Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“What did she say?” Nicholas asked as George came into view.
George returned with his head bowed low, and Nicholas braced himself for the worst. He swiped one of his tired eyes, glancing at the stage on the other end of the playhouse. Every seat was filled. The gaslights had been turned down low. The show would begin soon.
“She refused to give me a concrete answer for her silence,” George replied, sinking into the shadows beside Nicholas. He glanced at the awaiting stage. “You are certain you do not want to speak to her face-to-face?”
“It is not about wanting,” Nicholas corrected, voice catching in his throat. “I will not force my presence on her if she does not agree to see me.”
He was surprised by the emotion his words summoned within him.
The last week without Amelia had been torturous.
Painful more that she had refused to see him.
He admitted that he had been wrong in lying to her about his trip.
But it had only been so that they could move forward—together, separately, whatever they chose—in peace.
How strange, he thought, as an anticipatory silence settled over the playhouse. Is it not always the case in life that we realize what we want most when it falls outside of our reach?
Nicholas had not described to George the full extent of his suffering.
He did not need to know about the chain of sleepless nights, the apathy, the self-loathing that consumed him inside out.
He could not risk George taking the fact of his desperation back to Amelia and forcing her hand in the matter.
She will come to me tonight if she wants to. And if she does not, then I will know that I have burned the bridge between us without repair—and society will judge me fairly for it.
“There is… more,” George whispered as the first child appeared on stage. His eyes were round with concern. Nicholas knew before he spoke what he intended to announce. “She said that she is leaving tomorrow morning with her brother.”
“What?” Nicholas felt the blood drain from his face, averting his eyes to the floor. “I-I imagined it would not be long before she left with him. But… no.”
“I am sorry, old boy,” George said, his hand tightening for a moment on Nicholas’s shoulder. “But there is a chance yet.”
Nicholas swallowed, dizzy and sick, loosening his cravat and looking across the audience. It devastated him that Amelia was somewhere nearby, and he could not even speak with her and beg her to remain.
“In a few hours, she said she will return to the orphanage, where you first met, to pack the last of her belongings. If you mean to speak with her, then you will find her there.”
“To say what?” Nicholas growled, eyes stinging. “Goodbye?”
“Perhaps. Or to change her mind.”
A flicker of light in the dark.
He supposed it was something.
“Then that is where I must go,” he muttered resolutely. “It was only necessary for the guests to witness my arrival. I would not cast a dark shadow over her efforts by remaining here.”
Especially not when there is so much more at stake.
George did not try to stop him as he left early.
The hours crawled by in agonizing inertia.
Nicholas checked his watch again, tilting the face toward the gaslight beyond the carriage window.
Almost midnight.
The Jericho Playhouse had emptied an hour ago, the last stragglers dispersing into the cold soon after. George’s carriage had rattled away fifteen minutes prior, carrying Miss Ashwood with it.
The road was quiet now. Amelia must have already gone.
He rapped twice on the ceiling, and the carriage lurched forward into the dark streets of Oxford.
Rain came without warning. Not the tentative drizzle that had threatened all evening but a sudden, vicious downpour that hammered the roof like gravel and turned the cobblestones to rivers within seconds.
Nicholas pressed his face to the window, watching the lane ahead dissolve into sheets of water, the carriage lanterns barely cutting through the murk.
Come on. Faster…
They had just turned onto Walton Street when the wheel hit a rut.
The sound came first. A splintering crack so violent Nicholas thought the carriage had been struck by lightning. Then the whole vehicle pitched sideways, throwing him hard against the door.
His shoulder took the brunt of it, a hot burst of pain shooting down his arm as the carriage groaned, shuddered, and came to rest at a sickening angle, one corner sunk low where no corner should have been.
For a moment, he could not move. Rain roared against the tilted roof. His shoulder throbbed. Something warm trickled near his temple where his head had met the window frame.
The driver’s voice came muffled through the downpour. “Your Grace! Your Grace, are you hurt?”
Nicholas shoved open the door, which now hung above him like a hatch. Rain struck his face immediately, blinding him. He hauled himself out and dropped into mud that swallowed his boots to the ankle.
