Chapter 22 #2
When Cassie finally fell hard to sleep, Annabel checked her forehead and cheeks to find them almost cool to the touch.
Maybe her fever had broken, at least that.
She sighed with relief, even if she knew there would be no going home by breakfast. Surely, their fate was decided by now.
Either the Lackingtons had succeeded in their quest, or Billy had stopped them.
She wished he’d returned to tell her—was it good news or bad that he hadn’t?
But it was only a matter of time, either way.
Their life hinged on an untenable lie, and the truth was impossible to tell.
Annabel wasn’t tired; her mind went round and round. She looked for something to distract herself, then remembered the library downstairs.
The house was quiet, illuminated only by the slipping summer twilight outside.
She reached the smaller of the two library rooms first, finding a candle by the door.
Inside was a cozy sitting area around a hearth and floor-to-ceiling shelves and books.
With the candle, she began to peruse the collection and didn’t see D’Evercy walk in with a book in his hand. He was surprised to find her there.
“Pardon me, Miss Blake.”
Annabel turned, startled. “No, no. Pardon me. I was just looking for something to pass the time.”
“How is your sister?”
“Sleeping peacefully, finally. I think the worst is past. I’m very relieved.”
“I share your relief, of course.”
Annabel looked at her feet. She didn’t know what to say; everything seemed fraught with danger, saying too much, or too little. D’Evercy broke the brief, awkward silence.
“I do hope you’ve felt at ease here, at Ellesmere. I know it can be daunting.”
She watched the candlelight play on his features, showing the shadows of his genuine concern.
“It is daunting. But beautiful beyond any place I’ve ever been.”
“I’m quite fond of it myself. Been in the family for years.”
Annabel raised an eyebrow.
“Well, six hundred, give or take.”
She smiled, then shook her head. “I wouldn’t know how to begin to thank you, for your generosity, to all of us.”
“No thanks necessary. Anyway, it’s an awfully big place to rattle around on one’s own. Fanny’s right. I like it better with people here. I always have.”
“Are you an only child?”
D’Evercy hesitated, his voice softer. “I lost a sister when we were both quite small. And my father not long after.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t think my mother ever got over it, really. But she invested all the more in me, and in Ellesmere, both of us, I suppose, touched by her melancholy.”
“She’s in London, I heard Fanny say?”
“She stays there now, too ill to travel.” He looked at the fading fire in the hearth. “I have suspected that she sent me away on my Grand Tour in part to become accustomed to my being gone . . . or perhaps for me to become accustomed to her being gone.”
Annabel was touched by the tenderness in his voice. “And did it work, her clever plan?”
“Well, here I am, overseeing Ellesmere instead of overseeing her. So I suppose it did.”
“Still, I understand now, the rattling around alone here, the loneliness.”
“Loneliness,” he said. “I wouldn’t call it that.
But then, perhaps I am guilty of enjoying my solitude more than I ought to.
Honestly, I find London diverting for a few days, but it is the wildness here, the woodlands, the parts untouched by human hands, that most console me.
” He looked around the cozy library. “And this room, which is sometimes the only room I need, with a good fire and a good book.”
They were very close now, their breath intermingling, eyes glinting in the candlelight. An intimacy unlike anything Annabel had ever known.
“I’m guilty, too, of being more at home in own company than anyone else’s,” she said. “A room of my own and a good book will do me fine every time.”
He held out the book in his hand.
“Perhaps the poetry of Cowper? Not very original, I know—”
She took the book. “But one of my favorites.”
Annabel wouldn’t tell him how she’d come to Cowper.
He’d been her favorite author’s favorite poet; Austen read all of him, memorized most of him, inserted him into her writing, a line here, a reference there.
His themes were hers—homelessness, exile, the virtues of a simple life, the consolations of nature, of one’s inner being—finding one’s true home.
Henry recited from memory,
“Obscurest night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roared,
When such a destined wretch as I,
Washed headlong from on board—”
It was the one poem of Cowper’s she knew by heart. Amazed, Annabel finished the lines.
“—Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home forever left.”
The words hung between them, a silence of almost understanding.
“You love poetry,” she said.
“I find it a comfort.”
“As do I.”
He took one small step closer. “Then perhaps we’re not so ill met . . . Nor ill paired.”
Annabel’s heart was a drum, her ribs rose and fell.
She wanted to tell him everything, all the way from the beginning: where she’d come from, how she’d gotten here, how he’d turned her world around, made her want to stay—the invitation, the writing desk, a portal that closed, the lie that spun out of control.
She clutched the book to her chest and searched his blazing eyes.
But all she saw was his goodness, which she couldn’t bear to disappoint.
“Good night, Mr. D’Evercy,” she said abruptly, barely getting the words out. She swept past him but stopped at the door to leave the candle.
Confused by her swift departure, he turned to her. “I wanted to tell you. We’ve had a new foal today.”
Annabel nodded, her eyes backfilled with tears. “How wonderful.”
“I’ve named her Annabel.”
“Oh my.”
“A good, strong, honest name, I think.”
Annabel’s stomach sank. “If only I can live up to it.”