Chapter 21
She had not planned to go to the library.
She had come downstairs for a glass of water, which was true, and had taken a wrong turn somewhere between the kitchen and the stairs, which was less true, and had found herself outside the library door with the line of light underneath it that meant someone was in there and that she already knew who.
She stood there for a moment before she opened the door.
Harper was at the desk. He looked up when she came in, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
It was the only excuse she could think of at the moment.
“Sit down,” he said.
She sat, not in the chair across from the desk where she usually sat when he had summoned her for something practical, but in the armchair by the fire, which was further away and more comfortable.
It felt a bit too dangerous to be any closer than that to him tonight.
“I am glad you are here,” Harper sighed, “though it is a late hour. I owe you an apology.”
She looked at him then.
“This afternoon,” he said. “In the park. The way I handled it was not measured. I was not subtle and that lack of subtlety has consequences for you in terms of how the afternoon will be interpreted by anyone who witnessed it.”
She looked at him for a moment.
“Are you apologizing for defending me,” she said, “or for how you defended me?”
“For how,” he said. “Not for the thing itself.”
She absorbed this, wondering still what must have been going through his head at the time.
“People were watching, you know,” she said. “I would not be surprised if I hear whispers about this.”
“I know.”
“That is not like you,” she said. “You are always careful about being watched, as you are about everything.”
“I know,” he said again. The way he said it told her more than a longer answer would have.
She looked at the fire, which had burned down to something low and steady. “I don’t know whether to accept it,” she said. “The apology.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what you are actually apologizing for,” she said. “You say it is for the manner and not the thing itself but the manner is the part that…. you keep confusing me.”
He looked at her. “I know,” he said.
“You tell me to marry and then you send away every man who approaches me. It as though you want to help and then you make it harder. You say one thing and you do another and I cannot…. I cannot find a consistent position with you, and…. I find that very difficult.
“I know,” he said, for the third time.
“Oh but why do you keep saying that? It only makes me more confused.”
“My reaction was disproportionate,” he sighed. “But I did not want anyone to speak harshly in front of you. You can excuse that, surely.”
“But…” she twisted her fingers in her lap, “you… well…”
She wanted to ask him why it bothered him so much, if there was ever a chance that he might share her feelings. But it felt too terrifying to do that.
“I accept the apology,” she said finally. “For what it is.”
She should have gone to bed after the apology. She had accepted it and said what she needed to say. Now, she had every reason to stand up and say goodnight. Instead, she stayed in the armchair and they sat together in silence again.
It was Harper who broke it.
“You don’t have to marry,” he said.
She looked at him.
“You and your mother can stay here at Wilmington, regardless of whether you marry. That is something I should have said at the beginning, perhaps but I am making myself clear now.”
The room was very quiet for a moment.
“Why are you saying that to me now?”
“Because of all the trouble that you are going through,” he said.
“Oh, right.”
Temperance felt silly for thinking that could be, for a second, something else or something deeper. Of course it was typical of him to only be thinking of practical reasons.
“It’s really no trouble at all, really,” she said with a little more force than she expected to put in.
He was quiet for a moment.
“But you should not have to choose between an unwanted marriage and uncertainty,” he said. “This is your home and it should feel like your home. If I have not made it feel that way, I would like to correct that.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Something was moving in her chest that was warm and complicated.
“I cannot simply stay,” she said.
“Why not?”
Because it is hard for me to be around you and not fall deeper in love with you.
“I just do not think it wise to be left at your mercy,” she said, and said it plainly, without apology.
“You are a good man, I believe that now, but circumstances change. You might marry again, and your wife might have opinions about two women living in your estate indefinitely. Your goodwill is genuine right now but goodwill is not a legal document and it cannot protect me the way a marriage can.”
“You think I would change my mind?”
“I think that people do,” she said. “Not out of cruelty, just because life moves and arrangements that made sense at one point stop making sense at another, and I would have nothing to stand on except your current goodwill. I have spent too much of my life in exactly that position.”
Something seemed to snap inside of Harper at the words, and the warmth seemed to drain from his face.
“A marriage to a stranger offers you the same uncertainty,” he said, defensively, “You would be at someone else’s mercy, someone you have known for a handful of conversations, whose character you cannot fully know yet, whose circumstances can change just as mine can.
At least here you know the terms. You know me. ”
She looked at him.
“Wouldn’t you rather,” he said, seemingly composing himself, “Wouldn’t you rather count on my generosity than on the goodwill of a man you barely know?”
Generosity.
The reaction that she had to that word was almost visceral. All of a sudden, she felt as though she was back in the nunnery. Every person who had ever described her situation as something they were graciously providing rather than something she was owed.
She looked at Harper and she knew he had not meant it the way it had landed but it did not change anything.
“I do not think that I require your generosity,” she said in an impassive voice. “And we needn’t speak about this anymore. There is something far more important that I need to discuss with you, I would like to arrange a ball.”
Harper looked at her. The shift in her had been visible, but she did not bother offering him any sort of explanation for it.
“Here at Wilmington,” she said, in a steady voice. The last thing that she wished to do was to show him show she truly felt, “One final event, at the end of the season. I have a suitor in mind and I need one more occasion to establish things properly.”
“It seems like a bit of a hasty decision,” he said, and there was a strange flicker of emotion in his eyes, “who is the suitor?”
