigh, but perhaps I shall do so again, for I did not truly see the depths of my mistakes. "
Nathaniel watched his brother's face as the speech came to its end.
James's jaw was tight, his eyes steady but bright with the misery of a man who had come not merely to admit he was wrong but to understand why.
That distinction mattered. A man could apologise because the facts had proved against him.
It was another thing entirely to stand in a room and say: I was not only mistaken, I was unkind.
Nathaniel reached out and shook his brother's hand firmly, holding it for a beat longer than custom required.
"I do not think there is any need for further apology," he said, his voice steady.
"Miss Fairleigh has more than enough to consider at the present moment, and your apology, as you have said, was already given.
Believe me, that young lady will not hold anything against you. Her heart is too kind."
James looked down at their joined hands and then back up, his jaw tightening with the effort of what he had come to say.
"It is not only Miss Fairleigh I wronged, Ashcombe.
It is you. I questioned your judgement when I should have trusted it.
You saw what I could not — or would not — and I made you pay for my blindness.
" He cleared his throat. "That is what I came to say.
Not merely that the facts proved you right, but that I should not have required facts to treat my own brother with more faith. "
The room was quiet for a moment. It was not a wound healing, precisely, but Nathaniel felt the relief of a weight being set down that he had not realised he was carrying, his shoulders easing with it.
"Thank you, James," he said simply. "That means a good deal more than you know."
With a small, careful smile, his brother nodded.
"You speak very favourably of her, Ashcombe.
I recall that you told me at the ball that you intended to pursue her.
Might I ask if that has already occurred?
Now that the matter of her inheritance has been settled, are you now to step forward and follow on with your connection? "
Nathaniel felt a smile tug at his mouth. "Indeed, I do have every intention of doing so."
James nodded slowly, his expression softening into approval. "I do hope that you will find happiness with her, Ashcombe. I can tell from how you look when you speak of her that she has captured a significant place in your heart."
"She has," Nathaniel admitted, more than ready to speak of all that he felt. "I mean to marry her, should she have me — and I do not intend a long courtship."
At this, his brother's face split with a smile, his eyes dancing.
"If she will accept you?" he asked, as Nathaniel chuckled.
"My dear brother, given the way she was looking back at you as you spoke the night of your masquerade ball, I think you need not have even the smallest hint of fear of her refusal. "
"I thank you," Nathaniel responded, turning his head to look at the clock. "I am to go to call upon her very soon."
"Then I will not keep you from her," James said, extending his hand so Nathaniel could shake it firmly once more. "I wish you every success."
Nathaniel smiled. "I thank you. I hope I will have good news for you very soon."
The door closed behind his brother and the study was quiet.
Nathaniel stood where he was for a moment, his gaze falling on the desk — the pen still where he had left it, the ink not yet dry on the blotter from the letters he had written that morning.
Then his gaze moved to the chair beside the cold grate, the chair where he had sat in the dark with the voice that told him the cost was too high.
The cushion still held the impression of his weight.
He looked at it. He did not sit down. He had no desire to linger in the room where he had once been unable to decide.
He picked up his coat from the back of the chair and went.
The carriage was waiting in the drive. He climbed in and sat forward on the seat, his weight shifted toward the front edge, his hands resting on his knees.
The door closed, the horses moved, and the city began to pass outside the window — the rattle of wheels on cobblestones, the cries of the street sellers thinning as the carriage turned south toward the quieter squares.
He did not rehearse what he would say. He had tried, in the small hours of last night, sitting in the chair where the decision had first been made, and had found that there were no words adequate to rehearse.
Every sentence he constructed had sounded like a speech, and he did not want to give her a speech.
He wanted to stand in front of her and say what was true.
He would know the words when he saw her face.
His hands rested still on his knees, open and loose, the thumb idle against the palm. The old reflex was absent. He did not miss it.
The carriage slowed. The houses here were set back from the road, their gardens visible through wrought-iron gates. He heard birdsong — a blackbird, clear and insistent — and then the crunch of gravel as the wheels left the paved road and turned into the drive.
Despite his brother's reassurances and his own mounting hopes, Nathaniel could not deny that there was still a curl of anxiety in his stomach as the carriage approached the house.
Taking in a deep breath to steady his nerves, he lifted his chin and climbed out of the carriage and walked up the steps to the front of the house.
"Lord Ashcombe here to speak with Miss Fairleigh."
The butler nodded and then gestured down the hallway. "You will find Miss Fairleigh in the gardens, my lord. Might you wish for me to show you the way?"
"No, no. I thank you." His steps led him along the hallway, towards the doors that would lead to the gardens.
The doors opened onto gravel, and he heard his own footsteps as he stepped outside — a measured, steady sound that she would not hear from where she stood among the roses.
The path curved through beds of early summer colour: delphiniums standing tall against the garden wall, lavender beginning to open along the border, the heavy heads of peonies bowing under their own weight.
The morning light lay across it all with the gentleness of a day that has not yet decided whether it will be warm, the air still carrying the coolness of the night before.
He slowed his pace without meaning to. There was no audience here, no ballroom, no watching faces to manage. It was only a garden, and a path, and the sound of his breathing, and the knowledge that she was somewhere ahead of him around the next turning.