“Farewell, Sebastian.”
“Not farewell,” he said hoarsely. “Only—until we meet again.”
“Perhaps.”
She reached the servants’ door, paused, and looked back.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For seeing me.”
“You were always worth seeing,” he replied. “It was the world that lacked the eyes, not you the worth.”
She slipped away, leaving him alone in the fading light—and neither of them knew whether what lay ahead was beginning or ending.
Chapter Ten
“The linens in the blue room require airing.”
Cecilia looked up from the breakfast she was not eating to find Mrs Patterson observing her with the particular severity of a housekeeper newly vested with authority over one she was not entirely certain how to manage.
“I shall see to it directly.”
“And the silver wants polishing. Sir Horace remarked that the candlesticks were quite tarnished.”
“I shall attend to that as well.”
“And the—”
“Mrs Patterson.” Cecilia set down her fork, abandoning the pretence of appetite. “I am acquainted with my duties. I have performed them these five years. You need not enumerate each task as though I might forget.”
The housekeeper’s lips thinned. She was unaccustomed to interruption—least of all from the household’s ambiguous dependent: too gently bred for a servant, too reduced for a lady. “I was merely endeavouring to—”
“I understand. Thank you.”
Cecilia rose and left the breakfast room before Mrs Patterson could continue. It was rude, perhaps—certainly unlike her usual careful deference—but this morning she could not summon the energy for such performances.
She could summon the energy for very little.
It was the second day since her return to Thornfield: the second day of grey skies and grey walls and grey gowns that seemed to leach the colour from her very soul; the second day of attempting to resume her invisible existence, and discovering she had quite forgotten how it was done.
The linens. She would air the linens. It was a task that required movement and attention, the honest engagement of muscle and bone. Perhaps, if she worked hard enough—if she exhausted herself sufficiently—she might cease to think.
She might cease to remember.
I love you, and I cannot pretend otherwise.
His voice echoed in her mind as she climbed the stairs to the blue room. She could still feel the pressure of his hands upon hers; still see the desperate honesty in his grey eyes; still sense the ghost of his kiss—that brief, devastating contact which had expressed all that words could not.
And then she had walked away—had left him standing in the library, had watched Fairholme Park recede like a dream dissolving in the morning light.
She had done the right thing. The sensible thing. The only thing a woman in her position might do.
Why, then, did the right thing feel so very like dying?
***
The blue room had not been used in months. A fine film of dust dulled every surface, and the linens—when Cecilia drew them from the bed—bore the stale scent of neglect. She opened the windows despite the chill, admitting the keen air, and set about the methodical labour of stripping the bed, beating the mattress, and replacing everything with freshly laundered sheets.
It was good work—honest work—the kind that occupied the hands and left the mind free to wander.