“Elias Talbot,” she said. “He is good and kind and the arrangement would be a sensible one. I just need one more opportunity to make it formal. Whatever you have spent on the season, on the dresses and the introductions and everything else, I will pay you back after I am married. Every penny, I want that clear between us.”
The library was very quiet, and Harper was looking at her with a confused expression.
“Are you being serious?”
“There is no reason for me to joke to you,” Temperance said, as though she was trying to establish some distance between the two of them. “Truly, I have no reason so you should assume that I am being serious at all times.”
He stood up and crossed the room towards her so that the distance between them was now small. She felt her heart beat speed up.
“You are not going to pay me back,” he said. His voice was very quiet.
“I am,” she said. “It is the right thing to do, and you should do know this, as you care very deeply about the principle of things.”
“Temperance,” he wanted.
“I will not leave it outstanding,” she said. “I will not be in your debt, and you do not need to be generous to me.”
His face flickered with realization.
“So that is what you’re upset about?”
“You shouldn’t assume that I am upset about anything,” she huffed. “That would be rather presumptuous on your part.”
“That is not what I meant,” he said, shaking his head, “When I said generosity, that is not what I meant and you know that.”
“But you said it anyway. Besides, it does not matter what you meant,” she said. “We need not focus on the semantics of the matter, but it matters what it is.”
“And what is it?” he said.
She looked at him for one long moment, and thought about Alethea saying it is not one sided and about Charity saying that was possessive and about the park and the library and the dress the color of her eyes and all of it, all of it, accumulating into something she did not have the luxury of acting on.
“It is my life,” she said. “And I would like to manage it myself.”
She stood up, and without thinking, she put some distance between them.
“Temperance, we not yet done speaking..”
“Oh, but I am done here,” she replied. “I shall see you later, Your Grace.”
When she returned to her chambers, the house was dark and quiet around her, and she did not sleep for a very long time.
What is happening to me?
“What is happening to you?”
“I cannot come and visit a friend?” Harper raised his eyebrow at his friend, Edmund, whom he had given the trouble of visiting at an hour close to midnight. They had met at the nearby Club, and decided to share a few drinks.
“You can, but it is not usual behavior for you,” Edmund grinned. “So I can only suspect that there is something going on that I am not privy to, but I would very much like to be.”
Harper rolled his eyes. He knew that his friend was not one to fish around for gossip, and therefore knew that it was not something that he should take offence at.
“She’s an odd one,” Edmund said after a moment.
Harper looked up from his glass. “I beg your pardon?”
“Miss Hosmer.” Edmund leaned back in his chair. “She looms rather large, and I suspect she is the reason that you are here.”
The club was quiet at this hour, most of the other members having gone home to their wives and their beds and their sensible evening routines.
“Oh, you’re assuming things,” Harper grumbled, but at this point, it almost seemed like he was lying to himself.
Which was one of the things that he had told himself never to do. There was no worse sin than a man who cannot tell himself the truth.
“I have known you for eighteen years, Harper. I have seen you navigate your estate, your title, a difficult marriage, and any number of situations that would have undone a lesser man, and I have never once seen you sit in this club at this hour drinking about any of it,” he paused, and shot him a look. “So.”
“I am not drinking about anyone,” Harper said. “I am having a glass of brandy.”
“You have kept the same hours since you were twenty-two years old and you have never once deviated from them without cause. So I will ask again, she looms rather large, does she not?”
Harper said nothing, and took a sip out of his glass.
“Has she always had this effect on you?” Edmund asked. “Or is it a recent development?”
“She does not have an effect on me,” Harper said. “She is a responsibility as the estate came with her and her mother. I have an obligation to see them settled, and that is the extent of my involvement.”
“Right,” Edmund looked at him. “You expect me to believe that.”
“She is a puzzle,” Harper said, after a moment, which he had not intended to say but perhaps the drink had loosened up his inhibitions. “That is all. She is an unusual person and I have not yet fully understood her and I find that…”
“You find that what?”
“Occupying,” Harper said.
Edmund considered this for a moment.
“You have had responsibilities before,” he said. “But you’ve never been this occupied about any of them.”
Once again, he did not answer. But Edmund took it as an opportunity to go on.
“You have not been affected by a woman like this,” Edmund said, “Not in all the years I have known you.”
“It is not like that.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” Harper said, but it came out as a hesitation.
“Harper,” Edmund said.
“Mmm.”
“You have never been properly in love before,” Edmund said, “I think perhaps it has finally knocked on your door.”
Harper looked at him then he let out a short laugh, “You are being ridiculous,” he said.
“Am I.”
“Completely,” Harper said. “You are reading a great deal into a glass of brandy and a late evening.”
“I am reading a great deal into eighteen years of knowing you,” Edmund said, “and the fact that you have said her name four times in the last twenty minutes without appearing to notice.”
Harper said nothing..
“Meditate on it,” Edmund said pleasantly. “We can talk about it at a later time.”
“Goodnight, Edmund,” Harper said.
Edmund left.
Now alone with his thoughts, Harper could only wonder. What was it about her that captured his attention so conveniently? He felt different towards her than he did with the other people in his life.
And it was beginning to bother him more, and more.
“It’s not love,” he told himself as he got up from his seat, “I have no capacity for such a thing.”