Chapter 20
They were in the parlor when Frederick came downstairs.
Lady Oldbarrow was in the chair near the fire with her wrap still over her shoulders and the air of someone who had decided not to leave until she was satisfied on certain points.
Thomas was standing by the window, which was his position when a room did not yet have a clear resolution.
They both turned when Frederick came in.
“Rachel is upstairs,” he said. “She is with Anna.”
“Good,” Lady Oldbarrow said.
He looked at them. “Thank you. For bringing her home.”
“It was no hardship,” Thomas said. “She was ready to leave when I found her. I think she knew something was wrong before I said anything. A remarkable faculty for reading a room, your sister.”
“She comes by it honestly.” Frederick crossed to the side table and poured two fingers of brandy, then stopped and looked at his godmother.
She shook her head. He poured Thomas a glass and carried both across the room and sat.
“People noticed you left,” Thomas said. He took the glass and settled into the chair across from Frederick. “Selbourne’s wife asked me about it. I told her you had been called back on a household matter. A gas fitting concern. Something unverifiable and mundane.”
“And she accepted that.”
“She accepted it with great enthusiasm, which means she does not believe it at all and intends to make up something more interesting. However, what she makes up will be about the house and not about—” He paused. “Anything else.”
“That will do.”
“It will do,” Thomas agreed. “For now.”
Lady Oldbarrow had been watching Frederick throughout this exchange with the expression she wore when she was seeing something she had not yet decided to name. She did not press. She looked at the fire and then at her hands and then at him, briefly, and then she stood.
“I am going to go,” she said.
Frederick rose with her. “Godmother—”
“Don’t.” She waved a hand. “I am not going because I am dismissed, I am going because I am sixty-three years old and the evening has been longer than I intended and you do not need me in this room.” She reached up and put her hand against his jaw, the way she had since he was seventeen, palm briefly warm against his cheek.
“Anna is upstairs and she has Rachel, and that is what she needs right now.” A pause.
Her eyes were very clear and entirely steady. “You are all right.”
It was not a question. But it was not quite a statement either.
“Yes,” he said.
She looked at him for one moment longer, and whatever she saw in his face she chose to leave where it was, which was one of the things he had always loved most about her. She smoothed her wrap and turned.
“Tell Anna I shall call on her tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Only briefly.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Good.” She let him walk her out to the hall, accepted her coat from the footman, and went. He stood at the top of the steps until her carriage had rounded the corner and the sound of it had faded into the ordinary noise of the London night.
He went back inside. Thomas had not moved from his chair. He had finished his brandy and was looking at the fire.
“Study,” Frederick said, and Thomas stood without comment.
The study was cold. Frederick put a log on the fire and did not wait for it to catch before he crossed to the decanter.
He poured two glasses and handed one to Thomas and sat in the chair behind the desk, which was where he sat when he needed to think clearly and wanted the desk’s architecture of order between himself and whatever was happening.
Thomas sat across from him. He looked at his glass, not at Frederick, which was his way of indicating that he was going to wait.
Frederick drank. Then he set the glass down and told him. He kept it brief, as he always kept things, and in order. Birchall in the entrance hall. Simmons on the floor. Anna was standing in the middle of it when he came through the door. Thomas said nothing until he had finished.
Then he said, with a quietness that was more serious than his usual register by considerable distance, “The bastard.”
“Yes,” Frederick said.
“He struck your butler and walked into your house—”
“Yes.”
“With intent to remove her by—”
“Yes.” He picked up his glass again. “He is gone. I have sent for the physician for Simmons. Barnes will have a letter from me first thing tomorrow and I have made it plain to Birchall that any legal action on his part will be answered in kind.” He turned the glass. “It is managed.”
Thomas was looking at him with the expression he wore when he was deciding how far to go. “And Anna,” he said.
“She is upstairs. Rachel is with her.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Frederick said nothing, and Thomas exhaled. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out.
“I saw her face when she came in tonight. When Rachel and I arrived back.”
“She has been through a great deal this evening.”
“She has been through a great deal for some time now, Fred,” Thomas said.
