Outside, the November air bit through her cloak with teeth sharp as regret. George helped her into their hired carriage, his movements careful, conscious of their audience watching from windows. The vehicle smelled of damp wool and previous occupants’ perfume, nothing like Aaron’s immaculate carriage with its leather and sandalwood scent.
Once safely enclosed, George dropped the pretense of weakness, his shoulders straightening as if shedding a heavy coat.
“You could have him back with a word.”
Louise stared out at the gaslit streets, the carriage rocking gently beneath her. “No. I couldn’t.”
“He loves you.”
“He loves his fear more.” She closed her eyes against the truth of it. “And I won’t spend my life competing with ghosts for second place in his heart.”
“Perhaps he just needs time to realize what he’s lost.”
“Time.” Louise tested the word, finding it bitter. “How much time, George? Weeks? Months? Years? Should I waste my youth waiting for a man to develop courage he should already possess?”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, each lost in thoughts too heavy for words.
At Sulton House, Emily had waited up despite strict instructions to sleep, curled in their mother’s chair with one of Aaron’s books clutched to her chest. He’d sent them after she left, all of Emily’s favorites from his library, with a note saying simply:These belong with their proper reader.
“Did you hear beautiful poetry?” Emily asked sleepily.
Louise gathered her sister into her arms. “Very beautiful.”
“Will you read me some?”
“Tomorrow, darling.”
Emily nodded against her shoulder, already drifting back toward sleep. “Louise? Will we ever be happy again?”
The question pierced through every defense Louise had constructed. She carried Emily to bed, tucking the covers around her small form, pressing a kiss to copper curls that caught lamplight like memory.
“We’ll find a different kind of happy,” she whispered to the darkness.
But as she stood in the doorway watching Emily sleep, Louise knew the truth. She had touched perfect happiness once, had held it in her hands for a brief, shining moment. Everything else would be a shadow in comparison, competent performances of joy that never quite reached her eyes.
This was her life now. Polite refusals and poetry readings and pretending her heart hadn’t been left behind in a study that smelled of brandy and old books.
She would survive it.
She had no other choice.
CHAPTER 38
“You’ve been drinking your breakfast again.”
Cecilia stood in the doorway of Aaron’s study at nine in the morning, surveying the battlefield of empty decanters and untouched correspondence with the expression of a general planning siege warfare. Morning light struggled through grimy windows, illuminating the slow decay of a room that had once represented order and control.
Aaron lifted his head from contemplation of yesterday’s ledgers, the numbers swimming before eyes that hadn’t focused properly in days. “The servants have standing orders not to disturb me.”
“The servants are terrified of you.” Cecilia swept into the room without invitation, her morning purple dress a splash of color in the brown monotony. She threw open curtains with violent efficiency, each yank of fabric sending dust motes spiraling through suddenly brilliant air. “Thornton actually blessed himself when he saw me this morning. The poor man thinks you’re attempting to pickle yourself from the inside out.”
“An interesting preservation method.” Aaron reached for his glass, found it empty, and set it down carefully. Morning light revealed the stubble shadowing his jaw, the hollow beneath his cheekbones, the way his shirt hung loose where muscle had wasted.
Cecilia planted herself directly in front of his desk, hands braced on the mahogany surface. Her rings caught the light, sending rainbow fragments across scattered papers. “How much longer?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How much longer will you sit in this tomb you’ve created, drowning in self-pity while that girl withers away across London?”
