Chapter 21
“Aunt Clio! Aunt Clio, look! Watch me dance!”
Clio shaded her eyes to watch Cordelia—affectionately known as Cordy to her family—do something that Clio supposed was a dance, though not in any style she could identify.
Still, she politely applauded the little girl’s efforts.
“Marvelous, darling!” she called. “You’re a rare talent.”
Cordy beamed in a way that said she didn’t truly understand the significance of the words, but that she understood what praise sounded like—and that she had been a frequent recipient of it from the adoring adults in her life.
“Say ‘thank you,’ Cordelia!” Letitia reminded the child before she could get distracted.
It was half effective; Cordy’s “thank you” was muffled and cast over her shoulder as she raced off to look at an interesting rock.
Letitia crossed her eyes in exasperation, but there was a clear fondness in her face. Clio laughed.
“At least you never had to teach me my manners,” she teased her friend, whose long red curls were fluttering in the breeze, making her look utterly picturesque.
That was no doubt as much to do with the happiness shining in her expression as with the idyllic country sunshine.
“I already came trained up in that regard.”
Letty gave her an arched look. “Yes, well, you gave me plenty to worry about, don’t you ever doubt it,” she said, though she didn’t sound terribly put out about it. “Half my gray hairs are named after you, Clio War—” She caught herself. “Clio Ferrars.”
Clio wrinkled her nose, though she wanted to grin madly. “That still sounds so strange, doesn’t it? And don’t think you’ve distracted me—you haven’t any gray hairs.”
“That shows what you know,” Letty retorted lightly. “I am merely extremely accomplished at hiding them in my coiffure. And your new name does sound a bit strange, yes, but a good kind of strange.”
When Letitia turned back to Clio, her blue eyes were shining with earnestness.
“I am glad,” she said. “I would have supported you, whatever you chose, but … I wanted you to find a place all your own.”
There was a wistfulness in her tone that Clio knew had more to do with Letty’s wishes for herself than her wishes for Clio.
“Do you think you’ve found that place for yourself?” she asked gently. She didn’t want to cause her friend to worry by explaining the precariousness of Clio’s own situation.
The distraction worked; Letty beamed.
“I think so,” she said. “I’ve known other governesses who complain that our role doesn’t quite fit in anywhere in the household—we aren’t part of the family, of course, but we aren’t quite part of the staff, either.
But I’ve spent my whole life in in-between spaces, and here, the people are kind.
They are respectful. They don’t expect me to fall all over myself with gratitude for the opportunity to work.
And the children are utterly precious,” she added, pausing to cast a watchful eye over Cordy.
“I’m happy for you,” Clio said, meaning it.
Her friend’s illegitimate birth had left her cast aside since her childhood, and the family that had purportedly adopted her had treated her more like an unpaid servant than a daughter.
Clio knew that Letty had felt more appreciation when employed by her great aunt, but that had always been a short-term position.
Helen and Xander’s children were young; they would need a governess for years to come.
Letty could finally have a place to call home.
Just then, as if summoned by the mere thought of her family, Helen came around the bend in the garden.
“Mama!” Cordy shrieked for her mother in a pitch that would render several local dogs deaf, no doubt, then waved something above her head. “I’ve found a leaf!”
“Lovely, darling!” Helen called back. When this supplied all the approval her daughter needed, she shook her head fondly, then turned to Clio and Letitia.
“Miss Knightley, I am hereby relieving you for the next hour,” she said to Letitia. “I would like to discuss some things with my cousin, so I shall mind the little sprite for a while.”
This was ominous enough that Clio cast a pleading glance at Letitia, but her friend was no fool; she was already getting to her feet.
“Of course, Your Grace,” she said politely. “Please let me know if you need me sooner.”
She wasn’t even looking at Clio. How rude! Not that Clio truly expected Letitia to countermand her employer, but still. That was loyalty for you.
“I appreciate that, Miss Knightley,” Helen said.
Letitia hurried away, pausing only long enough to mouth sorry to Clio over Helen’s shoulder.
Clio braced herself for interrogation.
“I can’t help but notice,” Helen said, not even bothering to hide the glee in her voice, “that you appear to be practically glowing today, my dear.”
That was honestly rather subtle, for Helen.
“Must be the sun,” Clio ventured. “Dreadful for the complexion, of course, but very pleasant.”
Helen, who was not the kind of woman who feared for the state of her complexion and knew perfectly well that Clio didn’t either, snorted. Clio shook her head. She might be irritated with her cousin’s shameless matchmaking, but she still adored Helen.
“Oh, yes, the sun,” she said, a definite note of mockery in the word. “And was it also the sun that had you all shining and bright at the breakfast table this morning?”
Clio shot her cousin a reproachful look. “Your breakfast room does have windows,” she pointed out.
Helen pinched her.
“Ouch!” Clio protested.
“Don’t be obstinate,” Helen returned, unrepentant. “I am an old married lady—"
“You’re not old, and marriage hasn’t stopped you from being a complete hellion,” Clio muttered.
“—who must get all of her exciting gossip from young things like you,” Helen concluded. “So. That man of yours. You seem very happy together. One might even say blissful.”
Clio supposed that she could have lied. She could have pretended that everything was just fine. She could have extolled Hector’s virtues—that part wouldn’t even be a lie, she supposed—like a woman in the throes of newlywed bliss.
But she found that she just … couldn’t.
“It’s temporary,” she said with a sigh. “We have moments of … connection—"
“Is that what you’re calling it?”
“—but mostly, we argue all the time,” Clio concluded.
Helen paused, assessing her. “Argue about what?”
