Chapter 26 #2
They rode in silence again. He failed to find a path through the words.
The lane narrowed and opened, cottages set back behind small hedges giving way to low fields.
Out here, orchards still stood where fields had not already given way to market gardens.
He signaled and turned into a slope where apple trees stood in neat lines, their branches bowed with the last of the fruit.
A man and a boy worked with ladders. Winston hailed them, named himself with a brief apology for the intrusion, and asked leave to buy a sack.
The farmer, all deference once he understood who he addressed, waved him on at once.
“Pick what you please, Your Grace. We have more than we can bring to market. The wind’s knocked down a good many.”
“We’ll pay,” Winston said.
“As you wish, sir,” the man replied, eyes bright at the thought of a Duke’s coin.
They left the horses at the fence. Adeline reached for the nearest branch and found it just above her fingers. Winston stepped under the tree and locked his hands together.
“I can hoist you,” he said. “If you trust me.”
“I’ve already climbed on your pride,” she said, and put her foot in his palms before he could answer.
He lifted. She was light. She steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder. His knee twinged, but bore it. When she reached for an apple, her balance tipped and her knee pressed against the side of his neck.
“Careful,” he said, amused despite himself.
“I am,” she said, concentrating like a soldier at a drill. She plucked one apple, then another, passing them down to him. The third required a small leap. She made it, neatly, and a shower of dew shook loose, spotting his cheek and jaw.
“That’s cheating,” he said.
“It’s efficiency,” she said, flushed from the effort. “How many?”
“A dozen at least. Mother will accuse us of greed.”
“She’ll eat two and say the rest are for Louisa.”
“That’s likely.”
Adeline reached again. The branch gave under her weight. She laughed, tried to correct, and the world slid an inch. Winston shifted to catch her. They both overcorrected and went toppling together in the grass with an unceremonious thump and a rain of apples thudding about them like soft stones.
She landed across his chest. He groaned once, both from surprise and from ribs that had not yet forgiven him for placing them in the path of a pair of horses and a carriage. She scrambled to push away.
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t move,” he said through a breath that wanted to be a laugh. “Everything hurts less when nothing moves.”
“You’re insufferable,” she said, and then began to laugh because the sight of apples rolling toward the hedge in slow, dignified escape would have set a saint laughing.
He laughed too, helplessly, until the ache told him to stop. She rolled to the grass at his side and stared up through the grid of branches.
“The Dowager will say we deserve a lecture,” she said.
“She will. I’ll act penitent. You’ll succeed at it.”
They lay in a clean quiet. It was so easy like this that he nearly forgot the questions dogging him. Nearly.
He turned his head. “Adeline…”
The first droplets of rain struck the back of his hand. Another hit her cheek. She blinked. The next came harder. The sky, which had been a calm, flat grey, drew itself into lines of rain.
“Oh,” she said simply.
“Run,” he said, and scrambled to his feet with more speed than wisdom.
They gathered the horses, swung up, and rode. The lane had turned slick in minutes. Water sheeted off the hedges and ran in quick threads across the road. Adeline’s bonnet brim funneled drops into her lashes until she gave up and pushed it back.
“There,” Winston said, nodding toward a signboard at the bend of the road, a painted bell crossed by a hunting horn.
“The Bell and Horns.”
“Half a mile?”
“At most.” He set his jaw against the rain and urged his horse on.
By the time they reached the yard, they were soaked through. The ostler ran, took their reins, and shouted for a boy to fetch dry linen. The inn’s door stood open, heat and the smell of ale and stewing beef rolling out like a promise.
“Rooms?” Winston asked the landlord, who had appeared in an apron that had seen a day’s work already.
“Two, sir, if you’ll take them adjoining,” the man said, quick to place manners above curiosity. “We’ll bring hot bricks and set fires.”
“Do so,” Winston said, and pressed a sovereign into his palm to encourage speed.
They were shown up a narrow staircase to two small rooms with a connecting door.
Each had a low hearth, a narrow bed, and a chair with a sagging cane seat.
The boy laid kindling and had flames going in moments.
The landlord’s wife brought a rack for their garments and two rough pieces of cotton that still smelled faintly of lye.
Adeline stood still for a moment in the middle of her room, water pooling under her hem.
The fire crackled. Her fingers slipped on the fastenings of her dress.
On the other side of the adjoining door came the scrape of a boot, the soft curse of a man whose shirt stuck to him in all the wrong places, and the steady pace of someone thinking too hard.
She undressed to her stays and shift, wrung water from her stockings, and hung them before the fire.
The heat smarted her skin to life. She stood close and reached her hands toward the flames.
The room was quiet now except for the fire and the dull thud of her own heart.
Leave. Leave before the question comes. Pack what you brought and take nothing else. Slip out while the rain hides your steps.
She pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth.
The wave of it came fast and unmanageable, not a polite ache but a deep wrench, like the body’s answer to a blow.
She sat down hard on the chair and folded forward, elbows to knees, and wept.
It was silent at first and then not. The latch clicked. The door between the rooms opened.
Winston stood there in his shirtsleeves and under garments, hair dark with water, a blanket slung around his shoulders like a soldier’s cloak.
He crossed the room in three steps and knelt at her feet, awkward in his height, careful of her dignity even now.
