Chapter 18 #2
His first attempt at threading the needle failed spectacularly.
“I don’t believe,” Violet said with unmistakable amusement, “that you’ve ever done that before.”
“I thought I might learn.”
“Why?”
He looked down at the linen still resting in her lap. More specifically at her hands. The skin across her knuckles had roughened over the years, the fingertips marked by countless hours of needlework, washing, polishing, and work no lady of the ton had ever been expected to perform.
His expression softened. “You’ve worked far harder than you should have.”
Violet instinctively curled her fingers into her palms. “They’re only hands.”
“They deserve better.” He reached into the pocket of his coat. “I bought something while I was traveling through Italy.”
Violet looked puzzled as he produced a small carved tin. “My sisters insisted every respectable household possessed it.”
She accepted it hesitantly. “What is it?”
“A cream made from olive oil and beeswax.” He smiled a little sheepishly. “I’ve carried it halfway across Europe waiting for someone who might actually use it.”
Violet looked down at the small tin resting in her hands, and it was at that moment that Adelaide felt like she was intruding on the makings of a secret.
Theodore had not moved closer, yet something in the room had shifted all the same. The easy confidence with which he usually filled a space had quieted into something almost careful, as though he feared startling a skittish bird into flight.
Violet, for all her composure, seemed equally uncertain. She turned the little tin over once between her fingers before tracing the carved lid with the tip of one thumb, her attention fixed upon it with far greater concentration than a pot of hand cream deserved.
Adelaide found herself smiling.
He was not trying to impress Violet. He was trying to care for her.
Adelaide placed her hand on the doorknob, careful not to disturb whatever fragile beginning had settled between them, and drew the door gently shut behind her.
It seemed the house had changed in small, stubborn ways since her arrival.
Laughter carried more easily through its halls now.
Doors that had once remained closed stood open.
Even the servants, though not all equally convinced, had begun to move about with less of the wary reserve that had greeted her first days at Wolverton.
The place no longer felt quite so determined to remember only its grief.
She descended the rear staircase instead of the front, passing through the sunlit gallery before stepping out into the gardens.
The afternoon air was scented with roses and freshly cut grass, while somewhere farther down the slope she caught the distant sound of Elise laughing, though she could not see her.
Adelaide followed the path without hurry, discovering, somewhat to her surprise, that she felt lighter than she had in weeks.
“You’re smiling again.”
Adelaide looked over at her father, who was settling carefully onto the stone bench beneath an old lime tree. The effort of sitting still cost him more than it once had, but it no longer stole his breath.
His cheeks had regained a little color since arriving at Wolverton, and though the cough lingered stubbornly, the physician’s worried expressions had gradually given way to cautious optimism.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“You have smiled no fewer than four times while walking from the house—I watched you the entire way. Did you not see me?”
“I was merely enjoying the weather.”
“The weather is pleasant enough. But enough to ignore your own father?”
“It… is,” she said indignantly, and let another smile break through.
“It has never before inspired quite so much contentment.”
Adelaide lowered herself onto the bench beside him, pretending sudden fascination with smoothing her skirts. “I had forgotten how impossible you are.”
“I raised you.”
“So you did.”
The e arl chuckled, though the laughter dissolved into a brief cough. Adelaide waited until it passed before handing him the handkerchief resting beside her.
“You should still be resting.”
“I have rested enough to satisfy three physicians, and one stubborn daughter—who is by far the more demanding.”
She smiled again despite herself.
The gardens stretched quietly before them.
Late summer had begun softening into early autumn, the roses giving way to deeper greens and the first hints of gold along the hedgerows.
Somewhere beyond the orchard, bees drifted lazily through the lavender while gardeners worked without hurry, their voices carried only faintly upon the breeze.
“I cannot thank His Grace enough,” the e arl said after a while.
“For what?”
“For insisting that I come.”
“You believe that was his doing?”
“I know it was, my dear.”
Adelaide looked at him questioningly.
“He wrote to me twice before you arrived and expressed… concern.”
The word surprised her more than she expected. “He was remarkably persuasive for a gentleman who claims not to involve himself in other people’s affairs.”
A laugh escaped before she could stop it. “That sounds precisely like him.”
Her father glanced sideways. “Does it?”
“He pretends indifference terribly.”
“I wondered when you might notice. He is too much like his father in some ways, and even more so his mother in others.”
Adelaide looked away before he could study her expression too closely. “I have noticed several things, though I do not have a historical catalogue of his parents to base any judgements on as you do.”
“Of course,” the e arl leaned back against the bench, following her gaze across the broad lawns. “We are of the people who made and raised us… D o you suppose you got such a fever for argument and stubbornness from me?”
Adelaide laughed knowingly. “Oh no, you have done well to remind me every chance you get just how much I am my mother’s daughter.”
They shared a hearty laugh and leaned into one another lovingly. “You are the best parts of us both, my dear. As is he of his parents, God rest their souls.”
At the far edge of the lower paddock, Eric walked patiently beside one of the smaller mares while Elise sat proudly in the saddle.
Even from that distance Adelaide could see the little girl’s animated gestures as she attempted to explain something with both hands before remembering she was meant to be holding the reins.
Eric reached up immediately, steadying them again with the same quiet calm he seemed to reserve for frightened horses and curious children.
Elise said something that made him shake his head, and a moment later, he laughed. The sound did not reach them across the fields, but his smile did.
The mare ambled forward another few yards before stopping at Eric’s quiet command. He adjusted Elise’s hands with practiced care, speaking long enough for the child to nod solemnly before trying again.
“He is very good with her.”
“He is.”
Adelaide turned with a sort of surprised confusion knitting her eyebrows together, and her father blinked.
“I meant…” He smiled faintly. “… some men simply possess that sort of patience.”
She looked back toward the paddock. “I only know him as the man who kept everyone at arm’s length because he preferred solitude, but I think he was afraid.”
Her father said nothing.
“He has so much kindness,” Adelaide continued quietly. “I don’t believe he quite knows what to do with it.”
The e arl regarded her with unmistakable affection. “You’ve come to understand the man behind the title.”
“I’ve begun to, though I am sure that understanding is far too vast to comprehend in such a short amount of time.”
“But at least you are in pursuit of it…”
Across the field, Elise burst into delighted applause over some small accomplishment only she fully appreciated. Eric rewarded her with an exaggerated bow from the ground that sent her into another fit of laughter.
Adelaide found herself laughing too. “They look rather happy together.”
“They do.”
“They’re alike in some ways.”
The e arl followed her gaze. “How so?”
“They both become terribly serious whenever they’re trying to master something.” She smiled thoughtfully. “And they’re equally stubborn once they’ve decided they shall.”
Her father nodded. “I see it.”
Adelaide rested her chin lightly against her hand, watching Eric reach up to straighten the child’s crooked bonnet before sending the mare gently onward. For reasons she could not have explained, the sight settled warmly somewhere behind her ribs. “They make a rather convincing picture.”
“What picture?”
She answered almost absently, her eyes never leaving the paddock. “I think anyone seeing them from here would believe they belonged to one another.”
Her father smiled. “What is the point of life if we do not attach to one another? I believe we all find ways to belong to others, at least in some fashion. So that we are never forgotten…”
Adelaide nodded her head thoughtfully, watching Eric and Elise laugh with each other once more.