Chapter 24 #3
She looked at him with something that was almost indignation and then thought better of it.
"You think very poorly of me," she said.
"I think you are capable of better than this," he said. "That is not the same thing."
"It feels rather similar from where I am standing."
"Then consider," he said, "that what I think of you is considerably less important than what you think of yourself. And ask yourself whether this…" He gestured briefly with a wave to signify Lydia, the ball, all of it, "…is the person you intend to be."
The silence that followed was a different quality from the ones before it. She looked away.
"It is easy," she said, quietly, "to become someone you did not intend to be.
When things go wrong in a particular way.
You make one small choice, and then another, and they each seem reasonable at the time, and then one day you look at the shape of what you have been doing, and you cannot quite account for how you got there. "
"I know," he said. And he did. He had not arrived at the person he was now by any direct route either.
"I am not making excuses," she said.
"I did not take it as one."
"Why do you care so much for her?" she asked. And it was not, he thought, entirely disingenuous, there was something genuinely perplexed in it, as though the question were real.
His brows furrowed and he looked at her steadily.
"She is my wife, Clarissa."
"That is not an answer."
He could feel the pause in his brain, her words causing more confusion.
"It is the only answer that is any of your concern."
Clarissa looked away, toward the tree line, where the morning light was doing the specific autumn thing of making everything look briefly golden and slightly elegant. He waited.
"You are in love with her," she said. It was not quite a question.
He considered denying it, on the grounds that it was not her business. He considered confirming it, on the grounds that clarity might serve better than evasion. In the end he said nothing at all, which was, he suspected, its own kind of answer.
Clarissa made a small sound that was almost a laugh and not quite.
"I had thought… I suppose I had thought that you would carry what you felt for me for longer. That it would be… I do not know. I did not think Genevieve would replace me in your eyes so easily."
"No," he said, quietly. "I do not imagine you did."
The words were not unkind. They were simply true. She heard them, he could see she heard them with the particular wince of someone receiving accurate information they had not wanted confirmed.
"She suits you," Clarissa said, after a moment.
The tone was strange. Not generous, not bitter either, something more complicated than either.
"She is…I know her, obviously. Better than most people do.
" A pause. "People assume her perfect, and me difficult.
Her constant smile make people assume she is easygoing.
I have not always been… I have not always treated that fairly. "
He said nothing. It was not his absolution to give.
The sun had shifted while they stood there and the shadows from the tree line moved slightly across the path. Somewhere in the woods a wood pigeon was being persistently unremarkable. Thomas waited.
"I have not—" Clarissa started, and stopped, and something in her face moved in a way that was less arranged than anything he had seen from her in weeks. "I have not told Lydia to say anything. Not specifically."
It was not, he noted, a denial.
"Whatever has been set in motion," he said, "I am asking you to stop it. Not for my sake. For Genevieve's."
"You are very changed," Clarissa said, almost accusatory .
"People do change," he agreed. "I believe the general consensus is that this is broadly encouraged."
She almost laughed. He saw it. The way her mouth moved before she stopped it. His frown deepened and he took a step toward her before remembering what had happened previously. He did not wish to encourage another outburst, but he also did not wish her to miss the seriousness he felt about this.
"Will you stop it?" he asked. Direct, because directness had always worked better with Clarissa than anything more considered. She responded to the thing stated plainly. She had always found her way around implication.
She was quiet for a long moment.
"We shall see,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning up in something like a smirk. It was an ugly expression on her.
“Clarissa,” he said, his tone warning.
“How my sister and I deal with each other is our business, is it not?” she asked.
“It is my business when she is my wife,” he said, taking another step forward.
She stepped toward him, her smile widening.
He moved back, toward his horse.
“Thomas,” she cooed. “I sincerely doubt you care for her as you cared for me.”
“Be careful with your words,” he said firmly.
“You loved me,” she said. “You have known my sister, what, half a year? If that? There is no reason for you to claim that you love her.”
She stepped closer to him and put her hand on his lapel. His vision flickered red and he grabbed her wrist and pushed her away.
“Enough!” he shouted. Birds scattered from the trees and Clarissa looked shocked at him. Her expression softened purposefully.
"I am grateful to you," Clarissa said, finally, looking at the money in her hands. "Whatever else, I am genuinely grateful."
"I know," he said. "But that does not allow you to act in the way you have. Use the money well. Find yourself something stable, Clarissa. Something that does not require you to depend on anyone."
She looked up at him.
"That is what I want."
"Then want it in a direction that does not damage my wife."
She nodded, once. She was using the economy of a woman who had decided to accept something and was not going to elaborate on the decision.
He recognized the manner. He had seen Genevieve do something similar.
The clean, private way of closing a door on a feeling without theatre.
He had not expected to find it in Clarissa.
"There is one more thing," she said.
He waited.
"Lydia knows things I told her in confidence.
About the history of it. I said more than I should have, in the early weeks, when I was less…
" She paused. "Less careful. I cannot un-say it.
But I can stop adding to it, and I can make clear to her that the subject is finished, and she will understand what that means. She is practical, if nothing else."
He tensed, feeling something in him go cold.
“Are you insinuating something?” he asked darkly.
“I am saying,” she said softly. “That it would be a shame if she were to let something slip to the wrong person. Perhaps if she knew that I was not receiving the assistance I needed from the person who had promised?”
His jaw clenched.
“You would not–”
“Would I not?” she smiled at him. He felt the chill run up his spine. “Perhaps you should be a little more friendly with me, Thomas.”
“... Goodbye, Clarissa,” he said, pulling himself up onto his horse. He flicked the reins, desperate to escape the scene.
He did not look back. He was aware, in the way one is aware of things one is choosing not to attend to, of Clarissa standing at the edge of the tree line, and then eventually no longer standing there.
He did not know exactly what Clarissa had told Lydia, he would have to find that out before it went further than he could control it.
Worse still, what if Genevieve were to hear it before he had managed to warn her? He could only think of the betrayal that would fill her eyes before she masked it with a smile.
No.
He would not allow his choices to hurt her in that way.
He knew he could not yet abandon Clarissa. She was still in need. But if he allowed her to get out of control, then there was no telling what damage she could cause.
He wanted to tell her. He was aware that this was perhaps not a sentiment he could deliver with entire naturalness, they were not yet in the habit of easy declaration, of saying the things that were true without the architecture of occasion around them, but he thought he would find a way.
He was, as Genevieve had once noted with a particular expression that he had stored carefully away, thorough.
For now, he would hide it from her, not because he could not trust her, but because he had not found the way to explain it to her that would not hurt her beyond measure.
No, today he would return and be her affectionate husband.
He would find her in the library. Or the drawing room. Or at the stables, talking to the gray mare with the confiding tone she used when she thought no one was listening.
He would find her wherever she was, because she was always somewhere in this house that had become, without his entirely noticing, the place he most wanted to be.
He was going to tell her what was true, and she was going to look at him with those clear, patient eyes, and whatever happened after that would not require managing at all.
He took a deep breath.
Yes, he would tell her soon, but not yet.
The horse broke into a canter on the final stretch, and Thomas let it, and did not attempt to look as though he was not, for the first time in a very long time, in a very considerable hurry.