Chapter Ten
It was toward the end of breakfast the next morning when Andrew asked the question that Della had been dreading.
“So, what are we to do about this inheritance of yours?” He wiped invisible crumbs from the corners of his mouth with a napkin, and Della wondered, not for the first time, how anyone could look so dapper this early in the morning.
He’d dressed more casually today, forgoing his coat in favor of only his ivory shirtsleeves and a light-blue waistcoat. He’d spilled porridge on the tails of his cravat, so he’d simply unwound it from around his neck. There was truly no end to the improprieties he brought to this house.
Della loved it.
“Let’s . . . discuss that another time,” she managed to say once she looked away from the slice of bare skin at the base of his neck where his shirt draped open.
She tried to convey her meaning with her facial expressions, widening her eyes and shifting in the direction of the dining room’s open door, but she could feel his confusion.
It was just the two of them at the moment, but anyone could walk in or walk by, and Della didn’t know how to explain this to anyone else.
She didn’t know yet what there was to explain.
The subterfuge made her intensely uncomfortable, and she was no good at keeping secrets.
The only secret she’d ever kept was the illness that had eventually become public knowledge, and the resulting alienation was enough to make Della avoid hiding anything from anyone ever again.
“Meet me in the library,” she whispered across the table. “You leave the table first, then I’ll follow.”
She thought this was an excellent plan, but then she remembered he had no idea where the library was. He seemed to be poised to say just that, but she continued on.
“Right down this corridor, third door on the left.”
He nodded. She waved her hands in a motion that indicated he should commence phase one of their plan and leave the room.
A moment too late, she realized that was an incredibly rude thing to do.
Della blamed him for that, though. He was forever making her too comfortable.
Too safe for her own good. Her manners went the way of her good sense, vanishing at the first sight of him.
Andrew smiled, his lips just barely curling up enough to make his dimples appear.
Wordlessly, he stepped back from the table and departed.
He was rather stealthy, actually. Must have been all that hiding and seeking they’d done as children.
It had made him sneaky and made her adept at hiding herself.
Della stood, trying to make as little noise as possible.
The chair had other ideas, scratching against the dining room floor as if its only purpose was to produce a horrible sound.
She stayed still for a moment, both to stretch her tightened limbs and to determine if anyone heard her moving about.
Everyone in the house was always so attentive, and it felt like betrayal to be avoiding them all like this.
There simply wasn’t another choice. She couldn’t throw their very livelihoods into upheaval, not until she knew the facts.
Right then, it was all just speculation.
The whole ordeal was made of overheard whispers in the night.
Walking on the tips of her toes, Della left the dining room. She looked both ways at the door and hauled her shawl higher up on her shoulders. The hallway was always drafty, and she found that her elbows just could not bear the touch of the air.
Della kept her head down the entire way, but she acknowledged that was beyond foolish.
It was not as if they were in a crowded ballroom, and she could pass by a stray partygoer without being recognized.
If anyone saw her, she’d say she needed a novel from the study.
Or that she’d decided to take a walk about the house instead of outside in the gardens.
She’d lie and say that something about the absolutely perfect weather outside was unamenable to her.
Even as she praised her own quick thinking, she didn’t need it. She made it to the library without seeing a soul, and she heaved a sigh of relief as she opened the heavy door and gently closed it behind her.
“I am sorry for speaking so openly,” Andrew said. “I should have known you wouldn’t want everyone to know.” He was roaming the wall, looking at the spines of books she’d collected over the years. It was quite a selection, if Della did say so herself.
“It is not that I don’t want them to know,” she sighed, lowering herself into the chair in front of the enormous oak desk in the center of the room. “I simply don’t want to cause a stir until we . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she realized what she’d said. We. Implying present company was included in whatever this was. He hadn’t agreed to anything, and she hadn’t truly asked, so it felt like a rather bold assumption.
“Until we know more?” Andrew finished for her. He still walked slowly, his hands folded behind his back. It was a slow march across the room, and it was making Della nervous.
“I suppose,” she agreed. “Please, sit down.” She gestured to the admittedly overly plush chair behind the desk, and Andrew’s eyebrows raised in a way that was almost comical.
Still, he sat.
He looked out of place there, almost disheveled with no cravat and no coat. It made Della imagine things she shouldn’t. Walking into a room like this, seeing Andrew in the midst of his work. Perhaps with his curls all rucked up and ink all over his fingers. She’d step closer and he’d smile and—
“I would never presume to sit behind a viscount’s desk,” Andrew remarked.
He’d interrupted her barely blooming fantasy with thoughts of a harsh reality, and she didn’t appreciate it.
