Chapter 21 #2
He had not known he was going to. He had been holding her against his side, and the even rhythm of her breathing had been pressing against the inside of his arm, and he had opened his mouth to begin explaining the plan against Percival Cummings, and what had come out instead was the first sentence of a thing he had been carrying for three years.
“I did not see it.”
She did not ask what.
“I did not see that she was afraid. I did not see that she was ill in any way that could not be accounted for by the influenza she had caught. I saw that she was tired, and I attributed the tiredness to the influenza, and to Henry, and to the difficulty she had always had with autumn weather.
I had been managing the southern estate. I had been writing letters about Robert to people I should never have approached. I had been attending to seven other things, and giving none of myself to her. I did not see that she was dying.”
He paused.
“I did not see Robert either. Robert was not subtle. Robert had been in trouble for nearly a year, and the trouble had been visible to anyone who looked at him. I did not look at him.
I looked at the figures of his last quarter’s expenditures, and I delivered him a lecture in the library at Ashfield three weeks before his accident, and the lecture was, by every standard a man of my education has been given, exactly the correct lecture to deliver to a younger brother who had been overspending and gambling.
He had not been gambling for sport. He had been gambling because he had been frightened. I did not register the fright, because I had been delivering lectures.”
His voice broke on the last word.
He registered that he had stopped speaking. He registered, a moment later, that he was unable to start again.
Sophia turned in his arms.
She did it without haste. Her hands came up, and she took his face between her palms, absolutely, and without asking. Her hands were cool. They were steady. She held his face, and she looked at him.
“Edmund.”
“Yes.”
“You could not have known.”
“I should have.”
“You could not have known. Lord Graystone had perfected the trick of seeming safe before you were born. He sat at our supper tables for ten years and lied to every man and woman at the table. You were one of them, and so was Margaret, and so was Robert, and so was I. There is nothing about this you could have known. Nothing. Do you hear me?”
He looked at her.
He was, he registered, crying.
He had not expected to. He had not wept like that since Robert died.
. He had stood at the graveside dry-eyed and held his sister’s arm, walking back to the house without breaking, and he had taken three years since then to permit himself nothing more than a tightening of the jaw at any private remembrance of his brother.
His grief was quiet. It was not fully under his control.
Sophia did not let go of his face.
“You are not alone anymore. Do you hear me? You are not alone with any of it.”
He brought his hands up, covering hers against his own face, with both of his. He held her hands there for a moment, and then he turned his head, and he pressed his mouth to the inside of her wrist.
Then he leaned forward.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. Not at the temple.
The center. He kept them there for perhaps two slow breaths, with her hands still cupping his jaw, the smell of her hair against him, and the softness of her brow against his mouth.
Edmund drew back slowly, and he opened his eyes, looking at her.
Her eyes were closed. They opened.
She did not say anything. He did not either. There was something between them neither of them had said. He felt it in the cold air, and he knew he would say it, but not then, not with all of it still unfinished. Later. He would say it properly, when he could.
After a moment he gathered her against him again, and they sat for a while in the moonlight with his coat around her shoulders and his arm around her inside it.. He understood, with a steadiness he had not been able to find for three years, that whatever was coming would not be his to carry alone.
***
The knock at the front door was sharp.
It was a great deal too late for callers. They both heard the night footman cross the hall. They heard the door open. They heard Jonathan’s voice, low and urgent.
Edmund was at the morning room door before Sophia had registered him moving. She followed.
Jonathan was in the entrance hall in his evening clothes, with his hat in his hand, and his face was grim.
“Edmund. I am sorry to come so late.”
“What is it?”
“Lord Graystone met this afternoon with Bryant. Bryant Wallace. The defamation man. He has retained him for tomorrow morning.”
Edmund went very still.
“He is going to strike first. I do not know with what. I have it from a clerk in Bryant’s office whom I have been paying a small useful sum to keep me informed of his client list. Bryant takes only one sort of case.
Percival Cummings will file in the morning.
He has decided he cannot wait for whatever you are doing.
He is moving first, and he is going to move in the courts, where being a baron with a spotless name will count for much more than being right. ”
The hall was very quiet.
Sophia stood at Edmund’s elbow. She felt him take in one slow, even, breath.
“Then we move tonight,” Edmund said.
“Yes,” Jonathan agreed.
He looked at Sophia. “Lady Ashfield. Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“We have less time than I had calculated. We should go to the study.”
Edmund nodded and turned. His hand brushed Sophia’s as he passed, the briefest of contacts, gloveless.
The touch of his fingers along the back of her wrist for perhaps half a second was the only place, in the entire half-hour they had just spent in the morning room, where the five feet of distance between them had been allowed to close.
He did not look at her as he passed. He did not need to.
Sophia followed him and Jonathan to the study, and the household, which had been preparing for sleep, began, very quietly, to wake.