Chapter 17 #2
“And I thought I should never again have the opportunity to be properly furious with you,” she said instead, with a breathless little shrug that could not conceal how near she had come to saying something else entirely.
His smile tugged wider, though the effort pained him. “I can think of no greater declaration of affection than your continued desire to scold me.”
“It is not a declaration,” she retorted at once. “It is a warning. If you should ever again do something so profoundly foolish – such as allowing my brother to aim a pistol at you, or attempting to appear noble about it – I shall ensure you do not survive the second occasion.”
“Understood. I am to die only once, and then only with your express approval.”
“Precisely.”
They looked at one another for a long moment. She remained close, her gown brushing the edge of the bed and her fingers curled loosely against his side as if reluctant to withdraw entirely.
“You ought to rest,” she said at last, shifting slightly in her chair as though preparing to rise.
He leant back against the pillow carefully, but before she could move away, he reached out and gently caught her wrist. “You could stay,” he said very quietly. “Just until I do. ”
She hesitated for the briefest instant, then resumed her seat with great dignity. “I shall remain precisely five minutes,” she said, folding her hands once more. “But only to ensure you do not bleed to death unattended. That would be most inconvenient.”
Theo let his eyes drift closed. “A lady and a physician. How very fortunate I am.”
Hetty made no reply, but neither did she relinquish his hand, not until his breathing had softened into the even rhythm of sleep.
—
?—
It is a truth universally acknowledged by readers and authors alike that at some point – usually after much vexation, scandal, or an ill-advised duel – the heroine must find herself alone in her chamber, wide awake long past any reasonable hour and seized by the overwhelming certainty that she is quite hopelessly, irrevocably in love.
Indeed, Miss Henrietta Tolliver now found herself perched before her dressing table.
Her wrapper hung loosely about her shoulders, the fire in the grate reduced to a sulky ember, and she resembled a heroine plucked from some excessively sentimental novel: her hair escaping its pins and curling far more romantically than she approved of.
She stared at her reflection as if it might offer some measure of clarity, but it only regarded her with the same troubled expression she had worn all day.
Beneath her practised exterior, her thoughts were in utter disarray.
Theo Winslow had been shot, and directly on her account.
Whether or not it was technically her finger upon the trigger (and she was still somewhat unclear on that point), it had undoubtedly been her plan, her foolishness and her inability to wrest a loaded pistol from her sister’s hands before catastrophe took aim at his left side.
She could still see his face as he had looked up at her from the grass, dazed and bloodied and smiling, and said, “It was a good kiss.”
He was a fool – an absolute, incorrigible, infuriating fool.
And now, of course, he lay upstairs, installed in one of the guest chambers, stitched together with what she could only hope were moderately competent stitches, half-dosed with laudanum, no doubt still lounging amongst the pillows like a fallen hero and enjoying himself enormously.
Hetty pursed her lips at her reflection. “This,” she muttered darkly, “was never part of the plan.”
The plan had not involved Theo Winslow kissing her with such maddening, unhurried tenderness, and it had most certainly not involved her wondering whether matrimony would not be quite so appalling as she had always feared.
In short, her plan had not accounted for feelings, and now, to her eternal horror, she appeared to be in possession of several.
She sighed deeply, then opened her writing box and began rifling through its contents: an old note from Georgie full of underlining and sharp observations; a pressed flower from Lottie, long since browned at the edges; and near the bottom, folded and faded, a letter in Theo’s atrocious handwriting.
She had kept it, though not with any particular intention.
He had written it when she was ten, and he, three-and-ten, away with his family in Bath for the summer.
She remembered missing him with the unreasonable intensity children feel and refuse to admit aloud.
To unfold the letter now felt rather like drawing open a curtain in some long-abandoned room:
My dear Hetty,
Bath is perfectly dreadful. Everyone is ill or pretending to be, and the waters taste as though they have been strained through an old boot. I was made to drink something vile called saline draught, which I suspect is a plot on my mother’s part to turn me into a healthful ghost.
