Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The settee complained every time Winston shifted his weight.
He kept still to spare it and to keep the ache in his ribs to a low grumble rather than a shout.
The parlor had gone quiet after midnight.
The vicar’s clock marked the hours with a brisk little cough and then remembered itself and fell silent again.
Coals settled. The cat snored under the chair as if it owned the hearth.
He had left the candle burning low. It made a small lake of light that caught the edge of the map he had folded and the blanket he had pulled over his boots.
The great weight of the storm had passed; rain tapped the panes like an afterthought.
Somewhere above him, floorboards gave the soft, infrequent sounds of a house taking breath.
He did not sleep. He had tried. Each time he closed his eyes he saw the same things.
Adeline was on the doorstep, white with shock as her father spoke her name.
The way she ran. The way the storm made a wall, and she went into it anyway.
He was still wet from chasing her when they came back in, both of them dripping rain and the last of their fear onto the vicar’s clean floor.
The vicar’s wife had wrapped Adeline in a blanket and chivvied her upstairs.
Winston had taken the settle without argument because the alternative was either the floor or standing guard all night with his hand on the latch.
He flexed his fingers to loosen a cramp and set them flat again on the blanket. He had a list of facts. He put them in a row and forced himself to look at each.
Adeline lied about her name. DeBrett’s confirmed that she lied. She is Harston’s daughter.
He flexed his fingers.
She never had a fiancé. Never thought she would get married or have children.
His brows furrowed when he thought of a future where Adeline’s maternal instincts were not put to good use. It was unsettling.
Harston accused her of theft. Pike sniffed around it like a dog, believing it and prepared to throw the authority of Bow Street Magistrates behind it.
Winston rolled onto his side, wincing as his ribs protested against this small movement.
I have no proof to defend her with. I have nothing but my heart and my instinct. She lied, but no more than that.
What he did have was the woman herself. He had seen how she behaved when no one watched her.
How she spoke to Louisa when the child quaked, guided Cordelia through that long night.
He had the steadiness of her hands when his knee caught, the quiet sense that never showed itself as pride.
He had her fear, not theatrical but practical.
He had the memory of her body warming under his blanket at the inn, the way she’d said I’m here and made it true.
He did not want to believe all the stories that circulated around Adeline’s presence. He wanted to believe the opposite, that Adeline had fled because her father made the world dangerous, that Harston had killed his wife and scrubbed his conscience with titles. He put another fact in the row.
I do not want to be without her.
He could not yet give that want a name. Love was a word that came with obligations and ghosts. He could not lift it without waking something else. But the word stood there anyway, behind the others, not asked to speak, not dismissed.
His eye drifted to the dark corner of the room.
The candle threw no light there. He had the sudden, foolish certainty that someone stood in it.
A pale figure, hands folded at the waist, head bowed.
It vanished when he looked straight at it, as such things always do.
He breathed out through his nose and let his head press back against the settle’s worn top rail.
“Enough,” he said softly, to the corner, to himself, to a house full of old promises. “Louisa loves her. She loves Louisa. You can go. Louisa is safe.”
Saying it loosened something that had lived just under his breastbone for years.
He had told the truth to a ghost and discovered he could still breathe.
He heard a floorboard whisper above. A soft step.
The faint click of a latch. Bare feet on stairs made no sound at all.
The hem of a dressing gown made a soft rush.
Adeline paused in the doorway, the borrowed flannel swallowing her to the ankles, her hair braided and coiled up in a simple knot that told him she had tried to sleep and failed.
They looked at one another for a heartbeat, then two.
She crossed the floor quickly and without formality, and he rose to meet her, catching a sharp pull from his ribs and refusing to wince.
She went into his arms as if the argument had already been had and lost. He wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and drew her close, feeling the plain relief of another human pulse answering his.
“I should be asleep,” she whispered against his coat. “I can’t.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry for before.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “You did what any of us would have done. You ran. Now you’re here.”
She smiled without lifting her head. “You chased me.”
“Poorly,” he said. “I’ll never make a hero of a novel.”
Her hands had worked their way around his waist into the warm fold of the blanket. He rested his chin lightly on her hair and let the room be small and ordinary for a moment. Table, chair, settle, two cups on the hearthstone where the vicar had left them for any night-thirst.
“I’ve been deciding things,” he said, when breath came easy again.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It usually is.” He eased back enough to see her face. “We must confront Harston. Not here in a vicar’s parlor with rain in our boots. Somewhere that suits us. With witnesses, and time, and a door we can close behind him. But we must do it.”
She shook her head at once, the movement small and stubborn.
“No. It will make everything worse. He doesn’t argue for the sake of learning or illuminating the situation for others’ benefit.
He argues to win. He’ll bring papers and men and noise.
If I go on, he’ll follow slower. If I stop, he’ll be on us. ”
“If you go on, he’ll say you’re running proves him right,” Winston said, the words quiet but firm. “If you stop and face him with me, he’ll have to speak to someone who answers back.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “I don’t want Cordelia called into it. Or Louisa.”
“Nor do I. That’s why I’ll choose the ground.” He saw the doubt still in her and softened his tone. “You won’t be alone in this. And you won’t have to speak a word you don’t wish to.”
She swallowed. “I could go away before he seeks me out again. We have no way of knowing if he’ll come back here tomorrow morning. He just might. I could leave a note. I could write to Cordelia and Louisa…”
“No.” He did not let the word bite, but he did not let it bend. “You will not go away in the dark and call it kindness. That trick never saved anyone. It only spares us the pain of watching someone leave.”
She closed her eyes and steadied herself, breath in, breath out. “It’s my instinct.”
