Chapter Seventeen
Felicity did not appear at breakfast the following morning. It should not have injured Atticus to see her empty chair as much as it did. His grip tightened around his fork.
What else had he expected? To wake up and go about his day in the hopes that last night had been a horrible dream populated by his few hours of rest? That fool’s hope could never have lasted beyond breakfast.
Felicity was not here. They would never share a breakfast together again.
His heart plummeted yet again. Throwing his napkin onto the dining table, Atticus pushed himself to his feet, his appetite evaporated. Of the few sips and bites he’d forced upon himself, none of them had tasted right. It was all bland. Lifeless.
Just like that, Atticus’s world had returned to gray. It had always been bound to. How could something as delicate as love grow upon such an illusory foundation? Yet his had, without his permission, without his realizing until it had been too late.
Atticus had unknowingly been playing his part, almost as if he were a character in a story, placed just so, to fulfill a role and not a living, breathing, breakable man.
He slumped forward and planted his palms on the solid-wood table. All this time, he had thought he was growing in strength and courage by allowing himself to open his heart. Instead, Atticus had only welcomed a type of pain he had never thought to prepare himself for: the pain of betrayal. And of how he had been embarrassingly naive.
He shook his head in a feeble attempt to cast away that nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that perhaps he had too readily accepted his wounded pride’s vehement insistence that he accept her withdrawal and do the same himself.
Still, this was precisely the dreadful ache that had always filled Atticus with terror, that he tried desperately to escape in novels…that he thought he’d finally broken free from with the help of his brilliant wife. She was brilliant indeed, yet would it have been fair to Atticus to look at Felicity in the course of their daily lives and wonder, in the faintest whisper in the furthest corner of his mind, if he might be caught unawares again?
Atticus had come to believe that Felicity was the one person who would always be honest with him. To realize that even she could withhold such a pivotal secret had been a shock Atticus had never imagined, not now.
Worse still, he had forced Felicity to do the one thing she had never wanted…even if she had seemed content eventually.
Despite his every good intention and effort, Atticus had become the cage she’d always feared. That much had been evident in her eyes last night.
“Dear Atticus, whatever is the matter?”
Mama’s frantic cry disrupted the unceasing bombardment of Atticus’s shameful thoughts. He straightened and turned to find both parents racing across the breakfast room. They snatched at his hands and face, feeling for an elevated temperature or a wound, showering a volley of worried questions upon Atticus’s already fractured mind.
“Stop, please,” he mumbled under his breath. His shoulders inched up around his ears as he tried to gain a modicum of distance.
“Goodness gracious, was it the fish from last night? Oh, I was so suspicious of that new preparation method Cook showed me!”
“Look here, let me have a look at you. So pale! Was the port too strong for your liking?”
“And where is Felici—”
“Stop, please!”
The breakfast room went still. Mama’s and Papa’s ministrations ceased. Atticus took a step back and turned away, clawing at his collar, desperate for air.
“Atticus…where is Felicity?” Mama repeated after a long, shocked silence.
“What’s happened, son? Why don’t you sit here and tell us?”
With exceeding gentleness, Papa approached and rested his fingertips upon Atticus’s elbow, guiding him back to the long table laden with forlorn food and beverages. The footmen had brought in Felicity’s usual hot chocolate before he had convinced himself that the events of last night had been very, very real.
With a deep sigh, he resumed his seat while his parents took the two closest on his left. Atticus was strangely appreciative of it. He was not yet ready to look up and see another face on his right but Felicity’s.
“You have argued,” Mama said.
Atticus nodded. If it could sound so simple, why could it not be just as simple to repair?
“All couples do, Atticus, even the supremely happy ones. Even us,” she continued, her words laced with quiet optimism. Papa nodded his agreement.
“Not like this.” Atticus sighed once more.
He hung his head, his dark fringe obscuring the sympathetic frowns on his parents’ faces. He had no desire to see their expressions when he revealed his own deception.
“Whatever it is, surely, it is nothing the two of you cannot overcome with patience and time,” Papa added.
“If we’d had a love match, perhaps.”
Mama’s stifled gasp broke Atticus’s heart anew. “W-What do you mean to say?”
