Chapter 30 #2
“I imagine he is managing considerably better than his father is.”
“No doubt.” Catherine laughed, then reached over and squeezed Louisa’s hand warmly. “And how is dear Eleanor? I confess I have been dying to see how much she has grown since the last time I saw her.”
“Sleeping upstairs, thankfully, and growing far too quickly for my own comfort. She has begun smiling whenever someone speaks to her. I am afraid she has discovered that everyone in the household will stop whatever they are doing to make her smile again ”
“They do grow abominably fast, don’t they?
Oliver was crawling one week and attempting to climb the drawing room curtains the next, and I have never quite recovered my nerves since.
” Catherine accepted the tea Louisa poured for her, wrapping both hands around the cup with evident contentment.
Her smile lingered a moment before softening into something more searching.
“And how are you, Louisa? Truly. Your mother’s letter contained only vague details, and I confess I came prepared to simply sit with you for a while, whether you wished to speak of it or not. ”
Louisa found herself, despite every intention of maintaining her composure, blinking rapidly against the sudden sting behind her eyes.
“I have quarreled with Julian. Rather badly.” She set down her own cup, her hands not quite steady enough to trust it. “I have not seen him in a few days, and I do not know that I wish to, yet I think of very little else.”
“Then let us walk, rather than sit here staring at cooling tea.” Catherine rose, gathering her cloak once more.
“I find difficult conversations settle better in fresh air than in stuffy drawing rooms, regardless of the weather. Come. Tell me the whole of it while we walk, and I promise not to interrupt with anything more useful than the occasional sympathetic noise, until you have said everything you mean to say.”
They walked the gravel paths of the gardens for the better part of an hour, the autumn afternoon mild enough for comfort, and Louisa found herself gradually telling Catherine the whole of it: Vane’s pamphlet, Julian’s fear, the terrible words he had thrown back at her, and beneath it all, the truth she had confessed to her mother only days before and had not yet spoken aloud to anyone else.
“You love him,” Catherine said, when Louisa had finally talked herself into silence, both of them having wandered further than either had noticed.
“Yes.”
“And does he know it?”
“No.”
Catherine considered that for a moment, plucking a stray leaf from the hedge beside the path and turning it absently between gloved fingers.
“You have spent this whole conversation telling me what frightened you. What Vane did. What your husband said, and how it wounded you, and how you fear he does not truly want you beside him.” She glanced sideways at her, her eyes softening.
“You have told me at considerable length what you do not want, but you have not once told me what you do want.”
Louisa opened her mouth to answer, and found the words did not come as readily as she had expected.
“I want Eleanor safe,” she said finally.
“I know that. You have wanted that since before you met your husband.” Catherine stopped walking and turned to face her properly.
“What do you want for yourself, Louisa? Not for Eleanor. Not for Kit. Not for the promise you made Nell, or the arrangement you proposed to your husband. What do you, Louisa Everly, actually want, when no one else’s welfare hangs in the balance? ”
Louisa stood very still, the question settling over her with a weight she had not anticipated, and found that she had no ready answer.
She had spent her whole life answering exactly this question in the negative.
She did not want a husband who wished her quieter.
She did not want to surrender the promise she had made to Nell.
She did not want Eleanor to grow up feeling unwanted, nor Kit to remain forever locked behind his silence, nor her own sharp opinions ever softened for anyone’s comfort.
Every want she had ever named for herself had been shaped, first and entirely, by what she refused to accept.
“I do not know,” she mumbled, and the admission unsettled her more than she had expected it to.
“I have never properly asked myself that question, Catherine. I have always known what I would not tolerate. I have never once stopped to consider what I actually wished for, beyond the safety of the people I love.”
“Then perhaps that is worth considering now,” Catherine reasoned gently.
“Not because you have done anything wrong in caring for others so fiercely. Only because a woman who never asks what she wants for herself eventually finds that she has built an entire life around everyone’s needs but her own, and wakes one day wondering where she went in the whole arrangement.
I nearly did the same myself during my first year of marriage, before I learned better. ”
They walked on in silence a while longer, the question sitting heavy and unresolved in Louisa’s chest.
Catherine stayed through supper, filling the evening with gentler conversation, old memories, and gossip carefully chosen to coax a proper laugh rather than press the matter further, but as Louisa watched her carriage disappear down the drive the following morning, she realized that the comfort of the visit had not touched the one question that mattered.
What do I want for myself?
She turned it over long into the evening, sitting beside Eleanor’s cradle with the candle burned low, and found, however many times she asked it of herself, that she still had no ready answer, only the same unresolved ache that had settled into her chest the moment she’d left Ashvale and showed no sign of easing on its own.