Chapter 31 #2
Everyone drank. The moment broke into ordinary sounds again, the clink of glass, Nathan reaching to refill Eleanor’s water, James handing a bread roll up through the legs of his chair.
“That,” Tristan said, into a general murmur, “was rather amusing.”
“It was a toast,” Henry said.
“Hmm.” Tristan’s eyes moved between them. “Was it?”
“Have some wine, Tristan,” Charlotte said.
“I have wine. I am thoroughly supplied.” He was still smiling into his glass. “Nathan, how are the roads north this time of year?”
Nathan, bless him, took the subject and ran with it. Eleanor joined in. The conversation reformed around them all, warm and purposeful, and Charlotte sat inside it, smiled at the right moments, and turned the toast over and over in her mind like a stone she could not put down.
Even when you did not know you were lost.
Did she look lost to him? Had she always looked lost to him? Was that what this was—not feeling, not longing, but Henry Kingswell doing what the Duke of Sappherton did, which was to identify a problem and construct a solution? She had been the solution. Perhaps he had simply made a toast about it.
She was aware she was being an idiot.
She was not sure she could stop.
“Charlotte,” Eleanor said, low, meant only for her. “The soup was extraordinary.”
Charlotte turned, grateful. “Cook will be so pleased. She’s been terrifying the kitchen staff since Tuesday.”
“Tell me she makes pudding.”
“She does. Three kinds, because Ian made a formal petition.”
Eleanor laughed. Under the table, the bread roll fort made a structural noise and James mumbled something incomprehensible.
The meal continued. Charlotte continued inside it. She filled her glass again when Nathan reached for the decanter and she deflected Lavinia’s one careful look with a smile that she suspected did not convince either of them.
At the other end of the table, Henry answered Tristan’s question about the northern route and did not look at her again.
She told herself that it was better.
The candles burned down slowly. Ian and James were retrieved from under the table when the pudding arrived, both red-cheeked and full of extremely vital information about bread architecture. Ian climbed into his chair and looked down the table at Henry.
“Was that a good toast?” Ian asked.
The table stilled.
“Yes,” Nathan said, after a beat. “It was.”
Ian considered this. “Mine would’ve been shorter,” he said. “I would’ve just said ‘good, ye’re back’.”
Nathan laughed, loud and warm. The table followed.
Charlotte laughed too. The sound came out easier than she expected, and she was grateful for it.
She let it carry her through the rest of the pudding, the leave-taking, and the moment when Nathan shook Henry’s hand in the hall and said something quiet that made Henry look at the floor.
She did not hear what it was.
She was already in the corridor, walking toward the stairs, turning the toast over one more time.
Even when you didn’t know you were lost.
* * *
The house was quiet.
Charlotte lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling, She thought about the toast, which was still sitting somewhere in her chest like a small stone she could not cough up or swallow.
Even when you didn’t know you were lost.
She had been turning it over for two hours.
She was no closer to understanding it than she had been at the table.
She understood Henry’s accounts. She understood his silences.
She had learned, slowly and at some cost to her dignity, to read the things he did not say.
But this had been a thing he did say, plainly, in front of everyone, and she still did not know what he meant by it.
She pushed back the covers and got up.
She did not go toward the library. She did not go downstairs. She went up.
The nursery corridor was dark, only a thin wash of moonlight coming through the window at the far end.
She moved quietly, her hand trailing the wall.
She was not sure she had decided to come here.
She had simply found herself walking in this direction, the way she always did when she could not sleep, drawn by the room at the end of the hall like a habit she had not noticed herself forming.
She turned the corner.
Henry was there.
He was standing outside Ian’s door. Still dressed. His coat was on, but barely—jacket open, no cravat, his hands loose at his sides. He was looking at nothing in particular. He turned when he heard her step.
They looked at each other.
Neither spoke.
The moonlight was thin and grey, and in it, the sharp, composed lines of his face had gone softer. He looked tired. He looked like a man who had also been lying in the dark not sleeping, which she found, in a quiet and entirely unhelpful way, rather a comfort.
She came to stand beside him. Not close. Just near. Two people in a hallway, both of them pretending they had not come here for the same reason.
“He talked in his sleep,” Henry said.
His voice was incredibly low. She leaned slightly toward it.
“About the stream,” he continued. “And the fish we never caught.”
Charlotte looked at the door. She could picture it perfectly: Ian tucked under his blanket, the wooden horse somewhere near his pillow, his face doing the small, complicated work of a sleeping child.
Henry’s breath came out softly. Not quite a laugh. But almost. “He was arguing with someone about it,” he said. “Quite firmly. Apparently, the fish were enormous and were simply choosing not to cooperate.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together. “That sounds right.”
A small silence.
“He’ll forget,” Henry said. “When he returns to Scotland. He’ll forget the stream. The fish. The birthday hunt.” He paused. “Children forget.”
“Will he?”
She had not meant to say it like that. It came out lower than she intended. She was already closer to him than she’d realized, one step toward the door, toward the sound of Henry’s voice in the quiet.
In the dim light, his face was not hiding anything.
He looked simply like himself—stripped of the careful architecture, the controlled expression, the practiced authority.
He looked tired, fond, and sad, and she had to direct her attention back to the door because looking at him like that was not safe.
“I’ll miss him,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t say it. I know our arrangement was never meant to be permanent. I know he belongs with Nathan and Eleanor, and I am glad for that, I am entirely glad, but I will miss him until it—”
She stopped.
She pressed her mouth closed and shook her head once.
Until it what? She did not know how to finish that. Until it stops? It would not stop. Until I find somewhere else to put it? She had nowhere else.
She did not know why she had said it at all.
That was not entirely true. She knew exactly why.
She had said it because she was standing in the dark two feet from Henry and she was still turning over his toast and some small, reckless part of her had hoped that if she said something open and unguarded, he would answer with something equally unguarded in return.
That he would ask her to stay. Not because Ian needed her.
Not because the marriage required managing. Simply because he wanted her there.
She wanted the kiss to mean something. She wanted to know that he had felt it too, that soft, terrifying collision by the stream, that he thought about it at odd moments the way she did. She wanted to be seen.
He was looking at her.
Really looking. The way he had at the dinner table, that still, intent attention that felt like being read. She stood inside it and did not move and let him look, because she had nothing left to hide and little dignity to lose.
Ask me to stay.
She did not say it.
Say it means something. Say it was not duty. Say the toast was for me.
The silence stretched.
“I will miss him, too,” Henry said. The words were barely audible. Just breath, almost, the faintest edge of voice.
From inside the nursery, Ian murmured. Something about the fish, probably.
Henry turned his head toward the door. Then he looked back at Charlotte. His expression was unreadable now—locked again with all the stripped-back honesty folded away somewhere she could not reach.
“Good night, Charlotte,” he said and walked past her.
His shoulder nearly grazed hers. Nearly. Charlotte stood and did not move. She closed her eyes. Her fingers curled tight, the nails biting against her palms.
Don’t. She told herself. Don’t care. Not now. She breathed as evenly as she could.
Not ever.