Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“This is the part about the weather gauge,” James said. He had the ship book open on Dominic’s desk, his finger on the page. “I don’t know what it means.”
Dominic looked up from the ledger. James stood in the doorway, book extended, chin forward.
“Where did you encounter the term?” Dominic asked.
“Page forty-three.” James came in and set the book flat on the desk, open to a page showing two fleets and a diagram of wind direction arrows. “Annabelle didn’t know. She said to ask you.”
Dominic set his pen down. “The weather gauge is the upwind position. The ship that holds it has the wind at her back—she can advance or retreat on her own terms. The ship downwind fights on the other captain’s terms.”
James studied the diagram. “So the whole battle can be decided before a single shot.”
“A significant portion of it.”
“By the wind.”
“By whoever positioned himself better before the wind shifted.” He leaned forward and traced the formation with one finger above the page, not touching it.
“This is the French van at Trafalgar. By the time Nelson engaged, they were already on the leeward side. They couldn’t close the distance without sailing into their own guns. ”
James’s head tilted. “So being stronger doesn’t always mean winning.”
“Rarely. A stronger fleet in the wrong position loses.”
James studied the plate in silence, eyes moving from fleet to fleet. Then: “Can I sit?”
“Yes.”
He pulled the small chair from its corner and set it beside the desk. He opened the book flat between them. “Why did Nelson sail perpendicular to their line? Every other fleet sailed in a line.”
“Because he knew the perpendicular approach would put his ships under fire for thirty minutes with no ability to return it.” Dominic picked up the book.
“He also knew that once his columns broke the enemy’s line, it would create a close-range engagement, and English gun crews were faster at close range than any fleet afloat. ”
James thought about this. “He let his men be shot at on purpose. To reach a better position.”
“Yes.”
“He knew some of them would die.”
“He did.”
James was quiet, looking at the plate. “Was he sad about it?”
Dominic paused. “I believe he was. He had served with those men for years. He knew their names.”
James nodded.
“Will you read the Trafalgar part?” he said. “Annabelle says history is best when it has people in it. This part has people in it.”
Dominic found the section and read. James sat beside him with his chin in his hand, and the questions came at the end of every passage: about the signal flags, the smoke from the guns, what a man saw from the gun deck when the broadside came from thirty yards.
Each deserved a real answer, and Dominic gave real answers, and the afternoon moved past the study window without either of them noting the hour.
At five, Mrs. Howell appeared at the door. James collected the ship book and stopped at the threshold.
“What happened after?” he said.
“After Trafalgar?”
“After England won.”
“Read the next chapter.” Dominic picked up his pen. “We can argue the consequences tomorrow.”
James took this as the arrangement it was. At the door, he stopped once more and looked back.
“You know a great deal about this,” he said.
“I read.”
“Annabelle reads too. But she says history is drier than novels.” He thought. “I think it depends on the history.”
“It does,” Dominic said.
James found this satisfactory and followed Mrs. Howell out.
Dominic sat still after the footsteps faded on the stairs. He set his pen on the ledger. He looked at the small chair James had returned to its corner, left at a slightly different angle than before, turned toward the desk rather than the wall.
He left it where it was.
Three weeks later, Annabelle walked to the music room and found the door already open.
James was at the piano, the fallboard up, his hands in his lap. What was unusual was the figure in the armchair at the far end of the room.
Dominic sat by the window. A newspaper lay open across his knee. It was not being read.
“Uncle Dominic wanted to sit here,” James said, without turning from the keys.
She looked at Dominic. He looked at the newspaper. “I had the paper,” he said, as if this were a complete explanation.
She sat beside James and said nothing about the paper or the chair or the fact that Dominic had not stayed in a room with music being played since the night he had told her what he carried.
She set James’s right hand, and they began.
James stopped himself when the third bar went wrong before she pointed it out, repeated the passage twice without being asked, and by the end of the fourth piece was measurably better than a week ago.
