They stared at one another in silence for a second before he cleared his throat, flicking his eyes to the side like he’d find stage directions there, then looking at her again with an apologetic roll of his shoulders. “Are congratulations in order?”
She almost laughed at the question. Silas was ever the respectful and attentive gentleman, Claire thought. He was very steady. Very polite. He was very, very uncomfortable with all of this, and it showed.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t know how anyone is going to react to it. I came here to preemptively apologize to your wifefor not holding firm, for faltering at the line we drew in the sand all those years ago. Silas, I fear I have many apologies to issue on the matter. I do not know where to begin.”
He opened his mouth to respond and she cut him off, a sudden clanging anxiety throwing itself into the possibilities of his answers.
“Oh, also the rain!” she said, shrill and too fast. “The rain. I don’t want to go back today! Because of the rain!”
There was a pause. Silas watched her, gauging whether she was going to have another outburst, and then nodded slowly and gently like he thought sudden movements might initiate another untoward explosion.
She braced herself for how he would respond, for what he would say. She tried to predict the deflection, the excusing of himself, the awkward shuffling.
Instead, he leveled her in his gaze, gave a wistful little shake of his head, and said, “I know how you feel, Claire.”
“What?” she said, knowing she was balking at him. “You couldn’t possibly.”
He laughed then. He was the one who laughed! He reached up and rubbed his stubbled jaw and breathed in a big, indulgent breath that he blew back out again, shaking his head.
“He is my brother,” he said to her. “My brother, whom I love, and had to love while I also found and married Dot. You don’t think I understand? All ofthathappened before he … before …” He chuckled again, shrugging at her. “Before he was who he is now.”
“Oh, but that isn’t the same,” she protested, before she’d even given it a chance to settle into consideration.
Itwasn’tthe same, of course.Brotherwas far more inherent thanhusband, especiallyestranged husband. Even so …
“I suppose it’s not completely removed, however,” she added with an apologetic little sigh. “Was she cross with you about it? She must have been.”
“I don’t think she was,” he answered, sounding not entirely convinced. “Obviously, it wasn’t a thrilling prospect, especially not in the beginning, but she wasn’t angry. Things are very different now, besides. Very different.”
“He is different,” she corrected. “I am not sure anything else is.”
It was Silas’s turn to balk. He stared at her for a moment like she’d sprouted a second head. Like she’d just kicked her boot off and revealed that she was actually the source of those horrid devil’s toenails.
She didn’t like it. It was enough to have already seen Silas in a single new context today, but now they were verging on half a dozen.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” he said finally, his voice echoing a little in the empty foyer. “Do you believe that?”
“Well, obviously things have moved along with the necessity of time,” she said, confused by his confusion. “You had Vivian. Mr. Cresson became a barrister. Abe and Millie opened Morning Glory Investigations. I only mean myself, really. I am the same. Entirely the same.”
His brow had begun to wrinkle at the first word, and the wrinkle had grown with each subsequent one. She stopped talking lest he turn into a dried apple very soon, nothing but creases and dust.
He looked over his shoulder again, like he was considering calling for his wife and escaping the room entirely, but he did not call out or otherwise make a move to do so. He turned back to her looking more distressed still, utterly confounded that this had arrived on his doorstep today.
“Do you remember the night we met?” he asked her, so suddenly that it made her jump. “That night I brought the supplies and the maid to the Fletcher house?”
“Of course,” she said warily.
She had seen him plenty of times before he had seen her, of course. That autumn had been an exercise in intrigue, and Claire herself had stayed hidden throughout it. It was only after Dot and Silas became engaged to wed that she was revealed to him, that she was able to safely come forward, because the marriage would mean their interests were now aligned.
He had come up the stairs hand in hand with Dot. He had started the ascent smiling, and when he had seen her, round with Oliver in her belly, pale from being sequestered indoors, ragged from months without styling or luxury, his face had fallen completely.
That had been Claire’s doing. Claire had sobered a man newly in love.
It wasn’t a memory she enjoyed.
“Dot warned me that you had been the source for those gossip sheets and that I was not to attempt to impart guilt or shame upon you about it,” he said, his eyes going a little out of focusas he recalled it. “I don’t know what I thought you would be. I think perhaps up until that moment, I had imagined the only girl Freddy would fall so hard for would just be a copy of himself in a dress.”
“Silas!”
