"You've barely spoken to Alice today," Clara observed, her tone gentle but direct. She did not specify which Alice; there was only one who could be meant, only one whose name carried such significance.
Samuel felt his spine stiffen. "I was not aware my conversations were being noted."
"They are not. But their absence is rather conspicuous." Clara folded her hands in her lap, a gesture that spoke of both patience and expectation. "Particularly given that you spent considerable effort defending her at dinner last night."
"That was..." He stopped, unsure how to finish the thought. What had it been? Principled? Impulsive? An action of a man grappling with his own responses, still trying to make sense of it all.
"That was noted," Clara interjected smoothly. "By everyone present. Including Alice herself."
Samuel remained silent. The orchids seemed to observe him, their delicate forms waiting for a response he could not summon.
"She cares what you think of her." Clara's voice softened, her words emerging with the gentleness of someone sharing a hard-won insight. "She would never admit it; Alice would sooner confess to treason than reveal vulnerability—but she cares."
"I cannot imagine why she should."
The words came out more bitterly than he intended, and he noticed Clara's eyebrows lift slightly. She did not press him; she simply waited, patient in her understanding that silence could coax forth honesty.
Samuel's gaze was fixed on the orchids. Their delicate petals reminded him of Alice's face in the moonlight, the startled vulnerability in her eyes after he kissed her.
"What are you so afraid of?"
The question landed between them like a stone dropped into still water. Samuel opened his mouth to deliver a practiced deflection, something about propriety, the inappropriateness of speculation, how his interactions with Lady Alice were entirely unremarkable and required no analysis.
But the words wouldn't come.
Clara watched him with knowing eyes, her expression free of judgment, offering only an invitation to speak honestly. She had become a safeharbor, and Samuel realized, to his dismay, that he wanted to seek shelter there.
"I am afraid," he heard himself say, the confession slipping out before he could stop it, "of becoming someone I swore I would never be."
"And who is that?"
"Someone who loses control." His hands clenched on his knees, a familiar gesture of a man wrestling with himself. "Someone who acts without thought. Someone whose passions..." He paused, the word feeling dangerous on his tongue. "I watched carelessness destroy a young woman once. I vowed it would never happen again. Not through me."
"And you believe caring for Alice would require carelessness?"
"I believe..." He faltered again, confronting the inadequacy of his own certainty. What did he believe? That passion led to destruction? That control was the only safety? That the walls he had built around his heart were protection rather than a prison?
"I believe I do not know," he finally admitted, the words costing him something he could not quite name. "I thought I understood myself. I thought I understood her. And then..."
He did not finish. He did notneed to. Clara's expression suggested she had already grasped everything he could not bring himself to articulate.
The conservatory enveloped them in its humid embrace, with orchids standing sentinel while palms cast shadows that swayed in an almost imperceptible draft. Outside, the rain had ceased, leaving the gardens gleaming and expectant. Inside, Samuel Baldwin sat beside a woman who had offered him sanctuary, feeling the walls he had spent a lifetime constructing begin to crack in ways he did not know how to mend.
"She is not Charlotte," Clara said softly. "And you are not the man you were at twenty."
Samuel turned to her, startled. The reference to a story he had shared with no one at this house party, no one except Alice herself in a midnight library, struck him deeply.
"Alice told me," Clara explained, addressing his unvoiced question. "She shares most things with me eventually. It’s one of her less infuriating qualities."
The realization that Alice had spoken of him, had carried his confession to someone she trusted, settled in his chest with a weight that eluded categorization. Not displeasure, but something warmer and more intricate.
Something that felt dangerously like hope.
"What would you have me do?" he asked, thewords escaping him raw and stripped of formality, laden with uncertainty.
Clara smiled, a gentle expression tinged with what might have been satisfaction. "I would have you ask yourself that question honestly," she replied. "Then consider whether the answer you've been giving yourself is the one you truly believe."
She rose from the bench, smoothing her skirts, preparing to return to her duties as hostess. At the doorway, she paused.
