Chapter 20
Elise turned away, pacing a step and then stopping as if her legs no longer obeyed. The room felt suddenly too small for the truth that had been laid within it, as if the very walls had drawn closer to listen.
“You are not your brother,” she said at last, and even to her own ears the words sounded as though she had dragged them from some stubborn, ungenerous part of herself that would rather have remained silent.
She heard Edmund’s breath catch. He had expected condemnation the moment Holt’s taunt had landed, she knew.
He had expected her own anger to rise like a tide and wash him out to sea, she thought fancifully.
She would have expected to feel only revulsion at the name, at the connection, at the long chain of harm that had begun with Singleton and ended with Charles gone beneath the black water.
Instead, she stood in the centre of the room with a grief that had no proper place to go.
Charles was dead; Singleton was dead; Holt was caught and the ledger recovered.
The world, in its impertinent way, now behaved as if order had been restored, and yet Elise could not pretend that the past did not exist.
Elise faced him again. Her eyes were wet, but she did not allow her tears to fall. Tears were a luxury for women who were not responsible for a house, a school, a wounded man hidden behind a wall, and servants who depended upon her constancy.
“I can hardly hold it against you,” she said in a low, strained voice, “not when my own life has been a series of secrets and half-truths.”
Edmund took one step toward her. “Elise—”
She lifted a hand, stopping him. “Do not come closer yet.”
He stopped at once, as if she had placed a blade to his chest, and Elise felt a queer, discomposing jolt at the immediate obedience.
Gentlemen did not often stop when she asked them to do so.
They argued, they soothed, they overruled; they dressed their dominance as protection and called it kindness.
Mr. Leigh—no, Cholmely—stood still, as though her words were law.
Elise drew a slow breath. “Holt said—one brother was trying to right the other’s wrongs.”
Edmund’s voice was hoarse. “He meant it as mockery.”
“And yet…” Elise’s gaze held his. “And yet it is what you have done.”
He did not speak. He looked as though he wished to, and could not decide whether it would be theft or gift. Elise saw the restraint in him—not indifference, but the sort of control that had been forged by necessity.
Almost unwillingly, she softened her voice. “You saved me,” she said. She had been strong for so long, it felt as if she were confessing a weakness. “You saved Blake. You prevented Holt from taking what he wanted to use for ill. Those are not the actions of a man like Singleton.”
Edmund swallowed hard. She saw his throat ripple.
“And yet,” Elise added, her voice trembling now in spite of herself, “you watched me, you suspected me, and you let me stand on that wharf not knowing who you were.”
“Yes,” Edmund said again, “and I am sorry I did not tell you sooner.”
The apology sounded small against the weight of what he had withheld, but it was honest. Elise had become painfully adept at distinguishing honest pain from performed regret. His was the former.
She looked at him for a long moment, and in that look she felt herself judging, weighing and—to her own vexation—not finding him entirely wanting.
“Are you leaving?” she enquired quietly.
“I must.” Edmund shook his head once. He looked graver still. “There is… unfinished business.”
Elise considered him, her gaze keen. “Unfinished business?” she asked.
He paused before answering. She could tell he had to force himself to reply. “My father,” he said at last.
Elise could not prevent a gasp. “Your father?”
Edmund’s jaw clenched. “Colonel Renforth has told me—” He stopped. She wondered if it was because to speak of it would poison the air. “He was complicit in the treason. He will not be permitted to go unpunished.”
Elise felt the blood drain from her face. “How will he be punished?”
His voice was grim. “There will be… consequences arranged—quietly.”
She understood then—not in detail, perhaps, but in essence—and her stomach turned over.
“They will kill him,” she whispered.
Edmund’s expression did not change, but Elise saw something break behind his eyes.
“They will hold a funeral,” he said, as if the words were stones he must set in place to keep himself upright, “and I must be seen there. If I am absent, it will be remarked upon. If I do not play my part, the mercy they are offering—if one may call it that—may vanish.”
Elise bit her lip. “So even in death, you are not truly free.”
Edmund flinched.
