Chapter 13 #3
“Of course, you do,” Rosdale teased, laughing. “He’s for ever been a maudlin and dramatic creature, though he does his best to hide it.”
Lydia looked at him. Then she looked at Aurelia. Then she picked up her coat from where she had left it on the bannister. “Right,” she called.“We're off, then. Before it rains, and before the Earl of Rosdale can put his foot in his mouth.”
Violet made a happy sound as she moved over to kiss Aurelia goodbye. She stroked Evander’s arm and whispered something to him. Rosdale inclined his head at them both before being half-led and half-dragged out of the house by Lydia. And then they were gone.
“You should go and lie down,” Evander said after a moment.
“I will… I just needed a moment to gather the courage to walk upstairs.” She looked up, stretching her arms to hide her discomfort. “Go for your walk. I don't need looking after. I’ll be alright on my own.”
“I know you don't need me... You’ve made that more-than obvious in our short acquaintance.”
He got his coat and left before she could ask him what he meant. But she wanted to know desperately, the megrim be damned.
The woods at the back of the estate were thick and wild.
The trees were old enough that the canopy closed overhead and muffled incoming sounds.
It was quiet and damp, the wind muffled by the interwebbing branches.
The earth was soft from the last rain, and his boots sunk into the mossy ground.
He knew the paths without thinking about them, moving automatically between the brush.
He was perhaps half an hour into the woods, on the path that curved north toward the mill stream, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, his coat hanging over his arm, expecting the groundskeeper to appear.
Aurelia was fifteen feet back on the forest path. She was wearing her coat, her walking boots and the same bonnet from that morning. He could barely read her expression from the distance between them, but her appearance left him dumbstruck.
“Your megrim,” he said, foolishly.
“It is manageable for now.” She caught him slightly out of breath, keeping her head low as she navigated the uneven forest floor. The woods made the moment feel more intimate than it was. She looked smaller here, and he reached out to help her over the roots between them.
He blinked as she said, “I thought we should talk now that we’re alone. I wanted to talk to you before, but there was so much happening.”
Nodding, he invited her to follow him. They went a short way in silence, the stream audible somewhere to the left. A wood pigeon cooed somewhere above. If Aurelia wanted to talk to him, she could, especially given the earlier warnings from her Aunt Violet about her nature.
“I'm sorry for last night,” she began, “for saying what little I did, and for being cold with you. Especially after everything, it was undeserved. I felt rotten when I got into bed last night, and quite like a child for the way I acted.”
“Is that really something worth apologising for?” he asked. “You don't have to apologise for choosing to sleep in your rooms, Aurelia.”
“I know I don't have to.” She looked at the path and made them stop. “It occurred to me after last night that I have been managing this marriage by keeping you at a distance. And I don’t think it’s working. We’re too old to be so unsure of ourselves, I think.”
He looked at her sideways. “Unsure of what?”
She opened her mouth. And then she closed it and looked at the trees above. A bough moved overhead in a gust of wind. The pigeon must have relocated, because he couldn’t hear it anymore. Just her, breathing.
“I'm still working out how to say it,” she said. “You are very annoying to apologise to, do you know that? You are too understanding about everything. It’s been this way ever since the wedding.”
“The first or the second?”
“The second.”
“I can be less understanding if that would help.”
“Possibly.” She almost smiled. “Just… give me a moment to phrase this in the least awkward way possible, will you?”
He laughed under his breath and nodded, readjusting his coat.
The fact that she was there and wanted to talk made him feel lighter than he had in days.
It shouldn’t have mattered to him. Their marriage was what they had agreed it would be and he had a thousand other things to think about regardless.
But she was, he thought now, the primary object of his thoughts and had been for some time. So she was likely right that they had to stop pretending otherwise.
The path curved and they followed it, and the sky – which turned a dark slate grey as Aurelia had predicted all morning – finally made good on its promise.
The rain came down hard.
Within thirty seconds the path was dark, and the branches above them shook with the force of the wind. Aurelia stiffened beside him and looked around for cover. There was nowhere close to hide, and they were quickly becoming drenched.
“There is a place down there,” he cried over the rain, pointing vaguely. She turned the wrong way, so he sighed and took her elbow, and they ran together through the storm to seek shelter wherever they could.
The building was a third of a mile east through a gap in the woods.
Aurelia squinted through the rain while Evander led her toward it.
The barn had white-washed stone walls and a timber roof.
Evander said it had been empty since February, as he pulled the door open.
At least that’s what she thought she heard through the pounding in her ears.
They went through and he yanked the door shut behind them. They stood for a moment listening to the rain beat the roof. It was leaking somewhere, the water tapping against the floor.
Aurelia pushed her hat back from her face and held it.
Her hair was soaked, her coat dark across the shoulders.
She looked around the room: a bare, cracked flagstone floor, empty shelving, some upturned crates.
Evander waited by the door. His dark hair curled and dripped water into his eyes.
His lips were wet with rain. A drop hung off the end of his nose until he wiped it away.
It made her heart clench to see him like this, so undone.
He moved to inspect the barn, clapping at some leftover bags to scare vermin out of hiding. But it was just them, thankfully.
“At least it’s dry,” she said nervously, and he agreed.
She pulled off her gloves and moved to the crate to sit on it. He sat on the stone edge of the shelf opposite. The rain continued outside. Light slipped through the dusty windows and the crack in the door, but otherwise it was dark. She wished for a fire, her teeth chattering.
Evander was silent. Maybe he was still giving her time to think about what she wanted to say.
She felt bad about the night before, that much had been true.
She had been cold with him but not on purpose.
And she didn’t know how to address the tension between them without making it bigger than it was.
Just when she had finally decided how to begin, he reached into his coat pocket and extracted a book. He looked at it, pleased it wasn’t ruined, then offered it to her by leaning over the space between them.
It was a small volume of poetry from an author she didn’t recognise. She laughed in surprise as she turned the clothbound cover over.
“Of all the things I would have thought you carried in your pockets during a walk…” She took in a shaky breath, keeping the book off her wet skirts. “Why do you have this?”
“For reading, usually.”
“In the woods, all alone?”
He shrugged. “It was a long walk. I thought I might get bored.”
“That seems plausible enough,” she said. “Books are apparently a salve to every social situation – even being caught in a barn during a downpour.”
“This is a grain store, not a barn.”
“Yes, well, you would know the difference.”
“Farmer duke?”
“Yes.” She looked around. “What’s the difference?”
“Barns have haylofts.”
“Ah. Then thank you for clarifying.” She took the book and looked at the cover. “You didn’t have to go walking in the rain alone just to get away from me.”