Chapter 33 #2
“I will not be alone. My maid, Nell, will come with me. She will make lovely company, I’m sure.”
“I am sure she will. But a companion, or a maid, is not a husband, Lily.”
“Sometimes a companion is preferable to a husband, Caroline,” Aunt Margaret said.
Lady Brimsey shot her a look. Aunt Margaret shrugged.
Lord Brimsey cleared his throat. “If this is what you and Thornwaite have decided, then your mother and I support you. We always have. We always will.” He paused. “But I want you to know that if anything changes, if you need anything, you have only to write.”
“I know, Papa.”
“I mean it, Lily. Anything.”
She took her father’s hand and squeezed it. Lord Brimsey’s chin trembled. He cleared his throat again and reached for his tea with the determination of a man who refused to perspire emotionally in front of an audience twice in one month.
Lady Brimsey pulled Lily into an embrace and held her for a long time, murmuring against her hair about writing every week, eating properly, and not trusting foreign physicians.
Margaret rose from her chair and pressed a folded list into Lily’s hand.
“What is this?”
“Vineyards. The ones worth visiting between Calais and Rome. I have ranked them by quality. The ones marked with a star have excellent cellars and tolerable innkeepers. The ones marked with a cross should be avoided entirely.” She paused.
“Drink well. Write often. And if you find yourself in Florence, visit the Uffizi on a Tuesday. The crowds are thinner.”
“Thank you, Aunt Margaret.”
“Do not thank me. Thank the Marchioness of Loring, who compiled the original list. I merely annotated it.”
They hugged. Aunt Margaret held her tightly, and the embrace lasted longer than any her aunt had offered before.
Lord and Lady Brimsey departed with promises to write and a final round of tears from Lady Brimsey and emotional perspiration from Lord Brimsey.
Her aunt followed, pausing at the door to give Lily one last look that communicated, without words, that she saw through every lie her niece had told that afternoon and was choosing, out of love, to let them stand.
The door closed behind them.
Sophia appeared from the corridor where she had been waiting with the practiced patience of a woman who had known this moment was coming and had prepared accordingly.
She took Lily’s arm and guided her into the small parlor off the main hall. She closed the door. She turned to her sister.
“Tell me what is happening.”
“Nothing is happening. I am traveling.”
“Lily.”
“Sophia.”
“You have just told our parents that your husband will join you later, and you smiled while you said it, but the smile did not reach your eyes. I have known you for twenty-three years, and I know what your face looks like when you are lying to protect someone you love.” Sophia’s voice was gentle and immovable. “Tell me.”
Lily opened her mouth to repeat the lie. The words formed on her tongue, polished, practiced, and ready to deploy.
They dissolved before she could say them.
“He shut me out.” Her voice cracked. “I asked him about his past, about Sebastian, about the deficiency Lord Sudberry mentioned, and his voice broke, Sophia. It broke on a single word, and I could see how much it frightened him. Instead of letting me help, he told me to leave. He told me to go and never ask again.”
Sophia’s expression did not change. She listened the way she always listened, with her entire body, absorbing every word and filing it and waiting for the full picture to emerge.
“After that, he disappeared. He sleeps in his study. He dines at his club. He comes and goes like a ghost in his own house, and when I told him I wanted to travel, he arranged everything within a day. Lodgings, letters of introduction. He did not ask me to stay, Sophia. He did not even hesitate.”
The tears came. She fought them and lost.
“Please do not tell Edward.” She wiped her face. “Hugo needs Edward. Their friendship is the only real thing Hugo has besides Dorado and a house full of locked doors, and I will not be the reason it suffers.”
Sophia pulled her into her arms. Lily pressed her face against her sister’s shoulder and let herself be held. Sophia’s hand moved through her hair the way it had when they were girls, and the world was smaller and the problems were things that could be solved with a hug and a biscuit.
“I hope you find what you are looking for,” Sophia whispered.
“So do I.”
Sophia pulled back and held Lily’s face between her hands. Her dark eyes glistened.
“If you do not find it in France, come home. If you do not find it in Italy, come home. If you do not find it anywhere in Europe, come home, Lily. I will still be here.”
“I know.”
