Chapter 21 #2
The thought of defending her was not new.
He had defended her already, in small ways, the lie at the Hargraves’ ball, the subtle corrections when someone spoke ill of the Ainsworths in his hearing, the careful neutrality he had maintained in his mother’s presence.
But those had been gestures, impulses. They had cost him nothing.
What he was contemplating now would cost him a great deal.
His mother would not forgive it. Lady Beatrice Cavendish had made her position clear: the Ainsworths were a family in decline, and association with them was a liability.
To actively defend Sophia, to align himself with her against the tide of gossip and condemnation, would be seen as a betrayal.
His mother would not shout. She would not weep.
She would simply look at him with those cool, assessing eyes and pronounce herself disappointed, and the disappointment would be worse than any rage.
And then there was his reputation. The rake, the cynic, the man who cared for nothing and no one.
That reputation had protected him for years.
It had given him freedom, insulation, a kind of perverse respect.
If he threw it aside now, if he revealed himself as a man capable of loyalty, of conviction, of something that looked perilously close to love, he would be vulnerable in ways he had not been vulnerable since he was a boy.
The thought made his stomach tighten. But the alternative was worse.
Alistair returned to the desk and sat down.
He drew a sheet of paper from the drawer, uncapped the inkwell, and selected a pen.
The nib needed trimming, but he did not trim it.
He simply sat there, the pen in his hand, the blank paper before him, and let the shape of what he meant to do crystallise in his mind.
He could not expose himself as the Observer’s defender.
That would draw attention to her, and attention was the last thing she needed.
But he could do other things. He could use his connections, his influence, his money.
He could reach out to the publisher, offer anonymous support, create a shield of patronage that would make it harder for anyone to move against the essays without moving against him.
He could cultivate allies, plant counter-rumors, redirect suspicion.
He could be the silent partner she did not know she had.
It was not enough. It would never be enough. But it was something.
He began to write.
The letter was to Mr. Thomas Whitmore, the editor of the Brighton Chronicle and the man through whom the Observer’s essays reached the public.
Alistair had known Whitmore for years, had funded several of the paper’s more ambitious literary supplements, and the editor owed him favours he had never called in.
The letter was careful, couched in the language of artistic patronage, but its meaning was unmistakable: a new sponsorship opportunity had arisen.
An anonymous benefactor wished to support the continued publication of the Brighton Observer’s essays.
The benefactor was prepared to be generous.
The benefactor wished to remain unnamed.
He signed it with a flourish and set it aside to dry.
There were other letters to write. To his solicitor, instructing him to establish a discreet fund for the support of anonymous literary endeavours.
To Arthur Finch, whose quiet observation and steady nerves would be invaluable in the weeks ahead.
To the printer, perhaps, though that was riskier, and he would need to think carefully about how to approach it.
But those could wait. For now, the first letter was enough. The first step.
Alistair leaned back in his chair and looked at the essays spread across the desk.
In the dying firelight, the ink seemed to move, the words shifting and rearranging themselves like living things.
He thought of Sophia writing them, alone in her room on Marine Parade, the Channel wind rattling the windows and the candle burning low.
He thought of her courage, her clarity, her refusal to be silent even when silence would have been safer.
He thought of what she had said about the Turner. I see someone who refused to paint what was expected of him.
She had been describing herself, of course.
She had been describing the artist she was, the voice she had chosen, the risk she was taking every time she put pen to paper.
And she had been describing him, too, though she did not know it.
The man he might become, if he had the courage to stop performing and start being.
The fire had burned down to a single flame, a tongue of blue and gold dancing above the last unburned log. Alistair watched it for a long moment, and then he reached for the clock on the mantel.
He wound it carefully, feeling the resistance of the spring, the slow gathering of tension that would, when released, become motion. He set the hands to the correct hour, it was nearly midnight, the house silent around him, the servants long since retired, and gave the pendulum a gentle push.
The clock began to tick.
Alistair stood in the centre of the study and listened to the sound fill the silence. It was a small thing. A trivial thing. But it felt, in that moment, like an answer. Like a promise. Like the first beat of a heart that had been still for too long, learning to beat again.
He folded the letter to Whitmore and sealed it with wax, pressing his signet ring into the cooling red pool. Tomorrow he would post it. Tomorrow he would begin the work of building a shield around a woman who did not know she needed one, and might never know who had built it.
Tonight, he would sit in the quiet and listen to the clock, and let himself feel, for the first time in years, the terrifying, exhilarating weight of caring about something enough to risk everything for it.
The flame on the last log flickered, steadied, and burned on.