There is but one other boy of my acquaintance, a miserable specimen named Algernon, who plays the flute most atrociously.
He insists upon serenading the invalids, who are too weak to object.
I challenged him to a duel with sticks, but his governess intervened and informed my mother.
I am now forbidden from climbing trees, playing cards, or, as she phrased it, ‘generally conducting myself like a monkey.’ I consider this grossly unfair, particularly when Algernon himself looks rather like a ferret.
I am bored beyond all measure. I hope you are continuing with your fencing. I demand a rematch upon my return – though I maintain that you only won last time owing to some manner of deception.
Have you read anything interesting? My mother gave me a sermon cleverly disguised as a novel. I fell asleep upon it and was scolded for drooling on the binding. I should like to borrow something with pirates next time I visit.
Do not forget me, or Algernon shall become my only companion, and I shall be forced to take up the flute myself.
I remain, as ever, your most faithful adversary ,
Theo
She traced the line with her thumb, smiling. Do not forget me.
How very like him, even then – to make a plea for remembrance beneath a layer of absurdity and mockery. He had always possessed a flair for the theatrical and an irritating knack for concealing true sentiment beneath layers of impudence and wit, but it was there, if one knew how to read him.
She folded the letter carefully and returned it to the bottom of the box.
Though Theo should have, by rights, belonged more to Benedict’s childhood memories than her own – Theo being a boy and three years her senior besides – it had never been Benedict with whom he shared his closest confidences.
No, from the beginning, it had always been Hetty.
There was something in their acquaintance that resisted the usual constraints of age or decorum.
Where Benedict had dismissed her with the weary disdain of an elder sibling, Theo regarded as though she were something altogether remarkable: a creature of wit and curiosity, whose schemes were to be encouraged, not curtailed.
Even as children, he treated her not as a girl to be tamed, but as an equal adversary in argument, cards, and fencing – sulking briefly when bested before demanding a rematch with crooked grin.
He had allowed her to be bossy – indeed, gloriously so – imperious in manner, stubborn to a fault, and at times quite impossible, without once seeking to diminish her spirit.
Where others bade her to mind her place and temper her tongue, Theo merely raised a brow and followed her into whatever mischief she had dreamt up that day.
More than the laughter and misadventures, he allowed her to be entirely herself – not the version she had cultivated for the benefit of drawing rooms and dinner guests; not the composed eldest daughter, all tidy coiffure and measured steps, trained to speak prettily and sit just so.
No, he had seen beneath the facade to the girl who read novels by candlelight long after she ought to be asleep, who wept at Shakespeare and denied it furiously, who lost her temper, her hairpins and, on occasion, her dignity – often all at once – and never, not once, had he asked her to be otherwise.
Indeed, she rather suspected he had liked her better before she had learnt how to behave.
A gentle knock at her door roused Hetty from her thoughts. She started, blinking as if awakening from a dream, and glanced down to find her hands still resting atop the closed lid of her writing box. The knock came again, softer this time, followed by a whisper: “Hetty? Are you awake?”
“Come in, Georgie.”
The door creaked open, revealing her younger sister wrapped in a quilted dressing robe, her golden curls neatly plaited for bed and a chamberstick held aloft in one hand.
She looked, Hetty thought wryly, rather like a cherub who had been summoned from her celestial rest to deliver unsolicited advice.
“I spied your candle still burning,” said Georgie as she slipped inside, nudging the door shut with a deft backwards push of her heel. “And thought I had better make certain you had not flung yourself from the window in a fit of despair.”
“How bracingly supportive. ”
Georgie smiled, all innocence and dimples, and set the candle down upon a side table. “To be perfectly frank, I expected to find you dramatically sprawled upon the chaise with one hand pressed to your brow.”
“I must admit, the thought did cross my mind.”
Georgie crossed to the bed and perched herself atop the coverlet with the ease of one long practised in sisterly intrusions. “You are frightened, aren’t you?”
“Certainly not. Do not be absurd.”