Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“The wind has always been worse up here, do you not think?” Freddy chirped, helping Amelia out of the carriage.
“It is a wonder the house still stands after all this time. In Denmark—did you know I went to Denmark?—there is a church buried halfway in sand. I expected to find Bright Corner in a similar state.”
Her boots crunched against the pebbles of the drive as they stepped into the open air. Amelia clutched her bonnet, fighting the wind for it as she followed Freddy toward their house.
Bright Corner had been built in a different style than most other Oxford houses.
The whitewashed walls were partly covered with ivy.
The tiled front steps were stained with dirt from years of abandonment.
It had been erected on one of the tallest hills outside town.
Looking back behind her, she could see Oxford church spires in the distance, cutting through the clouds.
Freddy slipped his key through the front door. It jammed, a bad sign. He forced it open and laughed victoriously. Amelia stared through the yawning doorway into the dark house beyond, not nearly as excited to discover what had been left behind.
How long had it been since she had set foot in her childhood home?
At least two years, if not three.
Once Freddy had started traveling back and forth from the Continent, he had dismissed their parents’ remaining staff. Only the steward came by once a month to check for squatters or vandals—but he always took the servants’ entrance out of respect.
“What a terrible smell,” Freddy said, pinching his nose. “Something most certainly came to nest here and promptly proceeded to die. A fitting welcome party.”
He turned and waved Amelia indoors when she hesitated.
“Don’t be shy, Amelia. We will not be long.”
The entrance hall was quiet as a grave. The lace curtains by the front windows cast patterned shadows on the parquet. A vase of dead flowers stood guarding the door on a side table. Amelia pinched off a dead flower head. The petals crumbled into dust and floated to the floor.
“This place has been left to rot,” she whispered, pilling the remnants of the flower between her fingers.
She turned in a circle, casting her eyes up the stairs. Squares of discolored wallpaper appeared where her father’s paintings had once been.
“Where did the paintings go?” she asked.
Freddy followed her line of sight. “In the attic, under dust sheets with the rest of Father’s finer belongings.
And before you ask, yes, they are safe. The steward has them all under lock and key.
Your inheritance and mine cannot be trifled with by anyone.
Except perhaps Uncle Reginald. He has always had his eye on that Rembrandt portrait. ”
Freddy continued through the house, inspecting the rooms on the lower floor. Amelia trailed behind him cautiously, clutching her arms around herself as memories of her childhood rose unbidden into her mind.
The music room where her parents had forced her to play Haydn.
The dining room where their mother had had a fit over Christmas dinner three years in a row.
The library, now almost empty, where she had retreated with Freddy for weeks after their mother’s death—where he had read children’s stories to her before the fire while their father plotted his own demise upstairs.
She winced at the thought of the ghosts that still lingered here, wondering how many terrible moments she had forgotten since quitting Bright Corner.
“It surprises me that the Duke of Avon did not accompany you this morning,” Freddy declared once they reached the solar.
The windows were coated with a greasy layer of dust. Withered potted plants had been lined up on the shelves.
“The way he received me during my visit… I had not expected him to trust me to have a moment alone with you.”
“Nicholas…” She paused, correcting herself. “His Grace is not in Oxford.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“He left this morning for an errand. But he trusts me to make my own judgment.”
Nicholas had come to her with the news the night prior, the day after Frederick’s call. His estate manager needed him to attend the sale of some properties outside of Coventry. He had promised to return in two days.
Amelia missed him intently.
The memory of their last night together warmed her. Even if she knew it was a bad idea—the worst—to feel any sort of warmth and affection for him.
“Is that your plan?” she asked Freddy. “Did you call me here today to kidnap me?”
“Come now, Amelia.” Freddy smiled, shaking his head. “I invited you here because I believed you would want to see your old home one last time.”
She started. “You are renting Bright Corner?”
“Does that surprise you? No one has lived here for years.”
“It is your rightful seat. You are the lord of Bright Corner.”
“It is just a house, Amelia. The title is mine regardless. We will retain the surrounding lands. And…” He looked down at his gloved hands, then stood.
“I do not intend to spend much time in England in the foreseeable future. Someone else should live here. Give it a better chance than it ever got with us Tates.”
Confused, Amelia crossed the room.
“Then where will you go?”
“I expect I should remain in France once we travel there to meet the doctor.”
He smiled sheepishly, then corrected his expression.
Amelia understood with alarm why England was of no more use to him.
“You have fallen in love with the doctor…”
Freddy did not even try to deny it. His face brightened with a smile, and he suddenly looked so much more like the vibrant young man she remembered him being.
“I shall not lie to you now that you have figured me out. You always were much too perceptive for your own good. Yes, I have fallen in love with her. But I swear to you that is not the reason why I intend to take you to meet her. She is eminently talented and clever, Amelia. She will know how to cure you. I believe it with my whole heart—which is, admittedly, now hers.”
A strange sense of jealousy came over Amelia. She suppressed it, looking aimlessly around the room as her mind whirred.
“How… This is all very confusing… How long have you loved her for?”
“Since the moment we met, I suspect,” Freddy approached and placed a hand on her shoulder. “But if you are asking seriously, the past year.”
“And you did not think to tell me? We wrote during that time. Unless… did you mention it and I forgot?”
