Chapter 9
Nine
It was a few days later, and Aurelia had been awake since midnight. Her back ached. Her thighs ached. Everything south of her waist had formed a collective opinion about the past three days of riding that was strongly unfavourable. None of the baths were helping. And this wasn’t conducive to sleep.
But she liked her rides in the morning with Evander so much, she thought, that she didn’t want to alert him to the toll they were taking on her body.
At least it meant she was eating more. She was always hungry at Carrstone for some reason.
Her stomach rumbled in protest at that moment, and she placed a hand over it and sighed.
“Will you shut up,” she told it quietly.
It was impossible to sleep while she was this sore and this hungry.
Her legs were getting restless. It was too dark to write letters – she would keep working on the letter to Aunt Violet in the morning.
Finding a wool shawl and slipping into her house shoes, she left the room in search of the library.
The library was down a storey and to the left. She had confirmed this twice now and was reasonably confident. She took her candle and went down the corridor in her night clothes, which was fine, she assured herself, because no one was awake and this technically was her house.
But to her surprise, the library door was open when she arrived.
Light came through it. She stopped. Then she went in, because turning around felt too much like retreating – and if her husband chose to read at half past two in the morning then that was his business and she could take a book without it being remarkable.
Evander was in the chair by the east window. He had a lamp at his elbow, his book open, his legs extended toward the low fire. He was in his shirtsleeves again. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway, a little startled, leaning forward abruptly.
“I’m so sorry. I couldn't sleep,” she whispered.
“Neither could I.” He was already standing, the way he always stood when she entered a room. He gestured to her nightclothes. “But at least you tried.”
Aurelia held back from rolling her eyes, mortified that he was seeing her like this.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Well… a book.”
He looked at the shelves, which contained by her estimate several hundred volumes. “What kind of book?”
“I don’t know… What do you usually read?”
“Do you expect it will put you to sleep?”
“Maybe.”
He considered this, and then he went to the far shelf, the lower section nearest the window, and came back with a volume and handed it to her. She looked at it. A Natural History of the Norfolk Coast, published two decades ago, with illustrations.
“It is very specific,” she said. “Not a very catchy title.”
“Not a very catchy book. But it will soon send you to sleep, learning the difference between a loon and a jaeger.”
“I feel a bit like a loon myself at the moment,” she said through a sigh. “But thank you.”
She was again very aware of her night chemise and her loose hair, and the fact that the shawl she had grabbed on the way out was one of her thinner ones and was doing an incomplete job of covering her bare shoulders.
He was, thank heavens, not looking at any of those things.
He was looking at her face, and this was somehow not better.
“I will sit over there,” she said, indicating the chair on the other side of the fire, separated from his by an appropriate distance. “And I promise I will be quiet.”
“Until you start snoring.”
“I do not snore.”
He tried and failed to hide a smile behind his hand. “What I heard on our carriage ride here begs to differ.”
Rolling her eyes now, she sat and opened her book. A loon apparently had a wingspan of up to five feet, which was alarming, and she read about this for several minutes before she looked over at Evander again. He was, not shockingly, much more interesting than the book.
“What do you think?” he said, noticing her. “About the book?”
“Erm…” She squinted down at the pages in her lap. “Well, I think you were right.” She turned a page. “And I also think I never want to come face-to-face with a loon. What are you reading?”
“The same thing I was reading on the coach.” He said it without looking up. “It’s not a very good distraction, by virtue of not being a very good book.”
She waited for him to continue. He did not. The fire crackled. She looked at the illustration of the loon again, which was a very regal-looking bird despite everything. And then she asked, “From what?”
Evander looked up now, and she thought for a moment he was not going to answer. Then he said, "Various things."
He poured brandy at some later point. She was not certain when it was, but a glass appeared on the small table beside her chair and he was back in his own chair with his book and his own glass, taking a sip.
She picked up the glass and smelled it, then she took a sip.
It warmed her thoroughly and she sighed.