He didn’t speak. He gathered her in, blanket and all, until her forehead rested against his chest and his chin settled lightly in her damp hair.
She turned her face, and her lips nearly grazed his own.
Winston smelled of wet wool, peat smoke, and the soap from the inn’s basin.
Her hands were clumsy at first; then they found purchase, one at his shoulder, one at the small of his back. His heartbeat under her ear was steady and sure.
“I’m sorry,” she said into the fabric. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You do,” he said, voice rough. “It’s too much. It’s been too much for too long.”
“I should go,” she said suddenly, the truth bursting out. “I should have gone last night. I’ll hurt you if I stay.”
“You’re hurting now,” he said. “That’s enough hurt for one house.”
She drew a breath that caught on a broken laugh. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
“I know what you’ve done since you came to me,” he said, holding her a little tighter. “You’ve kept a child from breaking. You’ve kept my mother alive through a night I thought would end her. You’ve kept me from drowning in my own damned house. That will do for knowledge.”
The steadiness of it undid her. She tipped her head back.
His face was close, intent, the troubled lines smoothed by the heat and the bare facts that lay open between them.
He lifted a hand and ran his knuckles once down her cheek to brush away what the tears hadn’t.
It wasn’t a question. It was a confirmation.
She kissed him first, quick and searching.
He answered at once, not urgent, not restrained, but present, the whole of him meeting the whole of her.
His hand slid to the back of her neck; the other found the curve of her waist through damp linen.
The blanket slipped, the fire answered with a small rush as if wind had found it.
“Adeline,” he said against her mouth.
“Don’t speak,” she said, and kissed him again, because words were what had trapped her for months, and this was the one place they did not rule.
They stood, the chair bumping harmlessly against their shins.
He caught the blanket before it fell and wrapped it around them both.
Her back warmed, his chest pressed to her, solid and human and here.
He kissed the line of her jaw and the hollow below her ear.
She hummed to let him know just how much she liked what he did.
She learned his breath, the shift of his ribs when he held in pain, the way he managed her weight with a care that felt like reverence.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“Cold,” she said, though the fire had done its work. She meant another kind of cold, the kind that lived in the space between a lie and the person she wanted to be.
He seemed to understand without asking. He held her until the shaking eased.
Outside, rain beat a steady time against the panes and then softened.
Somewhere below, a man laughed too loudly, a woman shushed him, and a door shut.
The world went about its business. They didn’t rush.
When the urgency came, it was simple, an answer to fear, a way to be quiet in a noisy life.
He lifted her, set her carefully on the edge of the bed, and sat beside her, foreheads touching, breath shared.
He pressed a kiss to her temple, then to her mouth again, and again, until the ache changed its shape and she knew, with a deep, constant certainty, that nothing in London had felt like this.
Not safety, not danger, not the past beating at a door, only this plain good thing between them.
When at last they drew apart, it wasn’t because the moment had ended but because the day would not be held off forever.
He tucked the blanket more closely around her and set his palm to the small of her back, his head bowed toward hers as if in prayer.
“Stay,” he said. “Just now. Stay.”
“I’m here,” she said, and it was the truest thing she had spoken in months.
A knock sounded at the door to the passage. The landlord’s wife, muffled by wood, called through it.
“Your fire, Miss, is wanting more coal. Shall I send it in?”
Adeline drew a breath, smoothed her hair, and stepped from the circle of his arms. “One moment,” she called, voice steady enough. She looked back at Winston, who had gathered his blanket and some semblance of a Duke’s composure. He smiled, small and rueful, and nodded.
The woman came and went with the coal scuttle, none the wiser. When the door shut again, Adeline and Winston stood in the quiet and listened to the new strength of the flames.
“We’ll ride back when the rain eases,” he said.
Adeline gathered her courage with her stockings. “Winston…”
He shook his head once. “Not here. Not yet.”
She understood. The orchard had made laughter easy; the inn had made comfort possible. The truth would break neither, but it would change the shape of both. They would face it, but not in a roadside room with wet boots drying by the grate.
She crossed to him again and put her hand to his chest, to that steady place.
He covered her hand with his own. They dressed with the awkward grace of two people who had shared something large and were trying to fold it into garments and boots.
When at last they stepped into the passage, the rain had thinned to a fine mist that only polished the world instead of drowning it.
Downstairs, Winston paid the bill and thanked the landlord with the kind of gratitude that makes no mention of what has been given and what taken.
Outside, the ostler brought the horses, their coats brushed dry, and their manes roughly ordered.
The orchard lay behind them, rows clean and sure in the grey light.
They rode toward London without pressing the pace, each marking the other’s seat for signs of discomfort and saying nothing about any that appeared.
The city met them with its steady noise.
At St. James’s Place, the house stood as it always had, clean as a bone against the street.
Inside, Cordelia had eaten half an orange and declared herself bored.
Louisa had built a village with cards and cushions and demanded stories for each house.
Adeline and Winston supplied them gladly. The fire popped, the clock kept time.
The poisoner would be found. The truth would not be put off forever.
For now, Adeline took Louisa’s hand and listened to Winston’s voice as he spun a tale about a Duke who got himself lost in an orchard, and a brave governess who found him by following the path of fallen apples.
Louisa laughed in all the right places. Cordelia, eyes half-closed, smiled.
The house breathed. Adeline let herself belong to it for one more hour.