James turned on the bench. “Uncle Dominic. Did you hear the fourth piece?”
Dominic had set the newspaper on the arm of the chair. She had not seen him do it, but he was looking at them; at Jame’s hands on the keys, specifically. When she glanced at his face, she saw the tightness around the corners of his eyes that revealed just how much he was holding back.
He answered nonetheless and said, “I did.”
“Was the rhythm correct?”
“It steadied in the final bar. The fourth beat in the third bar wanted more time.”
James looked at Annabelle. “He heard it.”
“He did,” she agreed.
“Play it from the beginning,” he said. “So he can hear it correctly.”
She played it through slowly, then at tempo. At the window, Dominic did not move. She did not look toward him, and the piece ended on its final chord.
“That was correct,” James announced.
From the window: a low sound, barely a sound at all.
She played the opening bars again, and James placed his hands on the keys beside hers, and the lesson went on.
The Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury’s invitations were coveted, her suppers excellent, and her receiving line moved fast because she had opinions about guests who lingered in it.
Annabelle had attended twice as Lucien’s sister.
Attending as the Duchess of Silverford was a different order of scrutiny, and the scale of the watching was more than she had prepared for.
“They have been looking at us since we came through the door,” she said.
“They’ll stop when something more interesting appears.” Dominic looked at the room, hands loose at his sides. “It doesn’t change. You learn to carry it differently.”
Across the room, Theodore and Cressida Yeats caught their eye the way people who are fond of you do in crowded rooms — Cressida’s head inclining, warm and brief; Theodore with the measured acknowledgment he brought to an equal. Dominic returned both.
Miles appeared from the card room. “Fairmont is at the white table. Eleven pounds to a baronet and barely looking at his cards.”
Elinor followed him out. “He’s nearly done. He asked after James on the way over. I consider that a good sign.”
Lucien came through the card room door four minutes later. He found Annabelle first across the room and came toward her.
He kissed her cheek. “You look well.”
“I am,” she said.
He straightened. He looked at Dominic.
“Silverford.”
“Fairmont.”
Neither filled the pause.
“The evening suits?” Lucien asked.
“Well enough,” Dominic said.
Cressida appeared at Annabelle’s elbow. “Your Grace. You look remarkably composed for a woman who has been inspected since the receiving line.”
“I’ve been practicing the expression,” Annabelle said.
“It’s convincing.” Theodore drew Lucien into conversation about a drainage matter affecting both their Shropshire properties, and the group divided naturally.
By the fireplace, Dominic and Lucien stood without a buffer.
Annabelle did not stare, but the room was not so large, and voices carry at the edge of a crowd.
Lucien stood at the fireplace with his back half-turned to the room, his wine glass held against his chest. He was looking at the fire.
“How is the boy settling.”
“Well.” Dominic was a foot to his left, both of them facing the same direction. “He’s sleeping properly. Eating.”
Lucien took a sip of his wine. “Good.”
The clock on the mantel ticked. In the card room behind them, someone laughed at something.
“He asked after you last week,” Dominic said. “He’s been asking Annab—”
“I’ll visit.” Lucien said it before Dominic finished, and Annabelle watched her husband nod woodenly. She put her hands over her mouth, the secondhand awkwardness nearly causing her to topple.
Goodness, men quarreling was ever so awkward to watch…although, she couldn’t quite say much of anything, given ladies’ own leanings when in quarrels of their own.
As if spawning from thin air, Cressida said, “When both parties prefer the friendship to the grievance, it works out. And they do prefer it; it’s visible, even from across a room.”
“I agree. Even though they both look so stiff,” Anabelle added. The two exchanged a soft smile, yet Anabelle’s attention remained on the two men.
Now Dominic was speaking, and Lucien listening.
They’ll get there, Anabelle thought. It would take time, but they would get there.
A few minutes later, Lucien was pulled back into Theodore’s drainage argument. Dominic drifted to the far edge of the room and stopped with his back to the paneling. Annabelle set her wine on the side table and followed.