“Then you must go,” Elise said quietly, and to her own surprise it was not accusation but realization. A man could not be asked to remain here, on her cliff, in her peril, when his own life was turning to ashes in London.
“Yes,” he said. “I must go very soon.”
The knowledge settled between them like a cold draught.
It should have been simple: she had survived loss; she was well acquainted with gentlemen leaving.
This, however, threatened to be a different kind of parting.
It was not Charles riding out with a promise to return; it was not a commander’s duty.
This was a man being summoned to the formal burial of a father he could neither love nor wholly despise.
Elise moved first, though she did not know quite why her feet obeyed her now when they had refused to do so moments earlier.
She stepped toward him—not quickly, not boldly, but with the cautious resolve of a woman choosing something in spite of herself.
She stopped close enough that she could feel the warmth of him through wool and air.
She raised her hand, holding it near his cheek without touching.
It was strange, as if she could not decide whether touching him was comfort or surrender.
Then, gathering her courage, she did it, briefly, lightly resting her fingers against his jaw.
The simple contact went through her like an alarm.
It was ridiculous that she should feel so much from so little, and yet she did.
Edmund went very still, as if afraid that moving would frighten her away.
“I do not know what to do with you,” Elise whispered.
His voice, when it came, sounded rough. “I do not know what to do with myself.”
A tiny, breathless sound escaped her—something that might have been laughter in a different life. Yet the truth in his voice did not feel like a demand. It felt like a plea he did not know how properly to voice.
Something in her, weary and stubborn and unaccountably alive, broke through its own caution. She rose on her toes and kissed him.
It was not a grand gesture. It was not theatrical. It was the desperate choice of warmth over judgement for a single, dangerous moment. Distantly she realized she was choosing herself over everything else in that moment.
Edmund’s hands lifted, and he drew her closer then—gently, reverently, as though she might shatter—and returned the kiss with a thoroughness that startled her. He did not take; he met her, as if he, too, had been holding himself too tightly for too long.
When they broke apart, Elise felt oddly alive in a manner most unfamiliar to her. Her breathing quickened in response to his nearness.
Briefly, Edmund rested his forehead against hers, and Elise felt safe for the first time in weeks. It was quite absurd.
“You must go,” she murmured, and now she meant it in both senses: he must go downstairs, to his men; and he must go to London, to that funeral that waited like a sentence.
“Yes,” he said, though he did not move at once, as if he could not bear to end the moment. “But I will return.”
“When you return,” she said quietly, “it will be not as Mr. Leigh, but as Edmund.” The sound of his name in her own mouth made her feel giddy in a way that was entirely improper.
“As Edmund,” he agreed.
A knock sounded at the door—a quick, discreet tap.
“Sir,” Sophie’s voice called softly, “they be asking for you below.”
Elise stepped back at once, renewing the familiar distance like a wall. It was easier to breathe with the wall in place.
Edmund looked at her, and Elise had the unsettling sense that he was trying to memorize her—as if he feared she would not be there when he returned.
“I will come back,” he said quietly.
Compelled by some hidden force, Elise abandoned the wall’s safety, ran to him and hugged him fiercely, giving him a swift kiss on the cheek before stepping back again.
Edmund left her then, closing the door gently behind him.
As his footsteps faded, Elise remained where she was for a long while, her hand still half-raised as if she had meant to call him back and had lost the courage to do so.
The house, newly quiet, seemed to listen with her.
Even the sea beyond the cliffs sounded subdued, as though it too had withdrawn its voice and was waiting.
She drew a careful breath and then another, schooling herself as she always had. Feeling, indulged without restraint, was a luxury she had long ago learned not to trust. It unsettled the mind, softened the judgement, and encouraged hope.
Hope had nearly undone her once before.
She moved at last, smoothing the front of her gown and tucking an escaped curl back into its place.
The mirror above her washing-stand reflected a woman she barely recognized: her eyes too bright, the colour still high in her cheeks, her mouth faintly swollen.
She looked—she thought with a touch of bitterness—like a girl who had been kissed and believed it meant something.
“Compose yourself,” she murmured aloud, the way she might do to one of the younger girls before a recital or examination. “You are not one of your silly girls. You know better.”