Chapter 18 #2
A sound like a suppressed sob escaped Winston when the door shut. He had not meant to make that sound in anyone’s hearing. Adeline did not appear to notice. Or rather, she chose not to notice.
“Not the main stairs,” she added quietly, motioning toward the smaller staircase that rose from the side hall.
“Less noise, fewer lamps. The servants’ steps will not contradict what she believes the world to be.”
He followed, one stair beneath them at all times, ready to catch his daughter’s heel if it slipped. It did not. At their arrival on the landing, Mrs. Hardcastle herself burst from a bedchamber with a gasp that could have stripped oil paint.
“Lord save us!” she whispered, clapping both hands to her bosom. “Out in the night, in nothing but a shift!”
“Quiet yourself now, Mrs. Hardcastle,” Adeline soothed, all warm practicality. “Scold in the morning. Just now we must be at peace.”
The woman, who could reduce under-maids to tears with a lift of an eyebrow, instantly became marshmallow. She had a brick wrapped in flannel ready in a trice and poured hot water into a basin. Between them they eased Louisa back beneath her coverlet.
Adeline sat on the mattress’s edge and continued to hum. Mrs. Hardcastle shook her head and wiped her eyes with the corner of her shawl as if the room smoked. Winston stood within arm’s reach and did not know where to put his hands.
When Louisa’s breathing grew deep and regular, and her small mouth softened, Adeline rose. The sheet quivered as if reluctant to let her go.
“Shall I sit with her?” Mrs. Hardcastle whispered, recovering some of her starch and attempting to look as if she had not cried.
“I shall,” Winston said, “fetch what you need for yourself, Mrs. Hardcastle. You will do us no good, fallen senseless from fatigue.”
He had meant it kindly. It came out as a directive.
The woman, who liked being commanded when it matched her own sense of right, curtsied and withdrew with the light-footed competence of long habit.
Silence took up occupancy again. The coal in the hearth shifted.
Adeline tucked the flannel brick closer to Louisa’s feet and laid one palm above the child’s heart, not pressing, simply acknowledging its work.
Her hand trembled, very slightly. Only a man watching as if the world depended on it would have seen.
“Thank you,” he said.
Adeline’s head did not lift. “You are welcome.”
“It was…well done.”
“It was fortunate.”
She drew her hand away and folded both before her in a neat knot.
She gazed at him then, and if the house had fallen down around them with a crash, he might not have looked away.
There was no triumph in her face. It mirrored his own so perfectly that he wanted to put out his hand and smooth the line between her brows with his thumb.
He scrubbed a palm over his jaw. “She, she has never…”
The words were stones. He forced them out of his throat.
“She has not done that since she was very small.”
“Then she did it,” Adeline said, simply, “when she lacked words for her troubles. Perhaps she lacks words now?”
“Because I do not permit them?” he asked.
He did not mean to ask her that. He did not mean to invite judgment into his daughter’s room. Adeline didn’t take advantage of the invitation.
“My mother was a sleepwalker. She was very unhappy.”
“You suggest Louisa is unhappy? Perhaps all she needs is a physician. An ailment cured.”
“I don't think it would help, and I don't claim she is unhappy, but something or maybe somethings are preying on her mind.”
Winston felt his shield raise, felt the accusations, and prepared to defend himself.
He became, in that moment, aware of the precise size of the space that lay between his body and hers, and of the thousands of things that would happen if he crossed the line between them.
He remained where he was, though and poured water on his ire.
“Will you tell me why she was bleeding?”
Adeline shook her head firmly and Winston felt the affront that only a lord denied what he sees as his rights can feel. He met Adeline's eyes. Steady. Unblinking.
“Will you swear that it is nothing that need concern me?”
The trust he was offering felt like a step taken in the dark.
“I swear it. It is nature, not illness or injury.”
The way she looked at him was so direct that he knew she was telling him what he wanted to know, telling him without breaking her promise to Louisa. A shaft of light through the dark. Winston understood. He blushed.