“I know.” He allowed himself the smallest smile. “So is mine. My instinct is to build a wall and pretend there’s no gate in it. But we have a child in the middle of us. If we run, we teach her to run. If we stand, we teach her that some storms end.”
“Your storms always end,” she said, not unkindly. “Mine don’t.”
“They do,” he said. “Or they can be ended.”
“By whom?”
“By us.” He let the next thing come because withholding it would make every other word worthless.
“I want to be free of Sarah. I can’t be while Louisa walks the world without a mother to love her.
I’ve told myself a dozen sensible lies about grief.
None of them works. The only thing that looks like an answer is the sight of you with her.
How she breathes when you’re in the room, how the night is shorter for her because you stand at the foot of the bed and tell it to be. ”
He had not meant to set his heart out on the table. He had meant to talk about law and letters and Oswald and Bow Street and a dozen clean strategies. The words had made their own road. He tried to lighten them before they became more than either of them could hold.
“I can’t yet call any of that by its proper name. I’m very likely a coward. But I know what I can’t do. I can’t go back to the house and tell Louisa that the woman who made the fear smaller has vanished because a loud man did a terrible series of things.”
Adeline’s mouth trembled and steadied. “Don’t call yourself a coward. You ran out into a thunderstorm with cracked ribs.”
“I’m an idiot, then.”
“You’re that as well.”
He let out a breath that he had wanted to be a laugh.
“Stay,” he said, because plain words had worked well enough so far.
“Stay and face him with me. We’ll gather what we need.
I’ve written to Oswald. I’ve sent for a man at Bow Street who knows how to listen.
We’ll put light on the places he’d rather keep dark. ”
“He’ll bring witnesses,” she said. “Men who owe him favors. Men who want them.”
“He will,” Winston said. “And we’ll bring people who know you as you are. My mother. The household at Greystone. The tenants who’ve watched what you do rather than what you say. It won’t be a trial in the newspapers. I won’t have that. But it will be a reckoning on our ground, with our terms.”
She looked at the coals for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, almost surprised. “I don’t want to leave and start anew.”
“Good,” he said softly.
“I’ve wanted to run since the day I stepped into your house,” she went on.
“It’s the only thing that ever worked. I run so the hurt stays where it was.
Then I met Louisa.” She lifted her eyes.
“I love your daughter, Winston. I want to be a mother to her. If I run, I teach her to be ashamed of her name. If I stay, I have to be braver than I’ve ever been. ”
“You already are,” he said. “Every morning when you come down the stairs and pour chocolate for someone else before you pour it for yourself, that’s brave. It doesn’t always look like banners.”
“I’m not good with banners.”
“Nor I.” He took her hands again, turned them palm-up in his, and spoke as if to a skittish colt.
“We’ll go home to Greystone. Oswald will meet us there.
The runner will come quietly in a day or two.
We’ll ask questions properly. We’ll take statements.
We’ll set down times and names. We’ll charge no one until we’ve gathered everything.
When Harston comes, he’ll find a house that doesn’t shake when he blows on it. ”
“And if he brings the law?” she asked.
“Then he’ll find I know how to read it,” Winston said. “There’s more than one version of that game. He’s not the only man in England who can hire a clever solicitor. And if it comes to a court, we’ll go into it with our backs straight and our papers in order.”
She nodded once, a small soldierly thing. Then she surprised him. “I’m sorry I said I’d go. I was trying to protect you.”
“You are protecting me,” he said. “What hurts me is the thought of a house without you in it.”
She looked at him as if he had turned a key he hadn’t known he held. He felt himself flush like a boy. He looked down at their hands because they were easier to address than her eyes.
“Louisa loves you,” he said, because it was true and it was safe. It was the easiest thing to say. Easier than telling her what was in his own heart.
“My mother does too, though she’d phrase it with more embroidery. I…” He stopped and got his balance. “I want to set this in plain order so Louisa grows up with a mother she can trust.”
Adeline heard the word he had not said and spared him. “I want that as well,” she said. “For her. And for us.”
They stood like that long enough for the coals to lose their brightest orange. The cat stretched and resettled without waking. The clock decided it was time to cough again and did so, apologetically.
“Will you sleep now?” he asked.
“I’ll try.”
“Take the blanket.”
“You’ll be cold.”
“I’m a Duke,” he said dryly. “We don’t feel cold.”
“Liar,” she said, but she took a corner of it anyway and tucked it around herself as if to please him.
She turned to go and hesitated. “If…when we do this,” she said, “there will be things you won’t like to hear. About my father’s house. About what I did to get out of it. I can’t promise to look like the person you want.”
“Look like yourself,” he said. “That will do.”
She nodded. “Good night.”
“Good night.” He let the words carry more than they said.
She had gone as far as the threshold before she turned back, crossed the room in three quick steps, and kissed him once, sure and gentle. It was not the rain-swept urgency of the yard, nor the careful tenderness of the inn. It was a promise made softly so as not to wake the house.
“I will sleep. Here with you. As long as we wake before the vicar. I would not scandalize such a nice old man,” Adeline said.
Winston grinned, ushering Adeline to the settle where there was just enough room for them both.
He put the blanket over them. He lay on the settle and thought of the road in the morning and the hall at Greystone, and the way Louisa would run when she heard the wheels.
He thought of papers and names and the questions he would ask and the men he would send for.
He thought of Sarah, and for the first time in years, he thought of her as someone he could grieve without punishment.
“Rest,” he said to Adeline, the past, and to himself. “We’ve endured enough tonight.”
The wind turned in the chimney and settled. The clock found its hour. He slept.