Clio threw up her hands. “Everything! He thinks aristocrats are all stuck-up prigs, and he hasn’t any patience for manners at all, and he thinks I’m ridiculous for having them.
And he is such a man, and he thinks that he can fix everything just by marrying me, which is really so terribly audacious that I—why are you laughing? ”
Indeed, Helen was practically clutching her sides.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s just that he sounds precisely like your cousin.”
“I assume you mean your husband,” Clio retorted, not sure if her affront at being so ruthlessly mocked was genuine or put upon, “because I have scores of cousins.”
Helen laughed harder. “Now you sound like him,” she said. “You pedantic, proper Lightholders.”
“Well, which is it?” Clio asked, properly incensed now. “Are we too proper, or is Xander like my improper husband?”
Helen was wiping actual tears of mirth from her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said, still not sounding like she meant it.
“I guess I ought to have said that the pair of you sound like the pair of us. I mean, I adore Xander, but he really does think that he can fix everything with ducal authority. And he does tend to wear propriety like a stiff suit. And I suppose that I also came to London thinking that all aristocrats were absurd prigs,” she added, with the tone of someone making a great concession to fairness.
Clio saw where her cousin was going with this point.
“It isn’t the same,” she said.
“No?” Helen’s one syllable drew to mind all the similarities—not only the ones she’d already mentioned, but the scandal that had prompted her and Xander’s marriage, and the time it took them to find their footing.
But that was missing one important detail.
“He’s leaving,” Clio said quietly, then rephrased it the way that felt true—was true, she supposed, when they got down to it. “He’s leaving me.”
Helen’s eyes grew flinty and angry, and Clio was reminded that Helen was really as fierce and protective as any of the other members of the extended Lightholder clan, just that she showed it differently.
“He’s throwing you over?” she demanded. “Then why did he come here?”
Clio was already shaking her head. “Not … not publicly abandoning me,” she allowed.
“He is considerate of my reputation. And he needs his own security, since his awful brother is trying to steal the dukedom from underneath him, and marriage is one of the conditions of inheritance.” She rubbed at the back of her neck while Helen waited patiently.
It was all just so much. It was all so complicated.
“But he plans to go back to the North,” she said. “That’s his home. I don’t know exactly when—we’ll wait for gossip to die down, he said, and there’s the mess with the inheritance. But he will go. And he’ll leave me behind.”
Helen thought about this for a moment. In the distance, Cordy had found some mud and was gleefully destroying her shoes in it.
Her mother didn’t seem bothered by this lack of ladylike behavior, and despite her own worries, this made Clio smile.
She hoped that little Cordelia never stopped feeling so free and happy as she did just then.
“You never intended to remain in London,” Helen said after a few beats.
Clio frowned at her. “Sorry?”
Helen was nodding to herself, apparently feeling increased conviction in her line of argument.
“You are not tied to London,” she reiterated. “Some people certainly are. Hugh and Persephone, for example. They are city folk, through and through. You shan’t find them living elsewhere. But you? You wanted to see more of the world.”
“Yes,” Clio allowed cautiously. “And I still can, I suppose, but that won’t change anything about the terms of my marriage.”
Helen shook her head sharply, like Clio was missing the point.
“No, Clio, I just mean—well, the North is part of the world, isn’t it? And you haven’t spent any time there, have you?”
Clio opened her mouth to respond, realized she had no idea what she was going to say, and closed it again.
“You think I should … follow him?” she asked. It sounded almost too fanciful, like her cousin was suggesting that Clio sprout wings and fly.
“Follow him, accompany him—whatever you want to call it,” Helen said. “Has he outright said that he wants to be far away from you?”
Clio jolted. “No,” she said, feeling like some kind of realization was being pried open within her. “He hasn’t.”
“You just assumed, from context?”
“I … yes.” Clio was looking back on things with new eyes.
“And have you outright told him that you wish to be parted?”
“No, I haven’t,” Clio admitted.
Helen looked as though she were the governess, now, one forced to lead a recalcitrant pupil to a very obvious point.
“Do you think that perhaps he is assuming from context that you wish it to be so?” she prodded.
“I … yes,” Clio said. “It’s certainly possible.”
And then Helen laid down her final card, the ace in her hand, the one that sealed the game.
“Do you wish to be parted from him?”
The way Helen asked it made it seem so simple. Clio felt her heart begin to race, as though she was doing something reckless, potentially fatal, and not just answering a straightforward question.
“No,” she admitted in a whisper.
No, she did not wish to be parted from Hector.
He was her husband, and more than that, he was …
He was Hector. He made her laugh. He annoyed her beyond reason.
He made her feel dizzy just from looking at him.
He brought her pleasure and comforted her, and he hadn’t abandoned her when she’d needed him most.
He made her feel like she wasn’t alone.
And all those things added up to an emotion that she wasn’t yet ready to name, but she could declare this one thing: that she did not wish for them to be separated, that she didn’t want to have a marriage in name only, that she wanted a true husband, one who spent his days and nights at her side.
“No,” she said again, with a little more confidence. “I do not wish for us to live separate lives.”
“Well, then,” Helen said, as though the answer was obvious. This was all well and good for Helen, but Clio did not consider it obvious in the least. Her silence must have revealed as such, for Helen let out a disgruntled, impatient sound.
“Well, then,” Helen repeated, a good deal more pointedly, “you need to stop hiding behind excuses. You need to stop making assumptions or letting yourself be misunderstood. You have to say what you want. You have to take the life that you want. Nobody is going to deliver it to you on a silver platter, Clio.” She gave Clio a determined look.
“You have to go after what you want and fight for it. That’s the only way that you will get all the happiness that you deserve. ”