“It is a very unladylike drink,” she said. “You must not tell anyone you gave it to me.”
He had closed his book and crossed one leg over the other, looking into the fire. “Your Aunt Violet made me swear I would sneak brandy to you in secret when I thought you needed one. She said you liked it, though she had tried for years to make you dislike it.”
“Aunt Violet talks too much.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “She said your father had a taste for it as well – joked it was an inheritance as well as that house in Perthshire.”
Aurelia started at the mention of her father. She took another fortifying sip, then set the glass down. “How much did Aunt Violet say about him?”
“A little. He told me how they died, and how young you were.”
She looked at the fire through the glass.
“You can tell me in your own words,” he said.
Did she want to? Not particularly. But he was her husband and would be her husband for ever, which meant she had to tell him at some point. And he might as well know now rather than later, before Aunt Violet kept talking and made her seem pathetic.
She seized her brandy before beginning, and it traced a hot path down her throat.
“You spoke of Perthshire… They were traveling so they could winter there. The plan was that we would all go. But I had fallen ill while we were in London, staying with Violet and her husband. Her husband was ill as well. So it was decided they would leave first and we would join them once we were healthy again. But on the road across the border, there was a collision between their coach and a stagecoach coming the other way.”
“I see,” he murmured.
She turned the glass in her hand. “I was seven, and I didn't understand it properly for several days. And then I did all at once… And there was hardly time to process because Violet’s husband died suddenly too from his fever.”
He said nothing.
“Aunt Violet… I can hardly remember that time, but I remember her not crying in front of me ever. She told me that I had to live with her, and that we would keep each other safe from everything from now on.” A small pause.
“She was right, mostly. She did keep me very safe for a very long time. I owe her everything. I think other widows would have succumbed to their grief. But not Violet.”
“A remarkable thing from her.”
“Yes, but who knows what it cost her in the end.” Aurelia considered this, and then decided she didn’t want to unearth any more that evening. She finished her brandy and put it down, and Evander placed the bottle beside her without asking.
“What were your parents like?” she asked, fixing the fire. “Frederick hardly ever spoke of them.”
He looked like he didn’t want to rehash the past either, but she had shared so much, he must have felt she was due something from him.
“My mother died when Frederick was twelve. She was… I’m not quite sure how to describe her.
A simple woman overall. Her mother was Russian but largely disconnected from her family.
” He turned his glass in his hand. “My father was… For the most part, he was exacting. He had high standards for himself and everyone else. He was not a cruel man. Just not a particularly warm one.”
“And you? Did you meet his standards?”
“For the most part. I fared better than Freddy.
But we never quite worked out how to live side-by-side.
I think he realised toward the end how economical he had been with his affection, especially after Mother died.
But he never apologised. Then he died when I was nineteen and we didn't get the chance to try again. But these things happen, and we move on.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “You were a child. It was up to him to fix things between you, and he should have been brave enough, or humble enough, to try. That’s how I think I would be with my children, anyway…”
He looked at her, and as if straining to hear her, he dragged his armchair closer. “Yes. I've thought about that,” he said. “But it's easier when someone else says it. I don’t like to dwell on those relationships. What’s the point?”
“Do you think…” She leaned forward slightly, closing her book and setting it aside. “Is that why Frederick is the way he is? The way he needs everyone to like him?”
“You should know, I despise speaking about this,” he said with some humour, eyeing the brandy. “But you have caught me at a disadvantage. Yes, perhaps. But I was there for him when he was small. Whether I did it right, I couldn't say. But I think he had every opportunity not to become selfish.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Is it?” Evander shook his head. “Look at what he did to you. Even if he talked about you the way people talk about someone they're afraid of disappointing – he still went ahead and did it, ran away, abandoned you without considering what would become of you.”
The fire had gone lower. There was only a foot between them now, and with the late hour and the fact that they were alone in their shirtsleeves and nightclothes with a nearly empty brandy bottle… She felt she had never been in a situation like this before.