“Always.”
“Always.”
They held each other for a long time, and the drawing room was quiet, and the afternoon light slanted through the windows, and somewhere in a study across London, a man sat alone at a desk and did not know that the woman he had married was weeping in her sister’s arms because he would not let her love him.
That evening, Lily went to Thornwaite House alone.
Not to see Hugo. He was at his club, or his solicitor’s office, or wherever it was that men went when they were arranging the departure of wives they would not ask to stay. She went to the smaller stable behind the main block, the one that held only one occupant.
Dorado lifted his head when she opened the door. His dark eyes found her in the lamplight, and his ears pricked forward, and he made the low, rumbling sound she had come to recognize as a greeting.
“Hello, my friend.” She crossed to his stall and extended her hand.
Dorado pressed his muzzle against her palm, warm and soft, and his breath dampened her fingers.
She stroked his neck. The copper coat was smooth beneath her touch, and the muscles twitched and settled, and the three-legged horse leaned into her the way he leaned into Hugo, with the quiet trust of an animal who had learned that some hands were safe.
“I am leaving you,” she told him. “I do not know when I will be back.”
Dorado nudged her shoulder. She pressed her forehead against his neck and breathed in the warm, hay-scented smell of him, and the tears she had been holding back all day slipped free.
“Take care of him,” she whispered. “He will not ask anyone else to.”
She stayed with the horse for a long time. When she finally left, the stable was dark, and the city was quiet, and she walked back through the garden entrance and up the stairs to her chambers without seeing anyone.
Hugo’s study door was closed. A line of light showed beneath it.
She pressed her palm flat against the wood for one breath. Then she withdrew her hand and went to bed.
The morning of her departure, Lily rose before dawn.
She dressed in silence. Nell waited by the door with her own traveling case, her expression steady and professional, though her eyes held the quiet concern of a woman who had spent enough months in this household to understand that something between the Duke and Duchess had fractured.
Lily paused at the top of the staircase. Hugo’s study door was closed. No light beneath it. He was either asleep or gone, and she could not decide which possibility hurt more.
She would not knock. She would not stand in another doorway and wait for a man who would not meet her halfway. She had done enough waiting.
Mrs. Aldridge met her in the entrance hall, her hands clasped, her expression carefully neutral.
“Your Grace. His Grace asked me to inform you that the carriage is ready. He has arranged lodgings in Calais and letters of introduction for Paris, Lyon, and Rome. All the documents are in the leather case on the seat.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Aldridge.”
“He also asked me to give you this.” The housekeeper held out an envelope. “For expenses. He said you were not to worry about anything.”
Lily took the envelope. It was thick, heavy with banknotes, and sealed with the Beaumont crest. He had thought of everything.
Every practical detail, every logistical concern, every comfort she might need on a journey across Europe.
He had arranged it all with the meticulous care of a man who could organize anything except the words that mattered.
“Is His Grace at home?” Lily asked. She hated herself for asking.
“He left early this morning, Your Grace. He did not say where.”
Of course he did not. Of course he had left before she woke, so that he would not have to stand at the bottom of the staircase and watch her go, so that he would not have to choose between the mask and the truth, so that the last image between them would not be a goodbye he could not bear to speak.
She tucked the envelope into her reticule. She pulled on her gloves. She looked around the entrance hall one final time, at the marble floor and the portraits on the walls and the door to the study where she had stood and fought and lost.
“Take care of him, Mrs. Aldridge.”
The housekeeper’s composure wavered for one breath. “I will, Your Grace.”
Lily walked out the front door. Nell followed. The gray morning light swallowed them both.
She walked to the carriage, climbed inside, and the door closed. The driver clicked his tongue, and the horses pulled forward, and the townhouse, the street, and the man standing in the entrance hall fell away behind her.
Lily pressed her hand against the window glass and watched London blur.
She did not cry. She had cried enough. She sat straight, with her chin lifted and her shoulders squared, and she told herself that the ache in her chest would ease with distance, the way her aunt Margaret had promised, and that somewhere between Calais and Rome she would find whatever it was she was looking for.
She was not entirely sure it existed.
But staying had become impossible, and going was the only act of courage she had left.