He turned as she came to stand beside him.
“You’ve been looking at me all evening,” she said.
“And you’ve been looking right back,” he said, watching out of the corner of his eye.
He saw her open her mouth…and then close it, having nothing to say in rebuttal.
And he also saw the moment she caught the perfect escape. “I was checking whether anyone had noticed.”
What a stubborn woman indeed. “Three people noticed, but none of them will say anything.” He shifted his gaze back to scanning the room. “Although…Lady Fitch is the one to watch, since she’s been counting.”
“Counting what?” Annabelle’s tone was confused.
“How many times I look.” He watched the party, his lips curling up. “She lost count around the fifth.”
“Hm,” She hummed, already sounding tired of this thread of the conversation. When she looked up at him, the look he caught in her eyes made him want to pull back. “Do you think you and my brother will get back to normal?”
Dominic cleared his throat. “Hm, well, he is a man I have known for some time,” he said, “but what I have done is not something that he can easily forgive…neither am I asking him to.”
Annabelle pursed her lips. “He has been my brother all my life, and I am telling you that he is softening up more than you think.”
Dominic tilted his head. “Is that so?”
She turned her wine glass once in her fingers. “Yes. I’m certain of it.”
“Then I shall take my wife’s beautiful word for it.”
At supper, Lucien held the door, and Dominic walked through it without comment, neither remarking on it at all.
Annabelle heard it before she understood it: a change in the quality of his breathing, a sharpening where there had been ease. She lay against his side in the dark, listening, and his chest was no longer the slow rise and fall of sleep. His arm had gone rigid. She lifted her head.
His jaw was tight. Behind closed lids, his eyes were moving. The hand at his side had closed into a fist in the bedding.
She put her palm on his chest, shaking him, “Dominic.”
His breathing quickened, but he did not stir. Heart pattering against her chest, she pressed even more.
“Dominic.” Her tone was firmer, and he came out of it with a short, hard breath, eyes opening on the ceiling, chest lifting once in a rough wave and holding still. He breathed.
She did not move away. She kept her hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat, too fast, and waited while it found its way back. He turned his head and found her in the dark, and his jaw was damp along the line of it.
“You’re here,” he croaked.
“I’m here,” she said.
His hand came over hers and held it as his heartbeat slowed.
“Tell me something ordinary,” he said, his words rough at the edges.
“James has decided Newton should have a kitten to play with whenever he’s out in our garden,” she said. “He has chosen the name Admiral.”
A low sound from him, almost amused. His hand tightened around hers. “That is a terrible name for a kitten,” he said.
Annabelle hummed, her lips curving up as she watched him. “I told him so. He said the cat could grow into the title.”
He lay still, and she counted his breathing by the rise and fall of his chest, waiting.
“It was the room,” he said quietly. “In the dream.”
She waited.
“I am always the same age in it.” He exhaled. “And I always believe…this time, I’ll be fast enough.”
She moved her thumb slowly across the back of his hand. “You were but a child, Dominic,” she said. “There was nothing to be done.”
He said nothing to that, and she did not press him further about it, simply letting him process in the quiet. His breathing evened at last, and she thought he’d gone back to sleep, and then he spoke again, his tone almost childish:
“I went to the door today.”
She lifted her head to look at him.
“The east wing.” He was still looking at the ceiling. “The old music room. I stood in the corridor. I put my hand on the handle but I…”
She did not move, waiting for him to find the words for himself.
When he finally did, he said, “I couldn’t turn it. Not today.”
“But you went to the door,” she said, her tone encouraging, her heart bleeding for him, wanting more than anything to take his pain for him. Yet, he did not speak, as though he were not hearing her at all.
“Dominic.” She lifted herself and waited until he turned and looked at her. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. Remember that.”
He looked at her face in the dark for a long count. Then his arm came around her and drew her back against him, and she went and settled against his chest, and felt his heartbeat under her ear.