Chapter 16
“How did you know the twins’ mother before all of this?”
The question landed with an odd delicacy, suspended above the roast and the hissing candle as if Oscar had taken pains to set it there just so. Nancy regarded her knife, which was doing an admirable job of rendering the cutlet into insignificance.
“I suspected you would ask eventually,” she replied, not quite looking at him. “Though I half hoped you’d develop the knack for mind reading and spare us the conversation.”
“I do not claim any expertise in mind reading,” Oscar said.
“Only in facts.” He sipped his wine, face carefully impassive.
“I have seen the way Clara and Henry look at you. It is not the affection of strangers. Nor does it strike me as the regard for a distant cousin. I would like to know more about your relationship with them.”
“Must I?” Nancy picked at her bread, watching the crumbs collect in the gutter of the plate. She was stalling, and he knew it.
“You must,” Oscar said, with the smallest smile. “Otherwise, I will assume you are a spy.”
That broke the ice. “A spy? For whom?”
“Your mother. The House of Neads. The Peerage. I am flexible,” Oscar replied, gesturing vaguely. “But the truth would be preferable.”
Nancy glanced up. His gaze was direct but not challenging. She forced her shoulders back, straightened in the chair, and faced him properly. “Very well. The truth, then. Teresa was a maid in our house.”
Oscar’s brow shot up, but he said nothing.
“She was not an ordinary servant, though.” Nancy found her voice, a little shaky at first. “Teresa was brilliant. Not just clever, but… luminous. She had opinions about everything, often stronger than my own. When I was fourteen and she nineteen, we got into a quarrel about Aristotle’s ethics.
I lost, which I have never forgiven her for. ”
Oscar’s lips twitched. “You admit defeat?”
“I admit nothing,” Nancy said, but her smile was genuine.
“But from that day, she became my closest friend. We did everything together. I taught her Latin and French. She taught me how to sneak tarts from the kitchen without getting caught. She covered for me when I broke a window with a cricket bat, and I—” She stopped, catching herself before she could say too much.
Oscar leaned forward. “You?”
“I covered for her, too. Often. Especially when she began receiving secret correspondence from your brother.”
Oscar’s smile was gone. He was very still, a chess piece that had not yet decided whether to move or topple.
“Peter wrote to her?”
“Oh, constantly. Sometimes two letters a day. Most of them smuggled through the post at risk of getting us all sacked.” Nancy found herself almost laughing at the memory.
“There were so many codes and misdirections you’d have thought we were plotting a coup d’état.
Teresa would read his letters in the linen closet, and she would tell me—sometimes—what he said.
Sometimes not.” Nancy folded her napkin into a narrow ribbon.
“When they began meeting in secret, she enlisted me as lookout.”
Oscar blinked. “You were their accomplice.”
“I was their champion,” Nancy corrected. “You see, Peter was… well, you know what he was. The golden child. Kind, romantic, undeterred by reality. He was mad about her. I have never seen anyone so in love.”
She noticed Oscar’s hand tighten on the stem of his glass, the knuckles pale. But his face betrayed nothing.
“They planned to elope, at first,” Nancy went on.
“But then Teresa got cold feet. Not because she didn’t love him—she did, with all her heart—but because she feared she would ruin his life.
His future. So she refused him for weeks.
He finally convinced her with a single letter.
I never saw it, but after reading it, she cried for a day and then packed her things. ”
Oscar said, “My mother found out. That is what finished her.”
The words were flat, an indictment without accusation.
“It wasn’t Teresa’s fault,” Nancy said. “Your mother’s health was already—”
“She died within a year,” Oscar replied, still without heat. “Peter never forgave himself.”
Nancy’s throat tightened. “But he did love her.”
Oscar’s mouth twisted, a half-smile, half-wound. “I know.”
“They were happy, Oscar. Genuinely happy. I used to visit them after the twins were born. They had this tiny cottage at the edge of the estate. Teresa would always have a kettle on, and Peter would pretend not to see me coming so he could ‘surprise’ the children. They were wild, those two. I think they only stopped running when they slept.”
Oscar stared at his plate, as if the story had drained all color from the room.
Nancy pressed on, softer now. “After Peter’s accident, I wrote to Teresa. I could not attend the funeral as I was traveling with my family,” Nancy’s voice faltered, the first sign of real pain. “I visited often, but I should have…” She gestured to the present with a limp wave.
Oscar looked up, eyes cold and luminous at once. She studied him, the shape of his jaw and the set of his shoulders, and the way, even now, he sat with the posture of a man expecting attack.
“You could have visited them, you know,” Nancy said, her voice low. “Clara and Henry. Teresa would have welcomed you.”
Oscar’s hands stilled. For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then: “I was not wanted. Peter made that very clear.”
“He was wrong,” Nancy replied.
Oscar let the silence stretch. “I am not built for forgiveness, Nancy. Nor am I much good at family. My mother died, and I blamed him. He died, and I blamed myself.”
There it was: the truth, brittle and bare as bone.
Nancy felt something break inside her. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He looked up, blue eyes fathomless. “We always say that. It is never our fault, and yet the world is full of orphans.”
She stared at him, not knowing what to say. The pain in his words was an old, fossilized thing, worn into the very shape of him.
Oscar smiled then—just a fraction, not a real one, but something shaped like one. “You must not think me a monster. I cared for Peter. For Teresa, too. And I wish—” He stopped, the smile curdling into nothing.
“What do you wish?” Nancy asked.
“I wish I knew how to make any of it better. For you. For the twins. For myself, if I am honest.”
Nancy’s hands trembled, just a little. She reached for her wine, found it empty, and set it down with a thunk. “You make things better just by being here.”
Oscar arched a brow. “You are a liar.”
“I am not.” She met his gaze, bold for once. “You make things better because you try. Because you care, even when you pretend not to.”
He said, softly, “I do not pretend with you.”
She felt her throat close. “Then why do you always wear that face?”
Oscar blinked. “What face?”
“That one.” Nancy gestured at him, sharply. “Like you are a sculpture carved from ice. Like nothing in the world could ever reach you.”
He laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “I have never been good at warmth.”
Nancy stared at him, the urge to do something—anything—building in her until it was a living thing.
She reached out, and before she could think twice, her fingers brushed his mouth. Just the corner, where the smile was, or should have been. The skin was warm and softer than she’d expected.
Oscar went utterly still. His eyes widened, blue and brilliant and full of unspoken questions.
Nancy froze. What in God’s name had she done? She whipped her hand back as if burned, and the color flared up her cheeks so fast she thought she might actually faint.
“I—” she started, but nothing came out.
Oscar didn’t move. He simply looked at her, as if she’d performed a magic trick and then forgotten how she’d done it.
Nancy lurched to her feet, nearly upsetting the table. “I must go,” she said, her voice high and strangled. “It’s late.”
“Nancy—” Oscar started, but she was already backing toward the door, one hand pressed to her chest to keep her heart from exploding.
“Good night,” she said, and fled the room, skirts snapping behind her like a flag of surrender.
She made it halfway to the stairs before her legs gave out and she had to sit, breathing in ragged gasps.
What had come over her? She’d let him make her lose that control. Again.
You are not a coward, Nancy, she told herself.
But it was a lie. Because she knew, with terrifying clarity, that she wanted him to touch her back. And she was not sure what would happen when he did.