Chapter 23
Eloise woke the next morning with the unhappy sensation that the house had become different while she slept. Not visibly, and maybe only to her. It was the kind that changed the air between rooms and left people careful with one another.
She had expected to wake with some measure of resolve.
Instead, she woke with the hollow aftertaste of having done something necessary and painful, and discovered that necessity did not make the pain any smaller.
Jamie was engaged. Catriona would suit the role.
Everyone knew it, just like she had told him.
But that did not make it easier to bear.
Eloise dressed slowly, then went out with Clara under the pretense of needing fresh air and the practical excuse of the week’s bread from the village shop.
Clara, who did not believe in pretense unless one was using it to avoid a difficult conversation, walked beside her with a sharp, appraising glance and said nothing for several minutes.
The village was still waking. A cart rattled somewhere in the distance. A dog barked behind a low wall. Two children ran past with sticks and the fierce concentration of boys who had decided on war with absolutely no preparation.
Clara did not pretend not to notice the mood. She brought Eloise to the nearest tea shop without asking for her opinion and ordered tea so strong that it looked as though it might remove varnish from the table. Eloise stared at the cup. Clara stared at her.
“Drink it,” Clara said.
Eloise lifted the cup with both hands and obeyed.
Neither of them spoke for several minutes. The little shop was warm and quiet, with the smell of old wood, tea leaves, and yesterday’s sugar cakes hanging in the air.
Clara sipped her own cup and set it down with a grim expression. At last, she said, “Are you going to stay through the wedding?”
Eloise did not look up. The question had been coming. She had known it. She stirred the tea slowly.
“I do not know yet.”
Clara’s mouth flattened. “That is not what I asked.”
Eloise took a breath. “I will stay until the petition is dismissed.” She sighed heavily. “After that, I will go.”
Clara studied her over the rim of her cup. “Why?”
Eloise kept her gaze on her tea. “Because it would break me,” she said, and hated how honest it sounded, “to watch him every day and know I cannot be with him.”
Clara did not move. Eloise closed her eyes briefly. The sentence had escaped before she could polish it into something more sensible. It was too late anyway. And after everything that had transpired recently, she was too tired and worried to pretend there were no feelings she had been hiding.
Clara stared at her as though she was impossibly daft. “That is the stupidest sentence anyone has spoken all week.”
Eloise gave a tiny, miserable laugh despite herself.
Clara’s mouth twitched, though she did not soften much. “You are not the first woman to want a man she cannot have.”
“I know that.”
“No, you do not. You think you are the first person in the world to suffer badly.”
Eloise looked up. Clara returned the stare without blinking. “For what it is worth,” she said, “I do not think you are being foolish because you want him. I think you are being foolish because you are speaking as though your leaving is already the only thing that matters.”
Eloise looked down. The tea in her cup had gone a little darker as it cooled. What matters is that I was not brave enough to try to see if he might consider marrying me, instead, she thought, though she chose not to say the thought aloud.
Clara did not press. Instead, she covered Eloise’s hand with her own for one brief moment. The gesture was simple, solid, and unshowy. It nearly undid her.
Then Clara withdrew her hand and leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “Now,” she said, with deliberate roughness, “tell me what trouble Maisie has made this week, because if I have to hear one more tale about Logan covering for the child, I shall start charging him by the hour.”
Eloise blinked. “Logan has been covering for her?”
“Last Tuesday, she hid a biscuit in the hem of her dress and dropped it under the table for the dog.”
“The dog?”
“The dog was not supposed to be there.”
“Of course not.”
“Logan claimed the biscuit had been there all along.”
Eloise laughed properly, and Clara pointed at her immediately. “There. That.”
The conversation moved on from there, becoming a little lighter. But the words she had spoken remained. She would stay until the petition was dismissed. Then, she would go.
Whatever that cost her, it would cost less than watching him choose another woman while she remained in the house like a bruise everyone tried to pretend was not bothersome. She returned to prepare for lessons that morning with a face calmer than she felt.
***
Shortly after Eloise and Clara returned home, Maisie came in with a drawing under one arm and a suspiciously innocent expression. Duncan was already at the table, bent over one of Jamie’s charts with the sort of concentration that made his mouth go very thin.