“And she has conducted herself through it with more composure than most people in ordinary circumstances. I mean that without exaggeration.” He paused.
“You should also know that several people at the ball noticed Birchall leave, but no one connected it to anything. He left alone, quietly, and there is nothing to suggest he went anywhere in particular.” He turned his glass. “But I thought you should know.”
“Thank you.” He set his glass down. “For all of it tonight. I am aware it was—”
“Don’t thank me,” Thomas said. “It is not a transaction.” He looked at Frederick with a simplicity that was one of the things that made him difficult to dismiss. “You have done an extraordinary thing for that woman. I want you to know I think so.”
“I have done what was necessary.”
“You have done considerably more than what was necessary.” He said it plainly, without embellishment, and it landed with more weight for that.
“What was necessary was a letter to a solicitor and someone’s back door.
What you have done is bring her into your household, help her with the annulment, and put yourself between her and Birchall.
” He held Frederick’s gaze. “That is not necessity. That is something else.”
“She is Rachel’s closest friend,” Frederick said. “It is for her.”
“Yes, you’ve said so.” Thomas turned his glass in his hand. “Several times, across several conversations, with the conviction of a man who has decided something is true and is reinforcing the decision regularly.” He set the glass down. “The annulment will go through.”
“Barnes expects it within the month.”
“And after that, she is free.” A pause, deliberate. “And unmarried.”
“And Rachel must marry first,” Frederick said, “which is the work that remains, and which requires my full—”
“Rachel must marry first,” Thomas repeated, with the mildness of a man quoting something back. “Is that written down somewhere? Is it in a ledger?”
“It is the correct order of things! I have gone to great lengths to right the wrongs of this house. Order is necessary—”
“It is the order you decided, in the manner that you decide orders of things, which is without consultation, with great certainty and occasionally, without any logic that would survive examination.” He was not unkind.
He never was. It was simply Thomas, saying the thing he thought because the thing he thought was true.
“She wants a family man, you said once. Someone who would stay.”
“She does.” He reached for his glass. “And she deserves one.”
“And isn’t that,” Thomas said, with a patience that had a very slight edge to it now, “precisely what you have been? For years? A man who stays. A man who protects and provides and does not leave.” He looked at him.
“For Rachel, yes. But that is the nature of you, Frederick. That is what you are, not the circumstance you have been obliged to fill.”
Frederick said nothing. He looked at the fire.
“You’ve spent fifteen years placing yourself last on the list,” Thomas said.
“Longer, if we’re counting from when you were seventeen.
I know why you did it. I was there, or near enough.
I understand the reason of it.” He leaned forward slightly.
“But she will marry. Rachel will marry, and well, and then the house will be very quiet, and the list will run out of items.” He held Frederick’s gaze.
“You are allowed to want things, Frederick. You know that. Do you want to be alone?”
“I have everything I require,” Frederick snapped back, though he didn’t mean to.
“That is not the same thing.”
“Thomas—”
“A man can have everything he requires and be perfectly miserable,” Thomas said.
“I have seen it done, and done well, by men of considerable accomplishment.” He picked up his glass.
“You are allowed to want things. You are allowed to consider the possibility that one of the things you want is in this house and will very shortly be free to be wanted.” He raised the glass slightly. “That is all I am saying.”
“And that is quite enough,” Frederick said, regaining composure as he drank more.
“I am sure it is.” Thomas drank.
He did not look put out. He never did when he had said what he intended to say. He set the glass down and looked at the fire.
They sat in the fire’s warmth, and the house around them was quiet, and eventually Thomas rose and put on his coat and shook Frederick’s hand and let himself out.
Frederick stayed in the chair for a long time.
The next morning, the house woke more slowly than usual. Sunlight came through with the gentleness of London July, and by the time Anna came downstairs, the dining room was set, and the fire was going, and the world had resumed its ordinary appearance.
Frederick had already eaten. She did not ask after him, and Mrs. Hale did not offer, and she sat at the table with her tea and her toast and felt the quiet settle around her like something handed back.