Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Check,” Celia said, sliding her bishop across the board with a look of pure triumph.
William blinked, looking down at the board.
“I said, Check, Your Grace,” Celia repeated.
“How did that get there?”
“You were looking at Felicity’s painting,” Celia said matter-of-factly. “It is a very good horse, isn’t it?”
“It is,” William agreed, moving his king out of danger.
The following afternoon, he sat at the heavy oak table in the schoolroom, the chessboard between him and Celia like a battle.
On the other side of the room, Felicity was perched on a stool before a small easel, her tongue caught between her teeth as she applied a wash of grey to a sketch of the bronze horse.
She wanted to ensure she got it just right before starting her clay sculpture.
“I think I shall paint the Romans next,” Felicity said, not looking up from her work. “Just like in that painting in the museum. A whole legion. With their actual feet.”
“That is a wise idea,” Celia remarked. “Feet are important.”
Anne entered the room then, carrying a tray of tea. She set it on the sideboard and came to stand behind William, her hands resting naturally on his shoulders.
“Who is winning?” she asked.
“Celia is currently dismantling my defenses,” William replied, leaning back into her touch.
“It is because he is thinking about the horse,” Celia explained.
“What a beautiful piece of art,” Anne said as she handed her a cup of tea.
The room felt warm, filled with the scent of linseed oil and Earl Grey.
As William watched the two girls, one so like him in her fierce focus, the other a whirlwind of curiosity, he felt a sudden, sharp ache in his chest. He looked up at Anne, who was watching Felicity with that quiet fondness.
Is this what a family is?
He thought of his bloodline, the long history he had spent his life protecting. But looking at this family, makeshift as it was, gathered in the schoolroom, he realized he no longer wanted to just protect a legacy. He wanted to build one with Anne.
He wanted a child who would have her eyes and his stubbornness, a child who would be born into this new, warmer world they were creating—a child who would be guided and protected by Celia and Felicity.
His heart swelled at the dream building deep inside of him, something he had never thought he would want.
“William?” Anne prompted, sensing the shift in his mood. “Is everything all right?”
“It is nothing,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles.
“It is something,” she teased as she perched on the chair next to him. “What is it?
“I was just thinking that we might need a larger table soon.”
Anne’s eyes searched his, and for a moment, he thought she might have read the thought exactly as it formed. He smiled, but she did not return it.
“What for?” she asked quickly. “This is a perfectly adequate table for the girls.”
“Yes… it is,” William conceded, though his heart dreamed of something else.
She had read it. He saw at once that she had read it. Her expression did not change in any way that the girls would have noticed. She had been in drawing rooms too long to permit that, but something behind her eyes went still, in the way a deer goes still at the edge of the woods.
“A larger table,” she said, almost a question.
“Yes.”
“For the girls.”
“For… Yes, of course.”
She looked at him a moment longer. Then she looked away, at Felicity’s easel, and smiled at the painting as though nothing had passed between them.
“It is a very fine horse, darling,” she praised.
“Thank you, Anne,” Felicity said, without looking up.
“Might I have a little more tea, Anne?” Celia asked.
“Of course, you may.”
Anne rose and crossed to the sideboard.
William watched her pour the tea. Her hand was perfectly steady.
That was the thing, her hand was perfectly steady, and the steadiness was somehow worse than a tremor. A tremor would have been a small, involuntary thing. The steadiness was a choice. It was a wall she had put up between one breath and the next.
Why is she so closed off and yet so open?
He looked down at the chessboard. Celia’s bishop was still where she had put it. He no longer had the smallest notion of what he intended to do about it.
“Your move, Your Grace,” Celia prompted.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. Forgive me.”
He moved a knight, more or less at random. Celia gave him a patient look that suggested she had expected better of him, and took his knight with the rook he had entirely failed to notice.
“Oh, William,” Anne said lightly from the sideboard. “She has you quite beaten.”
“She has,” he agreed. “She is quite the player.”
He did not look at her. He did not dare.
After half an hour, the game ended with Celia’s magnanimous victory and his own very thorough defeat.
Felicity’s horse had acquired a grey wash, a noble eye, and a background of vague Roman architecture, which Celia pronounced historically plausible.
Anne sat in the chair beside him and drank her tea, saying all the right things and laughing in the right places. When their hands brushed as she set down her cup, she did not flinch, but she did not linger either.
The bell rang for the girls’ supper, and Felicity set down her paints.
