Chapter 30
“Ibeg your pardon.” Evander’s hand caught the banister.
“No, I beg yours.” Mary gripped the newel post.
They had reached the staircase at the same time, from opposite ends of the corridor, and now they stood on the landing like two strangers who had collided on a public street.
Evander’s hand gripped the banister. Mary’s gripped the newel post. Between them, three feet of carpet and the memory of every word she had said in his bedroom two nights ago.
“After you,” Evander said.
“No, please. After you.”
“Mary.”
“Evander.”
They stood there. The clock on the landing ticked through five seconds that felt like five minutes.
Evander’s jaw worked, and Mary’s fingers tightened on the newel post, and neither of them moved until Harding appeared at the foot of the stairs with a tray, and both of them descended at once, nearly tripping over each other on the third step.
“Forgive me,” Evander said, catching her elbow.
“It is fine.” Mary pulled her arm free. The place where his fingers had been burned through her sleeve, and she clasped her hands together and walked past him into the morning room without looking back.
This was the third day.
This was the third day.
Five days had passed since Mary stood in Evander’s bedroom and told him she could not accept his offer. Three since Lord Langham sat in the parlor and heard the truth about his daughters, a confrontation that had ended in tears and a blessing, and left Mary grateful and exhausted.
The reconciliation with her father should have lightened the weight she carried.
Instead, it sharpened it. Charlotte had her family.
William had his bride. Even Lord Langham had found his way to an apology.
And Mary walked the corridors of Blackholm House, avoiding the one person whose apology she did not want and whose love she could not have.
The days had passed, all of which had the same distance, the same politeness.
The morning room was the first test.
Mary arrived early, expecting an empty table. Evander was already there, his coffee half-finished, the morning paper open. He looked up. She looked at him. The silence lasted four seconds.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning.” Evander folded the paper. “I was just leaving.”
“You have not finished your coffee.”
“I have had enough.”
He had not had enough. The cup was half-full and still steaming. Mary sat and poured her tea and listened to his footsteps retreat down the corridor, and the steam from his abandoned coffee curled into the air between his chair and hers.
The corridor outside the nursery was the second.
Mary rounded the corner with Tommy in her arms, and Evander emerged from the opposite end at the same moment. They stopped. Tommy blinked at his uncle. Evander’s eyes moved from the baby’s face to Mary’s, and the look lasted two heartbeats before the composure slid back into place.
“Excuse me,” he said. The formality of it stung.
“Of course.” Mary pressed herself against the wall. Evander passed. His sleeve brushed Tommy’s blanket, and the baby reached for him, fingers grasping, and Evander’s step faltered. He did not stop. Tommy’s hand closed on empty air.
Mary stared at the place where Evander had been and felt her throat tighten.
The library was the third.
She needed a book. Any book. Something to occupy her hands and her eyes during the long evenings when the nursery was quiet, and her room was too empty, and the only alternative was sitting in the parlor pretending she did not hear Evander’s pen scratching in his study across the hall.
She found the shelf and reached for the top row, stretching onto her toes. Her fingers grazed the spine but could not grip it.
A hand appeared above hers. Evander pulled the book down and held it out.
“Apologies.” His voice was careful, measured. “I heard you come in. I was only trying to help.”
“Thank you.” Mary took the book. Their fingers brushed against the leather. The contact lasted less than a second, and both of them pulled away.
“I had it,” she said.
“Of course.” Evander’s jaw tightened. “I should not have presumed.”
“You did not presume. It was kind.”
“It was instinct.”
They stood three feet apart in the library with a book between them, and the word “instinct” hung in the air, because both of them knew what it meant and neither of them could afford to say so.
“Goodnight, Mary.”
“Goodnight, Evander.”
She took the book to her room and did not read a single page.
Each encounter left her skin humming and her chest tight, and each time she retreated to her room or the nursery or Charlotte’s side, she pressed her hands against her face and told herself to stop.
Stop remembering his mouth on hers. Stop imagining his hands.
Stop replaying the softness of his kiss in the bedroom and the word he had whispered, the word that had undone everything because it was real and he could not admit it.
She pushed the thoughts away. They came back. She pushed harder. They came back louder.
