Chapter 19
It had been three days since the Peterson’s tea party.
Lady Harrington heard the knock at the door before anyone else did, which was precisely how she preferred things.
Thomas heard it from his study, the particular quality of a knock that was not the postman and not Samuel, too deliberate for either, registering it with distracted half-attention .
He heard his grandmother’s footsteps in the hall, which was unusual.
She did not generally position herself near doors.
He went back to the letter.
She appeared in his doorway a few moments later. He looked at her and felt sweat bead on the back of his neck. He had the expression used when she had something to tell him that she considered beneath the dignity of a significant announcement but wished him to receive with the gravity of one.
"Clarissa Penrose is in the hall," she said.
He was on his feet before the sentence was complete, which he was aware of and could not entirely account for.
Not eagerness, that was not the word, nor was it the feeling.
Something closer to bracing. The particular physical response of a man who has been waiting, without knowing he was waiting, for a thing to arrive.
"You might suggest," his grandmother said, as he moved past her, "that she call when Genevieve is at home."
"Grandmother."
"I am merely observing, Thomas, that it is somewhat irregular—"
"I am aware of what you are observing." He said it without heat but with enough firmness that she let the matter rest, which was as much as he could hope for. He could feel her watching him go down the corridor, filing that information away, and he did not turn around.
Clarissa was in the hall, not the drawing room, which meant she had declined to be shown in and had waited, instead, near the door. She had the posture of someone who was prepared to be turned away.
She was dressed beautifully. He noticed this and did not know what to do with the noticing, so he set it aside and looked at her face instead, which was tired.
That was the first and clearest thing. Underneath the composure and the careful presentation, she looked tired in a way that was not about sleep.
"Clarissa," he said.
"Thomas." She looked at him with the expression he had once known very well, the one she wore when she was uncertain about her reception and was managing the uncertainty by appearing not to feel it. "I am sorry to call without notice. I know it is… I know it is not the done thing."
"Come in," he said.
He showed her into the drawing room himself and felt, distantly, the room's slight wrongness.
It had been Genevieve's room for months now, had her books on the side table and her particular arrangements of the furniture and the small evidence of her daily presence everywhere he looked, and standing in it with Clarissa produced a sensation he had no ready category for.
He sat in the chair across from her, leaving an appropriate distance between them. She settled onto the sofa and looked at her hands and then at him, and the tears came.
"I know this is improper," she said, between careful breaths.
"If I had anywhere else to go, I would not…
my parents, Thomas. They are threatening to cut off my allowance entirely.
To send me away. They will not hear my account of what happened, they simply…
" She pressed his handkerchief to her cheek. "I know I have no right to be here."
"Tell me what happened," he said.
She looked at her hands. "It is not a short story."
"I have time."
She took a breath.
"My parents were… when I came home, they would not let me explain.
My mother would not see me at first. My father—" She stopped.
Pressed her lips together. "He said things that I do not think he will easily take back.
That I had ruined myself, that I had ruined the family's standing, that whatever had happened to me was—that I had brought it entirely upon myself. "
Thomas said nothing.
"He had told me we would marry," she continued.
"Captain Hale. He said his situation would be resolved within the season, that there were arrangements being made, that once his colonel had…
it does not matter. The details do not matter now.
" She looked up briefly and then away. "I believed him.
I want you to know that I genuinely believed him. "
"I see," Thomas said. "When did you understand that he did not intend to follow through?"
She blinked slightly. Just slightly.
"Some weeks in. He became less available. His letters were shorter. When I asked about the arrangements, he became impatient, and I did not want to—" She stopped. "I was afraid that if I pressed him, he would—"
"You were afraid he would leave."
"Yes."
"But he left anyway."
A silence.
"Yes," she said, more quietly. "He left anyway."
Thomas looked at her. She was crying again, or nearly—her eyes had the particular brightness of someone managing tears rather than releasing them, which was a distinction he had learned to make.
"And your parents will not help you."
"They say they will not. I think…" She folded her hands in her lap with the precise, controlled movement of someone arranging themselves.
"I think my father may soften, eventually.
He always has. But eventually, maybe a very long time, and in the meantime, I have almost nothing that is fully my own, and I cannot…
" She looked at him directly for the first time since she had begun.
"I cannot stay as I am indefinitely, Thomas. "
He held the look for a moment, and said nothing, and in the silence he heard all the things she was not saying: that she had come here specifically, to this house, to him. That she had chosen him over any number of other options she might have pursued.
"I understand," he said.
"You are the only person who has ever treated me with genuine kindness," she said, and tilted her face up in a way that he recognized . "Without judgment. I know I do not deserve it."
He looked at her.
"You are my wife's sister," he said. "If you are in genuine need, I will help you."
Something moved briefly across her face. Then she smiled.
"It is money," she said. "I have almost nothing that is my own."
