Chapter 20 #2
“It really is extraordinary,” Seraphina said, looking out at the expanse in front of them.
The edge of the hill, a steep rocky drop, came into view.
“I had forgotten how much sky there is here. London makes you forget that sky exists at all, don’t you think?
Unless you go out of your way to see it.
But who would bother when there is so much to do in town? Do you miss it as much as I do, town?”
“Not particularly,” Aurelia replied. She had come to like Norfolk, the pace of the country life. “But it takes some adjusting to.”
“Have you adjusted?”
“Mostly, I think.”
Seraphina looked at her with something that was warm, possibly genuine. “You seem like you have. You seem very at home here.”
They had reached the highest point of the southern grounds, where the Roman wall ended completely and the land dropped away, the fields below laid out in long flat lines, the first crops pushing through the tilled earth.
The brothers had stopped under a thick elm tree a little way back.
Frederick said something and Evander laughed, and Frederick looked pleased with himself.
The sun made Evander’s hair look bright again.
Her heart panged involuntarily at the sight of him, his beauty, her husband.
“Look at them,” Seraphina murmured. “I forget sometimes that they are capable of being so normal with each other. Frederick spoke about the Duke of Sandacre all the time when we were travelling, you know. He really does think the world of him. I suspect there is nothing on earth so important to Frederick as the approval of his brother… That tends to be the case for many people.”
“What do you mean?” Aurelia asked, detaching herself just enough to look Seraphina in the face.
“Surely you’ve noticed? How people arrange themselves around Evander like he’s the sun and we’re all just orbiting him?
He’s quiet. You wouldn’t think he had so much magnetism when you first meet him, not owing to anything except his title.
But his pull is…” She stopped, smiled nervously.
“Suffice to say, it’s no wonder you seem to be obsessed with him.
As you should be, of course, as his wife. ”
Aurelia watched Evander's face in the easy moment, the laugh still in it, Frederick gesturing about something with his hands. She thought about what Frederick had said in the garden, and about that pull. She thought she had been the only one to notice. But maybe she wasn’t so special. Maybe they weren’t.
“I interrupted something earlier,” Seraphina said, her voice lilting.
Aurelia looked at her.
“When Frederick and I came down the grounds to you.” Seraphina's eyes were on the view.
Her voice was light and conversational. Her dark lashes caught the light and turned silver.
“I could see from the window. I told Frederick we should give it a few minutes actually. But he was already out the door.” A small pause.
“I'm sorry about that. It looked like it might have been a kiss in the making.”
Aurelia felt suddenly too large for her own body.
How could Seraphina tell a kiss was brewing when she hadn’t even been able to read him at all in that moment?
She shouldn’t have been embarrassed if that was the case.
It was natural for a man and a wife to kiss. Just not natural for them, it seemed.
“Actually,” Seraphina continued, “it reminded me of something. Just a moment long ago… Made me feel like a girl again. I suppose that’s how I knew.
At a house party here at Carrstone, two summers ago...
I told you about it, didn’t I?” She turned her head slightly.
“Do you know, he looked at me exactly that way too. Just before…” She stopped as though catching herself, as though she hadn't meant to say it.
“Just before what?” Aurelia asked.
Seraphina looked at her. Her smile was small, and she laughed prettily.
“I should not have said anything. Forgive me, Your Grace.
It was a long time ago and it meant nothing.
He will tell you so himself, I'm sure, if you ask.” She looked back at the brothers.
“Frederick,” she called, “come and look at this properly.
You can't see it from there. I want to see this with you.”
Frederick detached himself from the tree with good-natured compliance. Evander followed slowly, a tall mass in the distance Aurelia couldn’t bear to look at.
The four of them stood at the edge of the hill looking out at the view, and Seraphina pointed at something on the horizon and commented on the fields. Frederick agreed with whatever she had said.
It was a perfectly pleasant moment. But Aurelia stood there and just felt sick.
Just before... Before what, exactly? Before Evander had kissed Seraphina? That was what the pause had been rather than an accident or a slip. A purposeful ellipses, a door opened just wide enough for Aurelia to see what was behind. And Seraphina had opened it on purpose.
Evander was standing beside Aurelia, but not with her, in the way Seraphina and Frederick were standing spiritually entwined. She could feel the warmth of him. He said something to Frederick about taking a boat out on a nice day. She heard his voice without taking in the words.
She thought: he has never even alluded to it, not in any of the conversations they had managed to have in the last weeks.
So maybe it was nothing. Maybe Seraphina had constructed a moment from memory that was wrong, or she was just lying to be cruel.
Maybe the pause was exactly what she intended, just a moment to take in a breath of air, and there was nothing real behind it – and Aurelia was doing the work of single-handedly driving herself mad.
Then she looked at Evander's profile and her heart dropped.
He was looking at the view. His jaw was set, a mark of impatience in him, of the desire to leave.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
She looked back at him, and she thought she could not ask him about it there, not with them standing three feet away.
The skin on the high point of her cheeks prickled feverishly.
She thought momentarily about throwing herself off the cliff and seeing what would happen.
Instead, she turned back to the horizon.
The light was shifting over the fields, the long afternoon shadows beginning to carve their way over the earth, the sky turning a pale gold and lavender as the clouds moved.
It was a beautiful view. She had thought so the first time she found the end of this wall, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and she thought so now despite everything else.
But there was still that coalition of words – just before – sitting in her chest like a stone she wanted to mine out with her bare hands.