“It was a lie. A ruse.” Atticus shrugged. He had never felt more defeated. “It was a mistake, apparently. She made it clear after dinner that she…”
“Atticus, you are not speaking sense. We have seen you together from the very start,” Papa argued, his disbelief loud and clear.
“It would have been a grievous scandal. The night of the ball you hosted not long after our arrival… Felicity and I were caught unchaperoned in the library by Lady Eldmar.”
“Atticus!” Mama jumped to her feet, her chair scraping against the wooden floor.
Atticus flinched and retreated further into his lanky frame. Though he still could not bring himself to look up, he heard the hum of Mama fanning herself under Papa’s steady stream of whispered reassurances and attempts to return her to her seat.
“How could this happen?” she demanded, her voice cracking. “This is not to be borne! Never would I have thought you would be the one to compromise a young lady. And to lie to your mother and father, and for so long!”
“Dearest, please,” Papa begged, finally managing to catch his wife’s wrist as she paced back and forth in a flurry of distress. The lady dropped onto the chair with an exhausted exhale.
“Have you no further explanation? Have you nothing else to say for yourself?” Mama asked under her breath.
Atticus’s jaw tightened. “I would not have you think that Felicity is at fault in any way. She is perfectly innocent and blameless.”
“Then begin from the beginning,” Papa prodded, his gaze more serious than Atticus had ever seen.
What good would there be in lying or masking the truth now? It was done. Mere information, unchangeable like the text on a page. Atticus shared it all—even Lady Swan and Felicity’s lie by omission, understandable yet painful nonetheless. At some point as he spoke, Atticus had raised his head to meet his parents’ commiserating gazes.
“Heavens above,” Mama whispered when Atticus finished, her eyes wider than should have been possible.
“That…is certainly not what I expected to hear.” Papa leaned back in his chair and stretched his neck side to side. “Breakfast is not yet finished and I already require a nap.”
“As do I,” Atticus admitted. Every limb hung heavy with an exhaustion that transcended the physical. It penetrated his very spirit.
“So you see, all this time, I thought we had found each other by some miracle. That Felicity had found something in me worthy of being fully loved and understood and entrusted. In reality, she was being guided by this letter, the orchestrator of our fates, and I would have been none the wiser had Miss Clara not forgotten that I was never meant to know. The situation has become so increasingly entangled that it is now impossible to know which threads lead to truth and which only give the appearance of it, ending instead in knots of confusion.”
Mama frowned. “I do not agree.”
“I fail to see on what grounds.” Atticus shook his head and crushed the napkin in his fist. Surely, even his naturally optimistic mama would not attempt to find a positive outcome in this mess.
“It is quite simple. Do you love your wife?”
Atticus fought to keep from grimacing. “It is not that simple.”
“Very well, perhaps not. The question is still relevant. Do you love your wife?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
Mama and Papa exchanged a knowing glance that Atticus was not sure if he should like or not. He swallowed the anxious lump in his throat.
“We know you do, son,” Mama continued. Papa took her hand as if in silent endorsement. “And we know Felicity loves you. We know you bring each other immense happiness. That is all. That is the truth.”
The listless remains of Atticus’s heart stirred in his chest. How desperately he longed to believe her! He was so desperate, in fact, that he did believe it for half a beat.
“But how? How are we to overcome all that has tainted our marriage since before we met? How can we truly know if what we feel now will remain forever, because it is true…or if it will wither, because the soil in which it was planted was never meant to sustain it? What if one day, Felicity realizes that her feelings and the intrigue of the letter have faded with time, and that she was right to call us a mistake? How long will it take for her to inform me of that development?”
There was that strange sideways look again. Atticus narrowed his eyes. Apparently, there was still more to be said, but this time, not by him.
“Atticus, you know your mother and I love each other very much,” Papa began slowly. Atticus nodded, knots coiling in his stomach. “But…there was a time in our lives when your mother and I, in fact, loathed each other.”
All of Atticus’s propriety and good breeding disappeared in an instant. His mouth dropped open.
“Pardon?” he demanded. His bulging eyes bounced back and forth between the older couple’s sheepish smiles.
