Chapter 12 #2
Leopold’s gaze lingered on her a little longer than usual. “The garden needs replanting in the west bed.”
Honora frowned. “Does it?”
“It may.”
“I hear the east border is struggling too.”
“That too.”
Honora’s eyes returned to him. “You are discussing the grounds as if the matter concerns the child.”
“It does.”
She was quiet for a moment and then said, “You do know she cannot answer you.”
Leopold glanced down at Cecily. “That has not stopped her from having opinions.”
Honora let out a breath that might almost have been a laugh.
The sound changed the air in the room. Leopold noticed it too. She saw that much in the glance he gave her.
Cecily chose that moment to lose her balance again.
Leopold caught her before she could fall, one hand firm under her chest and the other steadying her hip. The baby gave a delighted sound, entirely unalarmed by the experience, and immediately began patting his sleeve.
Honora watched the ease of the rescue and the ease in the way he resumed talking as though nothing had happened.
He was not careless, not with the baby, not with her.
That was what troubled her.
A careless man would have made leaving easier.
Yet a good man was more difficult.
Much more difficult.
She looked at Leopold holding her sister’s baby on a Tuesday morning as though it were the most natural thing in the world and felt the shape of her own plan begin to loosen around the edges.
Northumberland.
Her aunt.
The bag under her bed, and the journey she had imagined as though it were inevitable.
And now this.
Cecily reaching for Leopold without fear.
Leopold listening, Leopold catching her when she fell.
Honora pressed her hands lightly together and looked away before her face gave her away.
She did not know when it had happened, exactly, but the question had shifted.
It was no longer only whether she could take Cecily away; it was whether she could justify it.
The thought sat in her like a stone.
She had been telling herself that leaving would be protection. That it would be simpler to take the baby to her aunt, to a smaller house, to a life that could be explained. Safer, perhaps. More private. Less full of rumors and dukes and impossible futures.
But standing there watching Leopold on the nursery floor, she could no longer say with confidence that Belgrave was worse than the alternative.
Not without lying.
And Honora was very tired of lies.
She glanced down at her hands and then back at Cecily.
What did she owe the child, her sister’s memory, or herself?
She did not know.
The morning passed on in ordinary pieces. Leopold stayed longer than he usually did. Cecily crawled across the rug with renewed enthusiasm. Honora fetched the cloths and the basin and helped with the baby’s breakfast.
No one said anything else about the garden beds, though Honora could not quite stop thinking about the way Leopold had spoken of them as if they were part of his ordinary life and not a topic for a nursery conversation.
When at last she left the room, she found she was carrying the thought with her.
Not peace, not certainty,
Only the very uncomfortable sense that her plan no longer felt as clean as it had before.
That night, after Cecily was asleep and the house had gone still, Honora sat at the small table in her room with a sheet of paper and a pen.
She had not written to Celestine since the accident.
That in itself was not quite true. She had written many times and kept the letters folded away. None had ever been read, of course. They had just become a way for Honora to talk about her most private feelings; to pretend as though her sister was simply a letter away.
This one came more slowly.
She began with the simplest truth.
Dear Celestine,
I am still here.
The words sat on the page like a confession.
She paused, then wrote on.
There is a duke here who sits on the floor with a baby who is not his and listens to her as though what she says matters. He does not speak to her as if she is an inconvenience. He speaks to her as though she is a person. I did not expect that.
Honora stopped and stared at the line for a moment. Then, she wrote again.
There is a woman in the kitchen named Martha who pours tea without asking and asks hard questions without pushing. She made me laugh this morning.
That made her stop once more.
Laugh.
The word looked strange and fragile on the paper.
She pressed her lips together and went on.
I told her I am not running from something, but running toward something I already lost. That, I think, is true, though I do not know what to do with it.
She hesitated over the next line and then wrote it anyway.
I came here to take Cecily.
The pen paused in her hand. She looked at the words and felt the truth of them like a weight.
Then she finished the sentence.
And now I am no longer sure that is the right thing to do.
Honora sat still after that, listening to the quiet of the room and the small, steady sounds of the house beyond it.
She folded the letter carefully.
Then she took the little strip of paper and tucked it into the lining of her bag with the others.
For a long moment, she remained seated there, one hand resting on the bag, the other still warm from the pen.
She had no idea whether she meant it as a confession or a promise.
Only that it was true.