Chapter 2
There were few mornings Thomas Harrington could recall feeling quite so acutely aware of his own heartbeat. He had dressed carefully, perhaps more carefully than was strictly necessary, and had dismissed his valet twice before finally being satisfied with the result.
It was not vanity that drove him, or so he told himself, but rather the particular anxiety of a man who understood that today was not merely another day. Today was the day his life changed irrevocably, and he found he wanted to meet it looking like a man who deserved what was coming to him.
He had not always been certain that he did.
He had fallen in love with Clarissa Penrose at what he could only describe as an inconvenient speed.
It had not been a gradual thing, a slow accumulation of admiration and regard of the sort that he had always imagined love to be.
It had been sudden and slightly alarming, like missing a step in the dark. He could still place the exact evening.
A dinner at the Ashworths', the candles burning low, Clarissa laughing at something her neighbor had said with her whole face, unselfconsciously, as though she had entirely forgotten to be composed.
He had watched her and felt something shift in his chest that he had not known how to name and had not, if he was honest, particularly wanted to. It had seemed inconvenient at the time.
It had seemed considerably more inconvenient since.
It did not hurt that she was extraordinarily beautiful.
Honey blonde hair that was pinned up in exactly the right way, blue eyes that looked at him warmly, and a figure that seemed to have been carved like a Roman statue.
It was clear the Penroses were blessed in that regard, as Clarissa’s younger sister was also beautiful, but not in the same definitive way his Clarissa was.
These traits, combined with such a warm and welcoming household… he had not seen it as beneath him to court and propose to Clarissa. Quite the contrary, he had counted himself an extraordinarily fortunate man.
Eventually, he finished his dressing and descended the wooden stairs of the Harrington estate. The sun seemed brighter, the portraits of his family seemed to be smiling at him, and the wind whistled outside in a particularly pleasing tune.
He had hardly sat down to eat his breakfast when his valet entered the dining room, holding a piece of paper.
“Sir, there is…” the man hesitated.
“Speak plainly, Geoffrey,” Thomas said, standing up. “Whatever has you acting so nervously on a day like today?”
“The Penroses,” the valet swallowed hard. “They are requesting your presence at their estate. It is urgent they say, Mr. Harrington.”
Thomas froze. They wanted him at their estate, immediately. Not at the chapel at the appointed hour? There should be no reason to be summoned at such a time unless there was some sort of a problem…
He shook the thought away.
I know well what Mrs. Penrose’s constitution is. She is likely consoling her nervous daughter.
He told these things to himself, hoping and praying that it was surely just a small detail requiring his attention. Something easily resolved.
“Send for the carriage,” he said, standing up.
As he walked through his estate, he felt a presence watching him from the stairs.
“Is everything quite alright?” Lady Margaret Harrington called out. He froze. His grandmother had sharp wits and an even sharper tongue. In his excitement he had quite forgotten that she had come to his estate for the wedding. He turned to her, giving his best smile.
“Everything is quite fine, Grandmamma,” he said, trying not to sound stiff. Her steely eyes looked him up and down.
“Are you quite sure of that? You appear to be perspiring,” she said flatly. He grit his teeth and felt his smile become stiff.
“Go have breakfast, I will have the staff take you to the chapel when it is time. There is some… minor business I am required to oversee,” he said, attempting to brush off her concerns and walk toward the door again.
“I will take your word for it,” she said, stepping down the stairs. He could feel her eyes on him as he entered the carriage and was all too thankful when they drove off that she would not be going with him. Whatever matter was at hand, her sharpness would not help it.
Arriving at the Penrose estate something immediately made the hairs on his arms stand to attention. He was used to the estate feeling warm and inviting, the smell of rose or jasmine in the air, and the gentle movement of the birch and willow branches that seemed to wave the carriage up the drive.
Not today.
The trees almost seemed to be directing him backward.
Stepping out and looking at the building, there was a particular atmosphere that he could not immediately name.
In the windows, the servants moved with the careful quiet of people who had been told to behave normally and were finding it difficult.