"I understand,” he sighed. “I can help with that.”
“Thank you,” she said gently.
She stood when he stood, and he had a moment, brief, insufficient, in which he understood that something was about to happen and did not move quickly enough to prevent it.
She crossed the distance between them with the particular decisive quality she had when she had made up her mind about something, and her hands were at his lapels, and her face was tilted up toward his.
“You are the only person, you have always been, I have thought about nothing but—” she started.
He stood there for one suspended, deeply regrettable second with his hands not yet doing anything useful.
"Clarissa—"
"Please." Her hands tightened on his lapels. Her eyes were very bright, very close, and she was looking at him with an expression he had once interpreted entirely differently. "Thomas, please. I have made such a terrible mess of everything, and you are the only— if you would just—"
"Clarissa." His voice came out steadier than he felt, which he was grateful for. His hands came up, finally, and closed around her wrists. Gently. Firmly. The kind of grip that was not unkind and was also not negotiable. "This is not—you need to—"
"I know," she said, and she was crying now, properly, the tears running without apparent management or calculation. She pressed forward rather than back, her forehead dropping toward his chest.
He stood there holding her wrists with his arms slightly extended in the posture of a man who had intended to create distance and had not quite achieved it. "I know it is not right. I know it is too late and I have no right to ask, and I know what I did, I know what it cost you, but I cannot stop—"
"Stop." He said it quietly and it worked, which surprised him slightly. She stilled. He became aware, with some urgency, of the door behind him, of the house around him, of many things that could go badly wrong in the next few seconds if he did not manage this correctly.
He took a breath. He released her wrists. He stepped back. One step. Two. The appropriate distance restored. He looked at her with the level expression he was working very hard to maintain.
"I am going to speak plainly," he said, "because I think plainness is kinder than the alternative."
She looked up at him. Her cheeks were wet. She was, he noticed, extraordinarily beautiful when she was distressed, which was itself a kind of information he did not know what to do with.
"I am married," he said. "I am married to your sister.
" He stopped. Started again. "Whatever I—whatever existed before, it is not…
" He pressed his lips together and looked at the window briefly and then back at her, because looking away felt like the wrong kind of honesty.
"This cannot be what you are asking for.
You understand that. I think you have always understood what I am and what I will and will not do, and I need you to understand it now. "
She said nothing. Her eyes were still very bright.
"I will help you," he said, "because you are in genuine need and because you are Genevieve's sister and because…
" He stopped again. Something moved through his expression that he did not manage quite quickly enough.
"Because it is the right thing to do. But I need you to understand. There will be distance between us."
It cost him something to say it. She could see that it cost him, and he was aware that she could see it. He held her gaze anyway because looking away would cost him more.
At the same time, he had to believe that Clarissa was like the woman he thought she was. Like Genevieve. Because that was the world he preferred to live in. Not the world where Samuel had warned him of fortune hunters. Because, of course, Genevieve was not a fortune hunter.
Clarissa looked at him for a long moment with an expression he could not entirely read. It had several things in it, layered in the way her expressions often were. He had learned, too late and at some cost, not to trust his ability to parse them.
Then she smoothed her skirt. She lifted her chin. She reassembled herself with swift, practiced efficiency—like someone who had been reassembling themselves in difficult moments for a very long time—and produced a smile that was only slightly unsteady at the edges.
"Of course," she said. "You are quite right. I am sorry, Thomas. That was… I am not myself."
"I know," he said.
He offered her his handkerchief, because he was not going to be unkind, and she took it, and the transaction had the slightly unreal quality of two people agreeing, without saying so, to pretend that the last five minutes had taken a different shape.
“You are much too kind,” she whispered.
“You compliment me too much,” he replied.
“I do not think I compliment you enough considering all you do for me,” she said, stepping toward him again.
“I am just helping my wife’s sister,” he reiterated.
“I know,” she said, a slight lilt in her voice.
“Clarissa—”
Before he could stop her, she kissed his cheek. His eyes widened, and he felt his cheeks flush, heat rising up his neck like it did when they were courting.
“I will meet you soon,” she said gently. “Somewhere private, so people do not misunderstand what they are seeing.”
“No, we…” his voice trailed off.
“We would not wish to worry Genevieve now, would we?” she asked.
“I… I suppose not.”
“I will see you soon,” she smiled, turning and walking out of the room.
For a few moments, he was quiet, his hand on his cheek where she had placed the kiss.
What had he done?
No, he thought. There will be distance; I will ensure it next time. I need to be an honorable gentleman and assist my wife’s sister in her time of need.
Even as he thought those words to himself, his mind went to Genevieve. She would worry if she knew. She would wear that tight smile she wore whenever Clarissa was spoken of, not the smile that looked like sunflowers in June.
He sat down and sighed.
He would do everything in his power not to worry his wife.