Chapter 23
Harper had not slept.
He had gone to bed at eleven and lain there for an hour and then got up and gone to the study and sat there until three, and then gone back to bed, and the result was that he was standing at his mirror at six in the morning looking at someone he did not entirely recognize.
There was grey at his jaw that he had not addressed in two days and shadows under his eyes. He looked, in short, like a man who had been losing an argument with himself for several days running and had not yet found a way to win it.
But he had no time to think about that right now.
So, he put on his coat and went downstairs.
The house was already moving around him, the staff preparing for the evening, flowers being arranged and furniture shifted. He walked through it and went to his study. There was a stack of papers on it, but he did not bother reading them.
No, something else was occupying his mind entirely.
The ball was tonight.
He had known this, of course. But something about the day having arrived irked him to no end.
Tonight Elias Talbot was going to ask her to marry him.
He picked up his pen, and made an annoyed scribble on the paper.
He had work to do. There was always work to do, as he looked at the papers and thought about drainage reports and estate accounts and the correspondence that had been sitting unanswered for three days. But none of it was sufficient for anything this morning.
Harrow appeared at the study door at half past nine.
“The preparations are coming along well, Your Grace,” he said. “The flowers have been arranged in the entrance hall and the drawing room. Cook has everything in hand for the supper. We will be ready by seven.”
“Good,” Harper said, without looking up from the papers he was not reading.
“There is one other thing,” Harrow said. “A delivery arrived this morning. Flowers, addressed to Miss Hosmer from Mr. Talbot. I have had them put in the entrance hall with the others.”
Harper looked up, unable to hide the annoyed expression on his face.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Oh, I just thought… well, it is good bring such things to your attention. Shall I move them somewhere else?” Harrow asked.
“No,” Harper said. “Leave them.”
Harrow nodded and went out.
Talbot had sent her flowers, Harper thought. Nothing original about it, and a woman like Temperance would tire from such a cliche gesture.
He picked up his pen and was not aware of how hard he was holding it until it snapped, cleanly, in two.
Harper had been in the study for two hours when he heard two of the maids in the corridor outside.
“She’s been up since six,” one of them said. “Had the flowers sorted before any of us had finished breakfast.”
“She always knows what she’s doing,” the other said. “You can tell she loves this house.”
There was a brief pause at the sound of something being carried past.
“Do you think he’ll ask her tonight?”
“Mr. Talbot? I think that’s rather the point of the evening, isn’t it. She deserves a good one after everything.”
“She really does. Did you see the dress?”
“The green one? I helped Mary with it this morning.”
“Isn’t it something.”
“I’ve never seen anything fit like that. Like it was made for her specifically. And the color….” there was a short, appreciative sound. “Whoever chose it has very good taste.”
“She looked beautiful,” the first said, simply. “Really beautiful.”
Their voices moved away down the corridor and faded.
Harper stood at his desk, and found himself in a new kind of hell.
The dress. Of course he remembered it, as he had been the one to buy it.
But tonight she was going to wear it for Elias Talbot.
Something burned inside of him, even though he should be happy that she has finally found a match.
But instead, all he could feel was poorly concealed jealousy.
It was late evening when his son came in the room.
“Come in,” Harper said.
Joseph opened the door and looked at his father.
“Shouldn't you be at your lessons?”
“I am done with them,” Joseph shrugged and took a good look at his father. “You look terrible,” he said.
Ah.
The two Hosmer women had taught his son to be a lot more candid than what he was used to. Joseph looked at the desk, at the untouched papers and the pen lying beside them.
“Did you sleep?”
“Some,” Harper said, which was technically true.
“Are you looking forward to tonight?” Joseph asked.
Harper looked at his son.
“It is not a question of looking forward to it, it needs to happen. So I am hoping to get done with it as soon as I can. But you should be in bed before the guests arrive. I don’t want you downstairs.”
“Why?” Joseph looked back at him.
“Because it is an adult occasion and you are ten years old.”
Joseph received this with the composure he received most things, and said, “All right,” and did not push it, which meant he was either accepting it or saving it. Harper suspected the latter.
“Is there something you needed?” Harper asked.
Joseph stood up. He went to the door and then stopped, and turned back, and Harper watched him conduct another internal deliberation, longer this time.
“I will be back in a moment,” Joseph said, and went out.
Harper looked at the papers.
He heard Joseph’s footsteps go down the corridor and up the stairs and come back down again three minutes later, and the door opened and Joseph came in holding Soot, who was draped across his arms.
