“Please, Seth, do not blame yourself. I couldn’t bear it if you had to fret over my well-being every time you left the manor, merely because of my… deficiencies.” Her fingers reached up to clasp his biceps and curled around them, holding to him in guilt.
“That is not the reason, Cherry. The reason I fret so much is because I… Well, all will be well from now on. I promise you that. Come, let’s get you seated.” He gently guided her forward and she followed, still trembling but a little less than before. She could hear the paws of Rufus and Shelby scurrying along behind them. When they reached the drawing room, her feet became tangled in the pieces of tinsel and paper chains she had left strewn across the floor from earlier. Seth encouraged her to take a seat beside the hearth, and then gently knelt down before her to disentangle her feet from those chains.
Oh, what she would give to see him just then…
“Should those blackguards come for you again, we will be prepared,” Seth spoke up with such purpose that she startled slightly. He then took the seat beside her but didn’t settle back. She could feel he was still leaning forward. “I will have Bates take more footmen into our employ, this skeleton staff is no longer feasible. And I’ll have Marcus restationed within the manor. Those rogues will not get another chance to lay a finger on you, much less drag you away.”
She reached for him, her hand resting on his cheek.
“You and my father…” she murmured, recognizing there had been something strange in the way they spoke to one another. “Pray, what is there between you? Some history, some past? What is the true reason you attended my father’s ball that night?”
He delicately drew her hand from his cheek, bringing it to his lips.
“Your trembling seems to have lessened,” he muttered, but Charity was not about to let him evade her questions any longer.
“Seth, please. I am safe with you. I know that.” Her words seemed to have moved something within him, for he at last leaned back on the settee, and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her into his chest. “The two of you…” She began again.
“We did have a past acquaintanceship… of sorts,” he admitted quietly. “But it all passed a long time ago.”
Charity’s stomach twisted into knots. This was it,she knew it. What she feared most, what she had persistently tried to quell from her mind ever since learning about the great fire of Aldenbury and his reluctance to address her questions. It had been a sneaking suspicion at first, but now it rose to her throat in the form of a lump.
For she recalled hearing something similar, a long time ago, from her own father.
His history with her father. It had to have something to do with the fire at this club, the loss of someone he loved, and perhaps pivotally, the true reason he had been at Holmwood house in the first place when they met.
“And now, I am determined to keep it in the past.”
“What do you mean by that?” she murmured, her voice barely there.
“Don’t worry about it for now.”
And for the first time since she could remember, Charity thought it rather best to not pry any deeper into his affairs.
He rubbed his hand up and down her arm, comfortingly. The touch reminded her of what they had shared the day before in his chamber. She trembled involuntarily once again, but this time, out of sheer thrill. She knew she was where she wanted to be. Even with secrets hanging between them, truths that might have the capacity to sunder them apart… for now, she felt assured in her heart that she was exactly where she ought to be.
As he said, I am home.
“Home,” she muttered softly, finding she longed to say more. She wished to tell him she loved him, that she couldn’t bear the thought of parting from his side, but the words just wouldn’t come. Especially now with the niggling suspicion that her father might have been a source of Seth's suffering, and possibly still was, merely by his presence.
And what abouther?Did her being here cause him pain too…?
Yet, as his strong arm slid around her waist a little more and they sat there together, in companionable quiet, awaiting their tea, she realized if it did, he had spent the last few weeks doing incredibly well to mask it.
“Home, indeed,” he said after a minute or so, bestowing the softest of kisses on her forehead.
Seth opened up a third box and began shoving papers inside of it too. Surrounding him was the hot glow of candles, more candles than he typically preferred in his study, oranywherearound him for that matter. Yet, the extra light was necessary tonight to clearly see the documents he was stowing away and putting into storage.
He filled the box with various papers: letters, fire investigation reports, official statements from the constables, and everything else regarding the great fire of Aldenbury. Even the grim reports concerning the state of the bodies of his father and Arthur went inside the box too, though he gulped around a large lump as he did so, feeling tears burning the backs of his eyes that he refused to let fall.
“It needs to be done,” Seth muttered to himself, now fully convinced of his course of action.
The remainder of the day after theincidenthad been spent with Charity, and to his surprise, he found himself genuinely content. A visit from the earl that had not ended in him beating that manto a pulp had still somehow left Seth satiated—merely because he got out of the other end of it with Cherry still on his arm.
After the earl had left, Seth had made a concerted effort to help Charity move past the unsettling visit from her father and Baron Tynefield, and they found distraction in each other's company with an ease that surprised them both.
I am happy with her, as I haven’t been for the last ten years.
Midway through his task of packing, Seth hesitated, his gaze drifting across the room to a painting slanted against the far wall. Illuminated between two candles was a portrait of Mary Colborne and Percival Colborne, the former Duchess and Duke of Axfordshire, but more importantly, his mother and father. It captured a moment of joy shortly after their wedding. Their faces, alight with happiness, brought a smile to his own.