He seemed to be observing, too. He ran his hands over the ornate carved wood of the chair’s arms, and Della had never in her life been so envious of furniture.
“Does it make you feel duplicitous?” she asked. She tried to keep the scorn out of her voice, but it was no use.
“No.” Andrew’s face fell. Those dimples hid themselves away in the shadows of his discontent. “I wish it did. Then we could blame it on the desk.”
Della sat with that for a moment. Andrew had always been this way, blunt and honest and always forthright with his thoughts and feelings.
He simply didn’t know any other way to be.
She’d expected a laugh at her suggestion that the viscount’s recent behavior was underhanded and deceitful.
She hadn’t expected him to agree, and so readily.
She remembered his letter, though, in which he’d said he liked to blame her parents for inane, trivial things like puddles and lost spectacles.
This was so much more significant than any of that, and it really was a pity they couldn’t just blame the desk.
“I am sorry, Della,” he began again. His soft face went suddenly sharp. That face was so dear to her, and it caused her physical pain to watch that immediate transformation. “I know they’re your family and I shouldn’t disparage them in front of you, but they’re so . . .”
His voice trailed off on a frustrated sigh.
Della watched as he tried to smooth wrinkles out of his suddenly creased forehead.
She was momentarily mesmerized by those slow, rhythmic circles.
Her breathing slowed, the beat of her heart relaxing into something lazy and soothed.
It was almost hypnotic enough to make her forget everything, like where they were and who she was.
That she had any problems at all in the world.
That there even was a world outside of this room.
“You needn’t apologize, Andrew,” she emphasized. “You apologize too much.”
He stopped the mesmerism, his hand falling away from his face. Now, she could see him in earnest, and that was much more exhilarating than relaxing.
“Is that a habit of yours with everyone?” she asked, because she suddenly had to know. “Or is it just . . . a reaction to me?”
Andrew looked at her then. Their eyes met, and it was as if there was nothing and everything between them.
Things like physical space and time ceased to matter, evaporating like morning dew in the midday sun, but their history remained.
In those eyes, she saw the boy with the curls and the wide smile.
She saw the only person who’d ever come looking for her.
“I am sorry if I apologize too much,” he sighed. She laughed at the irony, but his eyebrows pinched in response. “But I cannot be like them. I cannot be another person who hurts you.”
Her laugh fell into abrupt silence, like a drop of rain suspended in midair.
Della’s instinct was to refute and deny and dismiss.
That passed, though. The raindrop of hurt resumed its fall until it crashed against the ground and shattered.
She was hurt, and there was something about Andrew being so incensed on her behalf that brought warmth to the frigid emptiness in her chest.
Her parents were not well-liked people. Everyone she knew had something disparaging to say about them. They were rude. They were arrogant. They represented all the thoughtlessness and vapidity that defined high society.
No one had ever been upset with them because of her, though, and as much as she hated the sight of that normally genteel face tensing up in indignation, knowing all of that was on her behalf tugged at some previously unexplored chamber of Della’s heart.
“So what do we do?” she asked him, leaning forward in her chair and wrapping her shawl tighter around her chest. “How do we . . . resolve this?”
It felt like an impossible question, as if none of this were ever going to be settled. Her world had been upended, and the only thing she knew was that Andrew Lockhart sat in front of her, ready and willing to help. Even that was difficult to fathom.
“Do your parents keep any important documents here?” He began to look around, peering into desk drawers and eyeing the shelves on the wall behind her.
“We could find the letters patent or look up the barony in Debrett’s.
But there might be something here. I’ve no idea how many estates they have, or where they’d keep their records.
I don’t believe my father ever dealt with things of this nature on the viscount’s behalf—”
He stopped speaking so abruptly, and Della could almost see the path of his thoughts.
“I am sure your father knew nothing about this,” she assured him. “And if he did, I could not blame him for choosing not to risk his position by sharing that information.”
Della remembered Andrew’s father. He was always kind to her, with that same warm smile she was so glad to see Andrew had inherited. There was nothing in her heart that could find ill will for him, even if he had been a part of keeping this secret.
“I am—” Andrew started again.
“No, please don’t apologize.” Della smiled. She took over the conversation from there, rubbing her palms on the skirt of her gown to keep the joints in her hands warm. Her mind raced with thoughts of where her parents might hide any tangible proof that the property in question was indeed hers.
Her mind came up empty, her thoughts trapped in a dense fog that accompanied her worst pain. It was not the time for this, she decided. She was holding too much hurt already. She simply couldn’t add any more.
“Would you excuse me?” Della stood up too fast, and her entire body wobbled as her knees debated whether or not they’d support her weight.
She fled the room without looking back, and without another word from Andrew.