By the third day, pushing had become exhausting.
The worst was the parlor. Mary had gone in to retrieve her embroidery, the disastrous rose she had been neglecting since Isabella’s visit, and Evander was standing at the window reading a letter. He turned when she entered, and their eyes met, and for two full seconds neither of them breathed.
“I was just leaving,” he said.
“I only came for my embroidery.”
“Of course.”
“It is on the settee.”
“I see it.”
Neither of them moved. The embroidery hoop sat on the settee between them like an artifact from a civilization that no longer existed.
Mary crossed the room and picked it up. Evander folded his letter and put it in his pocket.
Their paths crossed near the fireplace, and his shoulder brushed hers, and the contact lasted less than a second, and Mary felt it for the rest of the afternoon.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It is a narrow room,” she said.
It was not a narrow room. It was one of the largest rooms in the house. They both knew this. They said nothing further, and Mary left with her embroidery clutched against her chest, and the rose was still terrible, and her hands were still shaking.
“He kicked the blanket off again.”
Charlotte tucked the wool back around Tommy’s legs and shook her head. “Every time. I turn around for ten seconds, and the blanket is on the floor.”
“He hates anything above his chest,” Mary said. “I told you. He will tolerate it to the waist, but the moment it touches his ribs, he kicks.”
Charlotte laughed. Tommy lay on his back in the crib, eyes wide, legs pumping in the air with the focused determination of a baby training for an event no one had explained to him.
William sat in the rocking chair beside the window, a book open on his knee, watching Charlotte and Tommy with an expression that had not changed since the day he arrived: quiet, steady wonder.
“He looks bigger,” Charlotte said. “Even in the two days since I’ve been here. Is that possible?”
“Mrs. Bridwell says they change overnight at this age. One morning, you look at them, and something is different, and you cannot name what it is, but the baby you put to bed is not quite the same baby you lifted out in the morning.”
“That frightens me.” Charlotte rested her hand on Tommy’s stomach. “I have already missed so much. What if I keep missing things? What if he changes in ways I do not notice because I was not here for the beginning?”
Mary put her hand over Charlotte’s. “You will notice. You will learn from him the way I did, one day at a time. And whatever I miss, you will write to me about it. Every tooth. Every new sound. Every ridiculous thing he does with a cloth at bath time.”
Charlotte smiled, but the smile faltered at the edges. “And you will write to me in France.”
“Every week.”
“From London.”
“From London.”
The word settled between them. London. Where Mary would be. France. Where Tommy would be. The channel between them, narrow on a map and enormous in practice, and every letter Mary wrote would be a bridge across water she could not swim.
William closed his book and stood. “I will leave you two for a while. I promised Richard I would look at the lease agreement Evander drafted for the Paris apartment.” He kissed Charlotte’s temple and paused beside the crib.
His hand rested on Tommy’s head for a moment, gentle and proprietary, and then he left.
The nursery was quiet. Tommy kicked his blanket off again. Charlotte picked it up and folded it across his waist, exactly where Mary had taught her.
“Tell me about the wedding,” Mary said.
Charlotte’s face brightened. “We will marry in France, once we are settled. William wants a small church near the university. Just the two of us, and whoever we can convince to cross the Channel.” Charlotte squeezed Mary’s hand.
“A month, perhaps. Once we have a home. It will not be grand, Mary. But it will be ours.”
“He wants to get it right.”
“He wants it to be perfect. I told him that perfect is a myth and that I would marry him in a cow pasture if he asked me, and he said he would keep that as a fourth option.” Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “It will not be grand, Mary. But it will be ours.”
Mary smiled. The ache in her chest pressed against her ribs, quiet and persistent, and she held the smile because Charlotte deserved to talk about her wedding without watching her sister grieve.
“And your home in France?” Mary asked. “What are you imagining?”
“A small apartment. Near the university, so William can walk to his lectures. A room for Tommy with a window that faces the morning sun, because he likes the light. I saw that. He turns toward the window every morning.” Charlotte’s voice softened.
“A kitchen where I can learn to cook, because I cannot, and William cannot either, and between the two of us we will poison ourselves within the first week if I do not learn.”