Chapter 28 #2
“I haven’t seen her. Beatrice manages the information carefully, which is her way of protecting both parties.
” James looked at him. “I did hear from Pemberton’s wife, who heard from Lady Ashford that the Duchess of Blackmoor has been calling on several charitable establishments this week and is apparently proposing a coordinated funding model for foundling houses across the city. ”
William looked at the window.
Of course, she is.
“William.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you?” James said pleasantly.
William didn’t say anything.
“What I was going to tell you is that dismissing Harwood does not constitute a repaired marriage, and that the accounts being in order is not the same thing as anything else being in order, and that you drove her out of this house by saying something you should not have said. That is what I was going to say.” James pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What you’ve done this week is necessary and right, and it should have been done a long time ago.
But it does not constitute a resolution of what happened in your marriage. ”
“Letitia has already covered most of this ground.”
“Letitia is wise beyond her years,” James said. He moved to stand beside William and looked at the bare mattress, the empty frame. “She left, William.”
“Yes, I know. She made a choice. She left because I told her the truth,” William sighed. “The arrangement was temporary. That was what we agreed on.”
“She made the only choice available to her, given what you gave her—which was nothing, by the way.” James gave him a pointed look.
William said nothing.
“Have you ever thought that maybe Cecily wanted more than the agreement you both made? Has it ever occurred to you?”
Of course it had, but William didn’t know what giving that information would do, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Instead, you told me that you said she was a responsibility, William. You said those words to a woman who had spent years turning away suitors because she did not want to be someone’s obligation, and then you watched her walk out of the house.”
The light outside was fading. The street had gone quiet.
“I know what I said,” William grunted.
“Do you know why you said it?”
He thought about Cecily in this room. In the chair where she had sat for two nights, with an infant asleep on her shoulder, and looked at him with the expression that had undone everything.
That was the moment he had known. Not in the garden, not during the waltz, not in the library late at night.
That moment in this room had been the moment he had understood that what he was feeling was not proximity or gratitude or the reasonable warmth of a man toward a woman who was kind to his sisters.
And he had taken that understanding and buried it under responsibility because the alternative was to admit it, and he did not know what he was supposed to do with something that large.
“I know why I said it,” William forced out.
James watched him. “Tell me.”
“Because I was–” William stopped. The word stuck in his mouth, and it tasted exactly like what it was.
“Frightened. Because she had become–” He looked at the window.
“Because I had allowed myself to want something outside the perimeter of everything I was supposed to want, and it was too large and too real. I could not—I could not see how to hold it safely, so I chose not to hold it at all.”
“That is not a justification,” James huffed. “I know what it is.”
“What is it?”
“A failure of courage.” He said it directly, without flinching. “A significant one.”
The room was very quiet.
“William, let me ask you something,” James said after a moment. “Do you regret your marriage?”
“No,” William said without thinking.
“Not the scandal, not the circumstances, not any of it?”
“No.” He said it again with the same conviction. “Not for a single moment.”
James looked at him. “Do you regret loving her?”
William said nothing.
He said nothing for long enough that the silence became the answer, and they both knew it.
James did not press the issue, because he understood when something had been said without words.
“She thinks it was pity,” William said finally. “Or obligation. She thinks I walked into that garden and kissed her because…” He heaved a sigh. “She thinks I called her a responsibility because that is what she was. To me.”
“Was she?”
“No.” The word came out with the same immediacy as the one before it. “She was–” He stopped and looked at the crib.
He thought about every morning at the breakfast table, the first time he saw Cecily—all of it. The full accumulated weight of a woman who had walked into his house and made it into something he had not known it was capable of being.
“She was the first thing in ten years that I wanted for myself,” he admitted.
“Not for my sisters, not for the estate, not out of duty or obligation or any of the things I have organized my entire adult life around.” He looked at James.
“But for myself. And I told her she was a responsibility and watched her walk out of this house and said nothing.”
James was quiet.
“I am in love with my wife,” William sighed. “I love Cecily.”
James let the silence stretch out. Then he said with a grin, “I know.”
William looked at him in disbelief. “I am the last person in this room to know.”
“Thank heavens you finally recognized the truth.”
William exhaled. “I will not regret it. Whatever happens… it is not a mistake. I called it one, and I was wrong. It is the truest thing I have, it is the truest thing.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I love her. And I am not going to regret it. Not any of it.”
James looked at him for a long moment. “Good.”
“It changes nothing.”
“It changes everything,” James countered. “And you know it. What are you going to do?”
William was silent, thinking.
“I’m not telling you what to do. I would like to be very clear that I am not telling you what to do, because your sister has already established that as her territory, and I have no intention of competing with Letitia for anything.
” The corner of James’s mouth twitched. “I am only saying that I hate to see you brooding and miserable. So don’t make this worse than it already is. ”
He clapped William once on the shoulder and then left.
William stood in the empty nursery for a moment longer. He looked at the chair. He looked at the crib. He picked up the small wooden horse from the shelf and turned it once in his hand.
He thought about James’s words and Isadora’s words and Letitia’s words and the accumulated weight of a week in which everyone who knew him had, in their separate and individual ways, been telling him the same thing.
He thought about what he had not said in a study. What he had not said at the top of the front steps. What he had stood in this room, not saying for the better part of six days.
He had reformed the accounts. He had secured the trust. He had read every document and signed nothing without understanding it, and had done all of it with methodical efficiency. He understood that preparation was not the same as courage, but was at least a beginning.
He set down the wooden horse.
I know what I have to do.
He went to find his coat.