Eloise sat, opened the book, and tried to keep herself from thinking about Jamie, Catriona, and the unbearable shape of things to come. It did not work.
Maisie brought her drawing over at once. “Look,” she said.
Eloise set her pen down. “What have you made?”
“Wedding.”
The word hit with such force that Eloise’s hand nearly closed too tightly on the page. She looked down.
It was a wedding, at least by Maisie’s design.
There were flowers everywhere, far more than any real ceremony could possibly support.
A figure in white stood under a wide arch drawn with a surprisingly careful hand.
Next to the white figure stood another figure whose face had been scribbled over on one side.
Eloise stared at it for a second. Then, she understood. The scribble was Maisie’s version of Jamie’s scars. Not cruel. Only factual. The child had drawn the face the way she saw it.
“Is it all right?” Maisie asked.
Eloise smiled gently despite the ache in her heart. “It is very thoughtful.”
Maisie brightened. “It is the wedding.”
“I see that.”
“And there are flowers.”
“There are a great many flowers.”
“Because weddings need flowers.”
Duncan, from the far side of the table, scoffed. “They need less flowers.”
Maisie ignored him. Eloise looked more carefully at the drawing and kept her face steady. The figure in white was unmistakably a bride.
Maisie thrust the drawing into Eloise’s hands as though it was evidence in a case she had already won. “Very beautiful,” Eloise said.
“Even the face?”
“Especially the face.”
Maisie looked satisfied and returned to her chair.
Duncan had gone quieter than usual. He was turning a pencil in his fingers and not meeting Eloise’s eye.
She did not press him at first. When Mrs. Maggie called Maisie out into the hall for a matter concerning ribbons and a missing glove, the room settled.
Duncan remained at the table. He was still. Too still.
Eloise glanced at him and finally said, “What is it?”
He did not answer at once. Then he asked, without looking up, “Why did you not want to marry Uncle Jamie?”
The question was so direct that for a second Eloise simply stared at him. Duncan kept his eyes on the page. She set down her book.
“Did Maisie ask you to ask that?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Then why?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Because you looked like you did not want to.”
She drew a breath. There was no point pretending otherwise. The child would know. “Duncan,” she said carefully, “sometimes people have reasons that are not easy to explain.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No. But it is the only one I can give.”
He finally looked up. His face was serious enough to seem older than twelve, and that made the question worse.
“I do not believe that.”
Eloise’s breath caught in her throat.
“I want to keep you safe,” she said. “And I want you to have the best mother you can possibly have.”
He seemed to consider that. “My mother married for love.”
Eloise’s chest continued to ache.
“My father made her laugh every day,” he said.
The words came with such simplicity that she had to look away for a moment.
“That sounds like a wonderful marriage.”
Duncan shrugged.
“That is what Uncle Jamie makes you do too,” Duncan said.
The child was not accusing her. It might have been less cruel if he had been. But he was simply stating it as plainly as if it were one more fact on a lesson page.
“Your uncle hired me to tutor you children.”
Duncan shrugged again.
“But you often act more like a mother would,” Duncan said.
Eloise swallowed.
“That does not mean I should be your mother.”
Duncan frowned. “If you did not want to be, you could have said so.”
The sentence hurt more than she expected. Not because it was unfair. Because it was true. “For you to be safe with your uncle,” she said gently, “I need to put my own feelings aside. Sometimes, it is not about what any adult wants, but about what is best for children. And this is what is best.”
He studied her for a long moment. Then looked down at his book, picked it up, and opened it with the finality of a child who has heard enough and needs time to think. Eloise watched him for a second. Then turned back to her own work and found, to her discomfort, that the page blurred slightly.
***
She passed the back garden on her way from the schoolroom that afternoon and stopped short. Catriona was there, seated on a bench near the hedge with a piece of correspondence in her lap. She looked up as soon as she heard Eloise’s approach.
“Miss Beauchamp. Would you join me, please, for a moment?”
Eloise glanced toward the house, then back. There was nothing inhospitable in the request. She approached the bench and sat beside her.
For a moment neither spoke. It was Catriona who eventually broke the silence. “I have been thinking about the petition. And Lord Feversham.”
Eloise looked at her.