He was helped out by a footman and strode toward the door. As he arrived the door opened.
“Mrs. Penrose?” he said, blinking in shock. He had expected a maid or a servant, not the matriarch herself.
“Come, come,” she said, ushering him inside quickly.
“Whyever have I been called here at this time?” he asked as she shuffled him toward the study.
“We will explain all, I assure you,” she replied. Her eyes were red. He noticed that immediately and chose not to comment on it.
The study door closed behind him.
He had been in this study many times, speaking enthusiastically with Mr. Penrose about his mercantile work. He had always enjoyed the space, the warmth of the hearth, the comfort of the leather seating.
That comfort was gone.
Mr. Penrose stood by the window. Genevieve stood slightly apart from her father, her hands folded in front of her, her expression composed in the careful way of someone who has recently had to compose it with some effort.
She did not quite meet his eyes when he entered.
Thomas looked between them and felt the first cold thread of unease move through him.
"Mr. Harrington," Mr. Penrose said. "I thank you for coming so promptly. Please, sit down."
"I prefer to stand, thank you," Thomas said pleasantly. "What is the matter? Is Clarissa unwell? Has something—?"
"Please," Mr. Penrose said. "Sit down."
Something in the older man's voice, the flatness of it, the exhaustion, caused Thomas to sit.
He was not certain, afterwards, how long he sat without speaking.
It felt like a considerable time. The words had arrived in his mind in the correct order, and he understood their meaning perfectly well.
He was an intelligent man, and the sentence had not been a complicated one, and yet some part of him continued to insist that he had misheard.
Clarissa.
An officer.
Elopement.
He was aware, distantly, of his own hands.
They were resting on his knees. He had placed them there deliberately, with the particular, practiced care of a man who had learned young that the worst thing one could do in a moment of crisis was to let his body betray what his face was working so hard to conceal.
He had learned it from his father, who had learned it from his, and the Harrington men had been doing it for generations, holding themselves very still in rooms where everything was falling apart. It was, he had sometimes thought, the most honest thing about him. The effort of the stillness.
He turned the information over with the detached, slightly desperate concentration of a man trying to find the angle from which it made sense. An officer. He found his mind snagging on that particular detail with an almost absurd specificity.
He tried to picture the man and found he could not, which was somehow worse than if he could. A nameless, faceless officer in His Majesty's regiment, and Clarissa had chosen him. Had looked at everything they had built together and chosen a stranger instead.
She had been happy. He was certain of that, or he had been certain, and now that certainty was quietly—methodically—dismantling itself. He thought of the last time he had seen her. She had laughed at something. She had touched his arm briefly in parting.
He had believed the look in her eyes and the affection she had shown him had been out of love for him, excitement for their betrothal. Had that actually been guilt? Had that been farewell? He could not tell anymore. He found, with some alarm, that he could not trust his own recollections.
"Mr. Harrington." Genevieve's voice was quiet and even. "I am deeply sorry."
He looked up at her. Her face was genuinely pained on his behalf, he realized, not merely performing sympathy.
It helped, fractionally, in the way that small kindnesses sometimes do in large disasters.
Then he looked at the rest of the family and saw that same look.
Despite Clarissa’s actions, they all still cared for him in that deep, familial way.
All at once, he realized how they must be affected, too.
He knew that their good name was something they relied on, and if Clarissa had taken that with her, there was little for this family.
There would be few prospects for Genevieve, and who could say how this would affect Mr. Penrose’s businesses?
Beneath the care and consideration, there was anxiety and embarrassment.
He straightened. Whatever was happening inside him would have to wait. There were other people in this room, and they were suffering too, and he was not the kind of man who forgot that.
"This is not your fault," he said, looking at Mr. Penrose. "I want that to be clearly understood. Whatever Clarissa has chosen to do, this is not a reflection on your family, nor on anything you might have done differently."
Mr. Penrose closed his eyes briefly. The relief on his face was painful to witness.
"You are a good man," the older man said.