“Good Lord!” he whispered.
Then, he felt ashamed and pricked by his honor.
“I apologize.”
“Noted.”
“But not accepted?”
“For the moment, it is noted. I would rather talk of Louisa.”
Why do I feel a sting that she does not forgive me? Why does it matter?
“Of course.”
“My experience with my mother tells me that she will sleepwalk again and to the same place.”
He nodded, once, slowly. “We will be ready in that case. The door can be kept latched.”
“No bright lamps on the stairs that might lure her. The bed should be more persuasive than the night,” Adeline said.
It was a sound plan and showed Adeline’s level-headed competence as well as her knowledge. Winston had to admit to himself that he was impressed. Adeline looked away, biting her lip. When she looked back, there was a question in her eyes.
“We?” she said.
“Yes. We will all need to be ready,” Winston replied, lost in thoughts of how to keep his daughter safe.
“But I have resigned,” Adeline said, quietly.
Winston had half-turned from her, following the path of his own thinking. Now he whirled. Adeline lifted her chin, firming her lips as though preparing for battle.
“You will withdraw your resignation,” Winston commanded.
“That is an order you cannot give.”
“I just did.”
“It is an order I am under no obligation to obey.”
Winston clenched his fists, feeling the tightrope on which he walked. A blast of temper might just blow Adeline further away from him.
“I…would like you to continue to be Louisa’s governess,” he said, slowly.
“For the remainder of the month?”
“Yes, or until another is found.”
Winston looked down at his daughter. She had his stubborn mouth When she slept, the two combined in an innocence that was neither his nor Sarah’s, only Louisa’s.
“I will not have her frightened,” he said. “I will not have her hurt. Will you remain?”
He hated the plaintive tone of his voice. He was a Duke. He commanded. He did not ask. Adeline nodded.
“It is a matter of care. Not of either one of us. I will remain.”
He took a chair at the foot of the bed as if it were a throne to which he had been appointed and where he must acquit himself of his duties with dignity.
Adeline stepped back to give him the space of that small ceremony.
She gathered the shawl more closely about herself.
Only now did he see that her feet were damp, the hem of her gown smeared with thin, clean mud.
His boots were no better. He had left damp prints all down this corridor like a fox.
“You should change,” he said. “You will take a chill.”
“I shall be quite well,” she hesitated. “With your permission, I will sit in the dressing room until she has been deeply asleep an hour. If she stirs, I can be here before she wakes enough to run.”
“Good.”
The word was inadequate. “Thank you.”
He heard the roughness and could not sand it smooth. “I am…Adeline, I am in your debt.”
“You owe me nothing.”
She colored. He rose then, because he could not sit without trying to touch her, and if he tried to touch her, he did not know what he would become.
He went to the hearth and used the poker to shift the coals until they glowed more stoutly.
Adeline moved toward the door, then paused and turned back, drawn by some gravity he recognized because it tugged at him also.
“You did very well,” she said. “It is no small thing for a man who commands to practice being…still.”
The word found its mark and lodged there. He bowed his head to it.
“I am not a good man,” he said. The admission startled him. It seemed to startle her. He did not stop. “I am not patient. I am not pious. I break before I bend.”
“You obeyed the orders of a Lady-In-Waiting,” Adeline said. “You bent.”
He wanted to say that he had not done it for virtue.
He had done it because if he had not, he would have died standing at the edge of the mere.
He only inclined his head. Adeline opened the door to the dressing room and slipped in.
She did not close it fully. He could see the spill of lamplight, the suggestion of her small figure settling into a chair, the faint outline of the shawl about her.
The sight steadied him. He found that he could, at last, lay his hand upon Louisa’s coverlet and count his daughter’s breaths without counting also the seconds between one disaster and the next.
He thought of Adeline humming in the dark.
He thought of three pairs of damp footprints through the carpets of the house.
He sat and watched. Louisa dreamed whatever children dream when their bodies are safe and their hearts uncertain.
The wind gave up arguing with the windows and went to trouble other roofs.