The front axle had snapped clean through. The wheel lay three feet away in a puddle, spokes fanned out like broken fingers. The horses stamped and tossed their heads, eyes white with fear, and the footman was already at their bridles, fighting to keep them still.
“She’s done for tonight, Your Grace,” the driver shouted over the storm, crouching by the wreckage. Water streamed from the brim of his hat. “I’ll send the boy for a wheelwright, but it’ll be morning before—”
“How far to Cornmarket Street?”
The driver gaped at him. “On foot? In this? A mile and more, Your Grace. You cannot mean to—”
“The distance, Blaire. That is all I asked.”
“Your Grace, you are bleeding.” The driver stepped toward him, one hand raised as though approaching a spooked horse. “Please. Get back inside the carriage and let me send for help. You’ll catch your death out here, sir, and then what good are you to anyone?”
Nicholas touched his temple. His fingers came away dark. He looked at them a moment, then at Blaire, then at the long black road ahead, where the rain fell so thick it swallowed the lamplight whole.
“A mile, you say…”
“Your Grace—”
“Find an inn. Go back to Riverside Court when the weather settles.”
Something in his voice must have settled the matter, because the driver did not follow him. Nicholas heard the man call out once more behind him, the words lost beneath a crack of thunder that shook the ground under his boots.
Then there was only the rain, and the road, and the dark.
He walked.
The cold found him quickly, burrowing past his coat, past his skin, settling somewhere behind his ribs where it throbbed alongside his shoulder.
His vision swam. The cobblestones beneath his feet seemed to tilt and buckle, and more than once he was unsure whether his next step would find solid ground or send him sprawling.
He thought of her face. That was all. Just her face.
The rest of Oxford fell away.
Amelia set the last of the fairy wings on the shelf above the coat pegs and stood back to survey the room.
The kitchen was quiet. Upstairs, thirty-two children slept in their beds, exhausted from the evening’s triumph, their painted faces scrubbed clean by Mrs. Thatcher’s ruthless hand.
Mr. Marsh had poked his head in ten minutes ago to announce that all was settled, that Mrs. Thatcher had retired, and that he intended to do the same.
“Will you be needing anything else tonight, Amelia?”
“No, Mr. Marsh. Thank you. I will not be here much longer.”
He had given her a look she did not have the heart to interpret and shuffled off to bed.
Now, Amelia stood alone in the kitchen with her trunk by the door and her traveling cloak draped over the back of a chair. Freddy was waiting at the inn on the Abingdon Road. The coach to Southampton departed at four in the morning. Everything was packed. Everything was decided.
She only needed to walk out the door.
And yet she remained, because George Elston had told Nicholas where to find her, and she had allowed it, and some traitorous, foolish corner of her heart still believed he would come.
She checked her chatelaine. One in the morning.
The play had ended at ten. Even accounting for the crowds and the traffic on Walton Street, he should have been here by now. If he intended to come at all.
She busied herself with tasks that did not need doing. Wiped the counter that was already clean. Banked the fire, then rebuilt it, then felt ridiculous for rebuilding it. She rearranged the cups on their hooks twice and stopped herself from doing it a third time.
Half past one.
Rain was falling. Softly at first, a tentative pattering against the high kitchen windows, then harder, then with a fury that rattled the panes in their frames. Amelia flinched at a crack of thunder and pressed her back against the wall, arms folded tight across her chest.
He is not coming.
The thought arrived with a clarity that felt less like revelation and more like something she had known for an hour and refused to name. She had given him the chance. She had left the door open, against every instinct that told her to bolt it shut. And he had not walked through it.
Of course he had not. Why would he? She had refused to see him for a week. She had sent her uncle to turn him away from the door like a creditor. She had offered him nothing but silence and then expected him to chase her through a storm on the strength of a secondhand message…
You are a fool, Amelia Tate. You have always been a fool.
She seized her cloak from the chair and fastened it with clumsy fingers. The trunk she could manage alone. It was not heavy. She had not accumulated much in her months as a duchess that she cared to keep.
The umbrella was by the door. She took it, pulled on her gloves, and reached for the latch.
Lightning broke across the sky.
The flash was so bright it came through the kitchen windows like noon, bleaching the walls white, and Amelia’s hand froze on the latch as the world tilted.
No. Not now.