“Joseph,” Harper warned.
“She was on the landing,” Joseph said, which was not an explanation for why he had brought her to the study. He sat back down in the chair with the cat in his arms and looked at his father. “She wants you to hold her.”
“Oh, not this again. She does not want anything in particular, for god’s sake. It is only a cat.”
“She does,” Joseph corrected, “She always goes to you when something is wrong.”
Harper looked at his son.
“She goes to people when something is wrong. I have noticed this about her.”
Joseph stood up and brought the cat to the desk and held her out, and Harper took her, because the alternative was a conversation he was not prepared to have. Immediately, Soot settled against his chest.
“What is the point of all of this?” He put his hand on her back.
“You are giving her love,” Joseph shrugged. “And she is giving it back, that is rather the point, is it not?”
Harper sighed.
“Did Albina teach you how to talk like that?”
“She might have rubbed off on me,” he laughed and sat back down, looking at his father holding the cat. “I want you to be happy.”
Harper looked at his son, surprised by this sudden shift.
“I know that is not a very useful thing to say, and it doesn’t solve anything. But I wanted to say it.” He paused. “You have been sad for days and I don’t like it.”
“I am not sad,” Harper scoffed.
Joseph looked at his father as if he did not believe a single word that was coming out of his mouth, but did not argue further.
Instead, Harper thought about what the house had been before they came.
Quiet and ordered and exactly as he had arranged it, everything in its correct place, everything running according to the standards he had set and the routines he had established.
He had arrived at Wilmington expecting something similar and found instead a household that ran on entirely different principles, chaotic and warm, and his son, who had spent the last several months slowly becoming someone Harper had not anticipated.
“She makes you laugh, you know,” Joseph said, “You don’t laugh very much usually. But sometimes, with her, you do.”
“Joseph,” Harper said. “I want you in bed before the guests arrive, I mean it. Enough of talking.”
He went out and closed the door. Harper sat alone in the study with the cat and the unanswered papers, thinking about what his son had said.
She makes you laugh.
He thought about Joseph’s face when he laughed. The way it transformed him, the composure entirely gone, just a boy being delighted by something, just a child who had found someone who made the world feel lighter.
What it would mean to take that away? To go back to Sedgewick and the quiet rooms and the ordered routines and the life that worked and asked nothing unexpected of anyone.
I want you to be happy.
If he married Temperance, he thought. Just that, just the thought of it, arriving before he could stop it.
Joseph would not mind.
Not much later, Albina knocked once and came in.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you. I just wanted to come in and check up on you. How are you feeling about tonight?”
“Fine,” Harper said.
Albina looked at the desk. The papers in the same position they had been in that morning, the broken pen on the edge of it.
“The flowers look wonderful, I think. Mrs. Peel has done a remarkable job with the dining room.”
“I am sure she has,” Harper said.
“Temperance approved everything this morning,” Albina said. “She was up very early. She has been managing the whole thing herself, really and is very good at it. You have noticed that about her, I imagine.”
“She is capable.”
“She is,” Albina agreed. “Among other things.” She looked at him. “Elias Talbot sent flowers this morning as well. Did you know that?”
“I heard.”
“They are very nice flowers. Though not as nice as the green dress, I think.” She tilted her head slightly, as if she were trying to make a point. “Did you know she is wearing it tonight?”
Harper avoided the question and Albina noticed him looking at the window.
“You are jealous,” she said, without any particular drama.
“What are you even talking about?”
“You have been in this study all day,” she said. “With a broken pen and untouched papers, and you just looked at the window when I mentioned the dress.” She paused. “I am very good at reading people and have had a great deal of practice.”
Harper said nothing.
“You are running from something,” Albina said. “So is she. The two of you have been running from the same thing for weeks.”
“She arranged this ball herself,” Harper said, irked. “She invited him specifically.”
“She did,” Albina said. “Because she is frightened, not because she doesn’t feel anything.”
She stood up to leave then.
“I want you to think about what tonight is going to look like. Elias Talbot asking my daughter to marry him, and you watching it happen, and then going back to Sedgewick and spending the rest of your life thinking about a ball in April when you sat in your study all day and did nothing.”
“What would you have me do?” Harper said.
“Get dressed,” Albina said. “The rest is up to you.”
She went out and left the door open behind her, and Harper sat at his desk and looked at the empty doorway.
It was time to get dressed for the ball.