“We were both young and had only just been introduced when I overheard your papa, in a foolish attempt to impress his haughty classmates from Oxford, insult my dearest friend at the time,” Mama continued with a giggle, her entire countenance aglow with the memory of her youth. “Something about all the turquoise feathers in her hair failing to distract from her plainness, both in features and in manners.”
Atticus’s mouth fell open as he stared at his father, who offered a sheepish shrug.
“Your mama made certain I—and all my classmates—knew precisely how she felt about my comment,” said Papa. “I was young and foolish indeed. Though might I add, that friend whom your mama defended so gallantly on that fateful evening has not returned any of her correspondence in nearly twenty years.”
Atticus sank back into his chair, his long arms dangling over the sides. Mama and Papa were too enamored with their reminiscences to mind.
“And so you…loathed each other? I cannot imagine it.”
The older woman chuckled, turning her fond smile from her husband to her son.
“That is just the thing, Atticus. Even we can hardly imagine it ourselves now. We have spent so much more of our lives loving each other that our origins, crucial to our love story though they are, carry so much less significance when weighed against the decades of joy we have shared since.”
Papa did not remove his soft gaze from his wife as he effortlessly continued her thought. “Eventually, after weeks of inadvertently crossing paths throughout London and renewing our bitter vows of lifelong hatred at every turn, we began to realize that we were actually being drawn to each other. We shared a lengthy conversation and apologies on both sides—after which, I apologized to your mama’s friend—and began a courtship much like many others. What once seemed impossible is now a distant memory we reflect upon with gratitude and amusement.”
Atticus continued to stare in wonder at the neat abridgment of this aspect of his parents’ pasts. It had been completely unknown to him, and no doubt Arabella as well.
“But,” he began, struggling to formulate a sensible rebuttal while also absorbing this new information.
“We know our situation and yours are not exactly comparable,” Mama continued, “but perhaps we might be taken as proof that strange, even undesirable, conditions need not rob you of an entire future of happiness. When you are living these days as they happen, every shift brings a new frustration that seems insurmountable. But if you persevere now, you and Felicity shall create so many memories of far greater importance that all of this business of Lady Swan and secrets and scandals will grow small in the distance.”
Atticus sat in pensive silence for several long moments. It sounded so simple, just as they had said. It sounded so tempting.
All these new dreams he had finally allowed himself to dream could be his if only he and Felicity could set aside their past.
Finally, Atticus forced himself to speak. “Thank you very much, Mama, Papa. You have given me much to consider and much for both of us to discuss.”
“We will keep you in our prayers, darling,” Mama cooed. The hope in her eyes returned as she stood.
“You will overcome this. We know it. You look as though you require some time to think, so we shall grant it,” offered Papa, also rising from his chair.
Atticus accepted a few more reassurances as well as a breathtaking hug from Mama and returned to his quiet reflection. His spirits sank to depths lower than he’d thought possible. What else had he done but delayed his parents’ disappointment yet again? It would become clear all too soon that Atticus had irrevocably failed. Felicity had made her decision and Atticus had not had the strength to fight her. He was still not sure the happiness of which his parents had spoken with such reverence could be possible for him and his wife.
But they had not seen the way she had looked at him. They did not know her as he did. As he’d thought he did.
After some untold amount of time, sitting and staring at the empty chair to his right, Atticus felt his body stir of its own accord. His legs forced him up and to the door, down the hall, up the stairs, and into his library. As if his body understood what his mind could not dictate, what his mind needed: the solitude of his sanctuary.
Atticus’s distracted mind came into sharp focus as he approached the corner. Their corner. What had once belonged to Atticus alone now bore painful reminders of another, not only in the items she had left behind—her book, a pair of gloves, a tea-stained shawl—but in the very air of the room.
He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled deeply. Did traces of her perfume linger? Or did he simply imagine it to stave off the inevitable cascade of loss waiting to crush him the moment he lowered his defenses?
Perhaps it had been a mistake to invite Felicity into this particular aspect of his life. It would never be the same now that she’d touched it.
Atticus opened his eyes. At least he could set aside her items for her lady’s maid to collect later. He steeled himself for the sting of handling the very same precious objects Felicity had held not long ago, but only came as far as the first.
