Chapter Eight #2
Cillian kept his face neutral, a skill he had perfected and which was, at that moment, being tested more severely than he liked.
“Mrs Holt’s post will end when her regular girl returns,” he said carefully. “At the end of the month, as I understand it. My brother had mentioned needing assistance. I said only that you might then be seeking employment. Nothing has been settled.”
Molly’s gaze remained on him.
Cillian looked down at the tablecloth.
“This is hardly a conversation for dinner,” he added.
“No,” she replied, with perfect composure. “But it is certainly one for later.”
There was something in her voice that was not anger, or not only anger. Something softer and more complicated. He filed it away for later examination.
Dorothea, who had been drinking Teddy’s burgundy with quiet determination and growing approval, chose that moment to redirect the conversation.
“Mrs Bramble. I understand you have kept your boarding house for twenty years. Tell me, if you please, about the worst guest you ever had.”
Mrs Bramble, who had been observing the company in composed silence, was persuaded to recount the history of a guest who had once attempted to depart with her best towels and a volume of Shakespeare in his trunk.
The story, delivered with her usual economy, produced such general amusement that even Dorothea laughed outright, and Teddy nearly ruined his waistcoat with burgundy.
And Cillian smiled.
He was not aware of it at first. It came without permission, small and unguarded, and might have gone unnoticed had Teddy not been watching him.
“You are smiling,” Teddy said.
“I am not.”
“My dear fellow, you are. I feared the habit extinct.”
Cillian’s expression settled at once into its accustomed reserve. The table quieted for a moment, with the instinctive caution of people who have glimpsed something rare and do not wish to frighten it away.
Then Molly told the goat story.
“When I was fifteen,” she said, leaning back with the authority of a born storyteller, “I became convinced that our garden goat, whose name was Reginald, was lonely.”
“The goat’s name was Reginald?”
“He had a regal bearing. There was no other possible name. He stood by the garden fence and looked at the house with such tragic dignity that I considered it my moral duty to improve his society.”
“You did not,” Dorothea said, already perceiving the danger.
“I led him through the kitchen and into the drawing room, where my father was receiving the vicar and two churchwardens. Reginald entered, considered the company, and ate the vicar’s hat.”
The table broke into laughter. Mrs Bramble pressed her hand to her mouth. Teddy gave himself up entirely. Dorothea made a sharp sound that she attempted, too late, to disguise as a cough.
Cillian, watching Molly across the table, felt the smile return.
It was still small. But it was real, and Molly saw it.
She was in the middle of describing the vicar’s second-best hat when her eyes met his, and for one brief moment her expression softened. Then she looked away and finished the story with admirable composure.
Teddy saw that too. Of course he did. His face took on such open, painful hope that Cillian reached for his wine and drank rather than acknowledge it.
The evening went on in that warmer key. Mrs Bramble offered one or two dry recollections of her boarding-house guests; Dorothea, growing sharper with every glass, delivered a merciless assessment of Bath’s most eligible bachelor, Mr Rowley Cartright, who was handsome, wealthy, dull, and possessed, according to her, of a laugh “like a donkey being instructed in song.” Teddy produced a dessert so uncertain in character that no one could agree whether it was a cake, a pudding, or a philosophical argument.
It was in the midst of this restored cheer, while Teddy was refilling Dorothea’s glass and Dorothea was threatening to depart without any intention of doing so, that he said, almost idly, “Oh—that reminds me. A strange fellow came into the shop yesterday asking after a Miss Granger from Somerset. Cold sort of man. I sent him away.”
The change in the room was immediate.
Molly’s glass paused halfway to her mouth. Mrs Bramble set down her fork. Dorothea’s eyes narrowed.
Teddy looked from one face to the next, the bottle still in his hand. “What? What have I said?”
“Teddy.” Cillian’s voice had lost all trace of the evening’s warmth. It was flatter now, harder; the officer’s voice rather than the brother’s. “What sort of man?”
“Polite. Grey coat. Cold eyes.” Teddy set the bottle down with care, his levity fading as he understood the room at last. “Middling height. Lean. Not a gentleman making ordinary enquiries. More like a man employed to find someone.”
Molly lowered her glass to the table. Her voice, when it came, was steady. “What did he ask?”
“Whether I knew a young lady lately arrived from Somerset. Whether she lodged nearby. I told him I knew nothing of the matter and suggested he try the Pump Room, since half of Bath appears to pass through it before breakfast.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
The room that had been warm a minute before seemed to have admitted a draught.
Molly smiled then, but it was the wrong smile: too bright, too carefully made. “It is probably nothing,” she said. “Bath is full of gossips and gentlemen with disagreeable eyes. One must not be alarmed by abundance.”
No one laughed.
The smile remained a moment longer, then faded.
The evening recovered, but imperfectly. Conversation resumed; wine was poured; the dessert was condemned again from another angle. Yet the earlier ease had thinned, and when the party broke up an hour later, the goodbyes were briefer than they ought to have been.
The party broke up later than intended and more quietly than Teddy would have liked. He stood on his threshold with the air of a man who knew he had damaged his own dinner without meaning to, and attempted only one parting jest before thinking better of it.
Mrs Bramble, Dorothea, Molly, and Cillian left together.
It was not a long walk to the boarding house, but the night had changed the city.
Bath, so bright and animated by day, had settled into pale stone, lamplight, and the softened echo of their footsteps.
Dorothea and Mrs Bramble walked ahead, their heads inclined together in low conversation.
Molly followed a few steps behind them, with Cillian at her side.
It was not uncomfortable. It was heavier than their usual silences, freighted with the grey-coated man, his questions, and the fragile life Molly had begun to build in a city that had almost started to feel like hers.
One gloved hand rested lightly against the locket beneath her dress, the gesture habitual now.
“You arranged my position,” she said at last.
“I mentioned a possibility to Teddy. He made the decision.”
“You arranged my position,” she repeated. “And you paid Mrs Bramble for my room.”
The words were not quite an accusation. They were quieter than that.
He looked at her. Her face, caught between lamplight and moonlight, was serious and more open than he had expected: not stripped of dignity, not helpless, but tired in a way that made his chest tighten.
She had been taking care of herself for weeks.
Now she had discovered that someone else had also been doing so, without her knowledge, and was still deciding whether gratitude and anger could occupy the same breath.
“How did you learn about Mrs Bramble?” he asked.