Celia bowed to William. “I shall beat you again tomorrow, if you are good.”
Felicity offered him the more dignified honor of her small, cool hand on his. “Good evening, Papa,” she said, before they joined one of the maids and made their way to sup.
“Goodnight, girls,” he replied as they walked out of the schoolroom.
Then they were gone.
The door closed behind them. The maid’s voice faded down the corridor. The room fell very quiet then. The fire gave one small settling sound. The smell of linseed oil hung in the air.
Anne was standing at the window. She had her back to him, and her arms were folded across her middle, not tightly, not defensively. Her shoulders were set in a particular line he was learning to recognize. It was the posture she adopted when she did not wish to be read, which only drew him in more.
“Anne,” he said.
“Mm?”
“Come here.”
“In a moment.”
She did not move. She was looking out at the garden, where the long blue shadows of a summer evening were beginning to stretch across the lawn.
He waited. He did not press her. He sat at the chess table, with his hands loosely clasped on the polished oak, and waited.
“William,” she said at last.
“Yes?”
“What was it exactly that you were thinking?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Anne.”
“No.” She did not turn. “Please, tell me. I would rather know it than not know it. I do not like… I do not do well with things that are left to my imagination. Thoughts tend to fester there.”
He was silent for a moment as he considered his words.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that in all the years of my first marriage, I had never looked up from a chessboard and felt this.”
“This?”
“Whatever this is. That I was sitting in the middle of something I had not realized I wanted, and that I wanted more of it.”
“More of it…”
“Yes.”
“More of… the girls?”
“The girls. You. All of it.”
“William. I… I…”
“I was thinking,” he continued, very carefully, “that I should like us to have a child together. One day. When it suited. If it were something that you… If it were a thing you also wished for.”
There. It was said.
He had not meant to say it today. He had meant to say it at a better-chosen moment, not this, not across a schoolroom with the smell of Felicity’s paint lingering in the air. But it was said now. It was in the room with them. He could not take it back, and he did not wish to.
Anne did not turn. She did not speak. The silence grew long enough that he began to feel it against his skin. He felt as if he were growing ill the longer it stretched out.
“Anne.”
“I heard you.”
“Say something. Anything.”
“I am trying to.”
Her voice was quite level. But he could see now that her hands, where they gripped her elbows, had gone white at the knuckles.
He rose and crossed the room. He did not touch her at once. He stood at her shoulder, looking out at the same garden she was looking at, at the expanse of the lawn and the high hedge at the end of it, and the first pale appearance of a star above the chimneys.
“Tell me,” he urged softly. “What is wrong?”
“I cannot give you that.”
William sighed inaudibly, unsure of what to say.
“I cannot give you that, William. I am nearly certain I cannot give you that. Please do not… Please do not build anything on the foundation of my giving you that.” She said it very quickly, all in one breath, as though if she did not, she would not manage to say it at all.
Then she pressed the back of one hand to her mouth and closed her eyes.
“Tell me what you mean,” he coaxed. “I want to better understand where you are coming from.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know some of what you might mean. I should like to hear the rest from you.”
She was silent. Her shoulders rose and fell once.
“My… my m—” she started and then stopped. Her voice had gone thin. She was still looking out the window. “I cannot talk about this now. Can we… talk about something else?”
He took her elbow very gently and turned her to him. She did not resist, but she did not look up at him either. She kept her face down, her eyes fixed on the middle button of his waistcoat, as though it were the most interesting object in the world.
“Anne,” he murmured.
“Please do not tell me it does not matter. Please do not be gallant. I will not be able to bear it.”
“I was not going to tell you that it does not matter.”
“Oh.”
“What matters is that I understand, Anne. We do not need to talk about this now. When you are ready, I am here.”
He hooked his finger under her chin and tilted up her face. Her eyes, when they met his, were very bright, and in them was a brittle look he had not seen before.
She closed her eyes. A single tear slid unhindered down her cheek, and he wiped it away.
“I do not know what I can give you, William,” she croaked. “I do not know if I can even try for it without breaking myself. I do not know…”
“You do not need to know tonight.”
“No?”
“You do not need to know for a considerable while. Consider the matter tabled.”
“Are we in Parliament?” she joked.
Then she made a small, broken sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite anything else either.
He pulled her in. She came.
She rested her forehead against his shoulder and stood there. After a moment, he felt the warm dampness of her tears seeping through the linen of his shirt.