He picked up the adventure novel Felicity had been reading these past few weeks. Atticus turned it over in his hands, pressing his palms to the leather covers. He hoped, even if she did not continue to read with him, that she would continue all the same. Eventually, most likely in the spring after a little warmth returned to the world, he might resume his new habit of outdoor walks…without his wife on his arm.
Together under the same roof, sharing a life, yet completely alone. That was the fate to which Atticus had unknowingly doomed them both, pulled along like a puppet on strings only his wife and this mysterious writer could see.
The harsh grip of misery crushed Atticus’s chest. It nearly brought him to his knees. Instead, he found his favorite chair and leaned as deep into its protective wings as possible, Felicity’s book still in his hands.
Atticus hesitated briefly before choosing self-indulgence. Here in this quiet corner, he might allow a moment to pity himself. No one would know. Least of all Felicity. She need not carry the burden of Atticus’s pain.
No one would know if he raised the book to his face to steal another lungful of her familiar, sharp scent, as if it he might bottle it in his heart and tuck it into a corner that would fall deeper and deeper into darkness, if only so Atticus could remind himself on rare occasions of the three most glorious months of his life.
A moment was all it could be, Atticus soon reminded himself. He had already been granted far more of them than he deserved. In some ways, he had Lady Swan to thank as much as to blame for it.
As he rose to return the volume to the rest of Felicity’s belongings, the pages fell open. Cursing his carelessness, Atticus caught the bookmark as it fluttered in elegant loops toward the ground and slipped it back into its rightful place.
His fingers brushed against a raised, irregular edge. A wax seal. The very blood in his veins froze.
It could not be. The chances were far too slim. His wife, though not a terribly popular correspondent by her own admission, received mail several times a week. It could be any letter.
If it were any letter, why had Felicity tried to hide it from him that day in library when she had returned home with Mrs. Harrowsmith’s happy news?
Atticus shook his head. His grip tightened around the spine, his knuckles white. Even as guilt ravaged Atticus’s insides, he raised his finger off the seal.
A purple swan. Just as Felicity had described.
And she had kept it right here in their place, in every book she had read beside Atticus. He recognized the one corner she often left peeking through the pages. It had been crushed one day when she’d dropped her book on the wooden floor. Surely, that must have accounted for something.
Atticus’s temptation was too great to spend any further time pondering Felicity’s intentions in using Lady Swan’s letter as a bookmark. He flipped the sheet open.
“Perhaps you find it difficult to recognize love because you are so accustomed to being shown time and again that you are not worthy of it.”
That line continued to swim before his eyes even after what must have been his fourth or fifth reading. It seeped into his bones, into his very soul, underscoring all the wisdom his parents had shared and everything his wife had confided in him. They converged into a sudden and stunning clarity in Atticus’s mind.
Bold, brave Felicity was afraid. She was afraid to be a wife and mother because she did not think herself worthy of accepting such roles. She was afraid to love Atticus now because she had been made to feel unworthy of love for the entirety of her life.
Hand trembling, Atticus nestled the letter back into the book and shut it with a quiet thump.
That was what he had seen on her face last night. Fear. That was why his heart had longed to accept his parents’ assurance that they truly could make each other happy if given a proper chance.
Lady Swan, whoever she was, had known it all along. Felicity lived in fear of what she believed she did not deserve.
Did that mean she believed she did not deserve Atticus when the opposite could not be more obvious?
This time when Atticus steeled himself, he did it with a confidence that had no place in a coward’s heart like his. Yet it anchored him to solid, steady ground, his spine straight and head held high. He set Felicity’s book down where he’d found it, on the red, velvet cushion of her chair.
Only time would tell if she would ever rejoin him in their domestic bliss. That was not his primary concern. As Atticus strode through the library, a strange silence settling over his plague of nerves, he knew one thing to be true.
It no longer mattered to him if Felicity could not bring herself to take this great risk and build their great reward hand in hand with him. That was a choice she must be free to make, now more than ever.
There was only one thing left for him to do, the thing Felicity needed above all else.
Atticus burst through the library doors. The footman at the end of the hall whirled around and hastily bowed.
“Where is Mrs. Wheadon? My Mrs. Wheadon?”
The older man glanced down at his glossy shoes. “I am afraid she is not at home, sir. She has not been since last night.”