Chapter 30 #2
Eleanor was quiet for so long that Louisa turned to check whether she was still in the room.
She was. She sat in the desk chair, her half-eaten biscuit balanced on her knee, studying Louisa through narrowed eyes, the assessing stare she reserved for moments when she believed Louisa had said a profoundly stupid thing.
“Louisa Fairchild. For a woman who just demonstrated extraordinary courage, you are being remarkably dense.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A man who feels nothing does not punch a baronet in a corridor.” Eleanor held up one finger.
“He does not spend an entire Season teaching a woman to see herself clearly when the arrangement gains him nothing of the kind. He does not arrive late to every ball and search the room for one face before he greets the hostess.” A second finger rose.
“I watched him do that. Every single time. He walked through the door, and his eyes went straight to you. At Lady Acker’s.
At the Thornbury ball. At Lady Ashworth’s.
I was standing beside you, and I saw his face change when he found you in the crowd. ”
“That was performance. The arrangement required…”
“Whatever the arrangement required, no man is that good a liar. A man’s eyes do not lie.
” Eleanor set the biscuit on the table and leaned forward.
“I have been in every ballroom you have been in this Season. I have watched Frederick court you, and I have watched Oliver look at you. He looked at you as though you were the only fixed point in a building that was spinning.”
Louisa turned back to the window. She swallowed twice before she could speak.
“Then why did he leave?” Her voice came out smaller than she intended. “After the kiss. After Dacre. Why did he disappear?”
Eleanor paused. When she spoke again, it was soft. Gentle.
“I do not know him well enough to answer that with any certainty. But I know what I have seen.” She stood and crossed to the window.
“A man who does not care simply carries on. He attends the dinners. He dances. He smiles and shrugs and moves through the Season as he always has. Oliver did not carry on. He went from being beside you at every gathering to vanishing from your life entirely, and that kind of withdrawal does not belong to indifference, Louisa. It belongs to a man who cannot trust himself to be in the same room as you without saying what he actually feels.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I cannot prove it. But I know what I saw, and I am telling you that Oliver Sinclair was not performing at all. He cared. And I cannot help but believe he still does.” Eleanor held her gaze.
“Whatever is driving him out of London, it is not that he feels nothing for you. I would stake every biscuit in that basket on it.”
Louisa pressed her forehead against the glass. The cold seeped through her skin. Outside, the lamplighter had reached the far corner and was working his way back, his flame steady against the rain.
“He is leaving at first light,” she said hopelessly.
“Yes.”
“He will be gone by morning.”
She pulled back from the glass. A circle of fog remained where her breath had touched it, already fading at the edges.
“You must stop waiting for life to happen, Louisa,” Eleanor said softly. “You must make it happen. Whatever it is you want, you must fight for it.”
“I… want him,” Louisa admitted.
“Then go,” Eleanor encouraged. “His carriage leaves at dawn. Grosvenor Square. You know where Ashford House is.”
Louisa hesitated and Eleanor reached forward, taking her hands. “You can do this. You have walked across every room I have ever pushed you toward. This is the last one.”
Louisa looked down at Eleanor’s hands around hers, then at her own bare finger where the sapphire used to be.
“What if he will not listen?”
“Then you will have told the truth, and it will be yours regardless.”
“What if I am wrong? What if you are wrong, and he feels nothing, and I arrive on his doorstep at dawn making a complete fool of myself?”
“Then you will be a fool who told the truth, which is better than a coward who kept it.” Eleanor squeezed once, firmly, and released her. “Do not rehearse. Do not prepare a speech. Just go.”
Louisa stood at the window. The rain continued against the glass. The lamplighter’s flame moved along the street, small and stubborn against the grey.
She pressed her thumb against the pale band on her ring finger and let herself remember.
Oliver in the library at Ashford House, his fingers finding her jaw, the word slowly suspended between them before his mouth found hers.
She turned that image over, and beneath it found another: Oliver crouching beside a painting hung too low for anyone to notice, looking up at her, telling her that poor positioning did not diminish worth.
Eleanor was right. None of it belonged to a man who felt nothing. She lifted her chin.
“Eleanor.”
“Yes.”
“I will need the carriage before dawn. I… must find the right words.”
“Yes,” Eleanor agreed. “You will need the carriage, and the words… will come to you.”
She squeezed Louisa’s hands once more before leaving. The front door opened and closed, and the sound of rain swelled briefly before the house sealed itself shut again.
Louisa swallowed.
Tomorrow Oliver would be gone. He wanted to leave.
She would not let him.