“So, where would you like to walk?” Adeline asked, uncomfortable with the praise.
“The gardens on a day like this. They have well-paved paths.”
“And many staircases,” Adeline pointed out.
“I have been cooped up for too long. Come, I will go either with you or without.”
“Then let it be with.”
It was not unpleasant to walk slowly with Winston’s strong arm about her shoulders, his hand draped there, held by hers. It was not a chore to hold her arm about his waist, or for his hip to be pressed against hers. Winston frowned in concentration, breathing in short, shallow spikes and needing frequent rests.
“I seem to have wrenched my knee, though the doctor ignored it. And battered my ankle. Thankfully, all on the same leg or I would be crippled,” Winston grumbled.
These complaints sent a spasm of guilt through Adeline, given that he had been so injured saving her life. But he did not remember doing it and explaining it would reveal more about herself than Adeline wanted to share. It would require her to explain her utter terror and the reason for it.
My fear of a man I know to be a murderer. A man I call Father and who calls me enemy.
They stepped out into the square of garden behind the house. The sky was low and silver, the kind of London day that never decided whether to rain or shine. Winston moved slowly, and she matched his pace.
“My father would have hated this,” he said after a time. “Leisure for the sake of leisure. He believed in discipline of body, mind, and soul. A man should keep himself fit for military service, keep his mind active through managing his lands and his soul clean through reading scripture.”
“So, he was not a lover of poetry then,” Adeline said.
“He regarded it as a sin. Frivolous and corrosive for the soul,” Winston replied. “He would have been happiest as a Puritan in Cromwell’s Republic.”
Adeline smiled faintly. “You read in secret then.”
“Under my schoolbooks. By candlelight. Then one day he found a page I had actually written.”
“You had written?” Adeline said in amazement. “What was it about?”
He gave a short laugh. “Something dreadful, I expect. Full of moonlight and repentance. But it was mine.”
She looked at him, seeing in that moment not the Duke but the boy who had once hidden scraps of verse. Perhaps under the floorboards or the hollow of a dead tree.
“Keats would have understood you,” she said softly. “He wrote,‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’He might have meant the act of writing as much as the thing itself.”
Winston smiled at her quotation, slow and genuine.
“He also wrote,‘I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.’I’ve always liked that. It’s an argument my father could never win.”
Their steps had carried them to the far end of the garden, where the wall was covered in climbing ivy. The scent of damp earth rose faintly around them. For a while, neither spoke. When Winston turned to her, his expression had softened.
“You see? There are still secrets I keep. But some are worth sharing.”
The warmth in his gaze unsettled her more than she cared to admit. She dropped her eyes.
This is an indulgence. A dream. To walk alone with Winston and quote poetry to each other. It is a fantasy.
If she were lucky, she would return to Briarwood with Cordelia. If not, she would be unmasked and sent away in disgrace. At that moment, the idea of being looked upon as a charlatan and a liar by Winston was intolerable. It struck at her heart, twisting like a blade. Tormenting.
I am the torturer. I allow him to grow close to me. Does he believe he can have me? There is no one to have. I am fiction.
“You should rest soon. The doctor warned against overexertion,” she said, gently putting him to the length of her arm.
He frowned.
“Have I shared more than I should with an employee? Talking of childhood and poetry. Would you rather have kept the conversation to Louisa and the weather?”
