“His manners are wrong,” Cordelia said. “That’s sufficient. Sit. You’re shaking.”
“I’m not,” Louisa said, and sat at once because she was.
Winston’s attention stayed on Adeline. He didn’t turn to look after the attendants. “We’re going home,” he said. “Now, please.”
Adeline knew that Cordelia would have argued if his tone had been different, but it was the voice of a man nudging a team back from a cliff. She accepted her shawl with grace and let him guide them to the gate. Adeline walked beside him. He didn’t offer his arm, keeping it free, and she understood why. By the time the carriage rolled away from the pleasure gardens, Winston had set his teeth against obvious pain. He said nothing until the jolt at the first turning made him shut his eyes and draw a breath through his nose.
“Damnation!” he hissed.
“Tell me,” Adeline said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not. I was not asking if the pain was real, only where it is.”
He relented. “It’s the knee. It catches.”
“May I?” She glanced at Cordelia and Louisa, who were opposite them, the former brisk, the latter sleepy. “There’s a technique. I read about it. You may pronounce it nonsense, but you’ll be doing so with less pain.”
He looked at her and nodded. “Very well.”
She shifted to the floor of the carriage, kneeling in the narrow space, and laid a fold of his coat over her lap to keep from soiling her gown. He extended his leg across the seat. She set her hands above the knee, thumbs on either side of the kneecap, and pressed, not hard, not soft, in a steady, circular motion. His breath left him at the third circle; by the fifth, his jaw unclenched.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked.
“A book,” she said. “Translated from the Chinese. A physician in the East described it. He said that pain lives in circles and can be coaxed out the way it came in.”
“That sounds like philosophy.”
“It is,” she said. “Hold still.”
She worked in silence for a minute more, then changed the angle of her hands and pressed along the muscle that tethered the joint. His shoulders lowered. The carriage hit a rut, but he didn’t swear. Cordelia pretended to examine the route through the window with great interest. Louisa pretended to sleep and succeeded.
“Better?” Adeline asked.
“Yes.” He sounded surprised, and she smiled.
“You may pronounce it nonsense tomorrow,” she said. “Not tonight.”
He let out a breath that almost counted as a laugh. “As you command.”
She returned to her seat, their knees nearly touching on the cushion. The carriage’s lamps threw a quiet circle on the ceiling. The two on the opposite bench breathed in the even rhythm of people who had made a temporary peace with the dark. Winston opened his mouth and closed it. He tried again.
“May I ask you something not very clever?”
“You may ask,” she said.
“My mother would say I’m bound to marry well,” he said, keeping his voice to the space between them. “I’ve spent years pretending to know what that means. I don’t. Is it rank? Is it a list of qualities on a paper? Or is it something else entirely?”
Adeline felt the question's edges. It wasn’t only a question about Society. It was the outline of a different, larger question he was not yet ready to ask. Her heart beat once, hard and careful.
Winston, do you really think there can be a happy ending between us? If you do, it is only because you do not yet know the truth.
“People say rank,” she said. “And money. And houses. They mean those, because they’re easy to see. Perhapswellis quieter. The kind of person a child runs to when she has a bad dream. The kind who doesn’t leave when the room is difficult. The kind who tells the truth when it’s costly.”
He looked at her. “Character.”
“Yes.”