“No, no,” he assured her emphatically. “I mentioned nothing to you in my letters. She has only found out herself in the last month. I have been helping her with her research. And over time… Well, you must understand that these things can happen when two people are forced to work in proximity with one another on a common goal.”
She understood better than he could ever have imagined.
“The doctor must be much older than you.”
“By eight years, but it does not matter to me. She is beautiful, the most impressive woman I have known, excepting you. She is a quiet woman, extremely learned and brave. You would love her, too, sister. Her name is Louise Charpentier.”
“Louise,” Amelia repeated quietly. “And I take it you intend to make her your wife?”
He paused, smiled again.
“I do. And though I have yet to ask her, I am confident that she will accept me. This place, all of it…” He gestured at the room and the overgrown grounds outdoors.
“It is time you and I left this behind. Oxford has always looked down on our family. And they have had good reasons to in the past. But I no longer wish to be associated with the errors of our parents. I loved Father. I even loved Mother, though she was a disruptive force at the best of times.”
“It was not her fault. She was sick.”
“So are you. With a different sickness, yes. But you have not spent your life making those who love you miserable just because you are suffering. You have always tried to live well and generously. It was not the same for Mother.”
“You judge her unfairly. She was never in her right mind. She could not live in any way except how she did.”
“And Father? The way he enabled the worst parts of her? The way he abandoned us, his own children, even when we needed him?”
When Freddy frowned, he looked so much like their late father. It hurt Amelia’s heart. He was right. Not everything had been their parents’ fault. But some things had.
She thought about what Nicholas had said two nights ago. That people made their own choices and did not have to be beholden to anyone. She was not sure he was right. But maybe she was not either, and the truth existed somewhere between her determinism and the chaos he relished.
She also thought about his insistence that she decide for herself. Was it possible that he was saying something more? That he was eager for their marriage to end so they both could move on?
“Sister, this place is cursed. I want nothing more to do with it, nor with England.”
“Which is why you want me to come with you to France—not just to meet the doctor.”
“It is my hope you will live with us, yes. Is that such a terrible thing to want?”
Amelia withheld her answer, not sure what she wanted to reply. Until he left England, she and Frederick had been inseparable. He had been the one stable force in her life. Her protector since she was born. It was only natural that he would want her to come with him.
Especially since some part of him believes I need him. I see that now. The way he looks at me with hope and pity. He loves me, he believes in me, but I am still a sick woman in his eyes—one he must save from herself because he feels that is his responsibility.
And when Nicholas looked at her, it was completely different.
He did not pity her.
She had faults in his eyes. And she liked that. It made her feel…
Real. Like my own person.
“I am glad you told me,” Amelia said, throat closing. “You deserve to be happy, Freddy.”
“And so do you.”
“Yes… I do.”
She took his hand when he offered it.
Which is why I must forge my own path forward in this life.
“How very strange to return here alone,” Amelia told her maid, Agnes. She stared at her reflection in the looking glass at her toilette table. Her maid smiled behind her, brushing out the waves of her long brown hair. “Has there been word from His Grace regarding his return?”
“None, Your Grace. But your correspondence has been delivered to your writing desk.” She gently brushed out the ends of Amelia’s hair, then lay the mass of diffused waves over her shoulder. “Is there anything more I can do for you tonight, Your Grace?”
Amelia sighed quietly, thumbing her perfume bottle. “No, thank you.”
Alone after her maid’s departure, she rose and crossed over to her writing desk, taking her correspondence and settling into bed.
She climbed atop the coverlets and stroked the place they had lain together.
The maids had changed the bedding. All traces of him were gone, and her heart panged painfully with how much she missed him.
Curling up against her pillows, she sorted through her letters. The note from Philippa she would read later. A letter from a women’s society in town came next.
And at the bottom of the pile lay a letter which was not addressed to her at all.
She frowned at Nicholas’s name and title scribbled in an elegant, looping script on the parchment. She turned it over. The seal, bright red wax, was unbroken. The sending note read London, 29th November. It had been sent three days prior.
Someone sorted this in my letters by mistake.
Amelia prepared to cast it aside, but something caught her attention. The letter was perfumed heavily. A woman’s perfume. Something heady and sweet, sugar and musk.
Fear curled in her stomach.
Who would perfume a letter for Nicholas?
He would be furious if he learned Amelia had read his correspondence. But maybe… No. The thought was too dark to entertain. He would not have dared.
And yet I cannot help but think about it. I could say that it was a mistake. I broke through the seal mechanically, assuming the letter was addressed to me. He would understand. He would—
A finger, acting of its own will, slid under the fold in the parchment and broke the seal. It cracked in the quiet air, and the letter sprang open.
The elegant script continued inside, beginning, Dear Nicholas…
Tears burned Amelia’s eyes. She wanted to look away, could not. The lines blurred, disjointed, as she read them with rapt attention.
How long must I endure this silence from you? I cannot feign indifference. Neither can you. Burying yourself in the quiet of the country… It’s not right. Come back, Nicholas, to London and to me. If you come, I will know you long for me still.
Devotedly, S.
Amelia dropped the letter as though it had burned her. She pushed herself out of the bed and stared at it in horror.
“London?”
Is that where he has gone? To see her? But why?
What else could it have been, but the dark face of Nicholas?
The one she had ignored, like a fool, because of love.