Yes, she could talk of other people’s needs all day. But never her own.
Her shoulders relaxed a little, and she drew her arm free of his fingers, turning away.
The room they were in was very small. He only now properly realised where they were—his cloak room. Barely two yards across.
“I do know men, and women, who have managed to free themselves of this curse of drink,” she said. “It isn’t easy. It seems to require complete abstinence.” Her expression was gentle, but eager, coaxing. “If he… If he was somewhere quiet, not in town, but a quiet house in the countryside, somewhere small enough that a couple of trusted servants could keep a close eye on him… He would need visitors of course, company. But dinners and parties would be best avoided. The first few months would be very hard. But it would get easier.”
“He has tried to stop. He cannot.” He wouldn’t let hope wriggle free. It was a flimsy butterfly. He held it pinned.
“I know it isn’t easy, but—”
“He doesn’t want to stop. Not really.”
The room seemed suddenly too small. Damnation. He should have just kissed her instead of starting on this. She might even have let him.
Crossing his arms, he leant back against the door. The smile he found to fix to his face was small and hard. “What he really wants, Mrs Ardingly, is to die. But it’s a sin to take your own life and he can’t risk not reaching heaven—my mother is waiting there, you see. He has told me all this himself, many times. I was Tom’s age the first time.”
Ah. That was more than he’d meant to say. Little was more disgusting than self-pity.
Her gaze moved over his face, searching, as though he hadn’t already revealed more than enough.
“He has things to live for.”
You.That was what she meant.
He let out a breath, some bastard cousin to a laugh, and shook his head.
“I bought this house, you know, when I reached my majority. I’d been managing his finances for years by then. I had our old London house sold and bought this one. No memories here. A fresh start, where he could live with me, away from those ghost-ridden catacombs in Shropshire. It didn’t work.” He tugged his shirt sleeves straight. There were emeralds in his cuff buttons, dark as yew. “So I bought a country house, down in Kent, thinking exactly like you did, that a small, quiet place might be the thing…close enough to London that I could keep an eye on things—my life, you understand, is in London. I need to be here.”
She said nothing, listening far too intently, as though his every word was falling into some deep, deep place; somewhere he could never get them back.
So why did he keep talking?
He dragged a hand along his jaw, looking hard at the dark folds of his greatcoat hanging on the hook opposite but seeing something entirely different. “He almost burnt the place down that first month. Knocked the lamp over in his room, drunk. Fell asleep, drunk. Thank God his valet smelt the smoke—saved him, saved the house. Nothing works.”
She didn’t deserve his anger, but she met his hard voice unflinching.
“Nothing works, Mrs Ardingly. I have tried it all.”
He sank two fingers under the collar of his coat and pulled out the letter. “This is from a solicitor. Advice to my father on how to divorce his wife. I’m prepared to taint our family with the scandal of divorce if it gets him free of that woman…if it gets us free of the Taits. His guilt and his shame eat him alive. He hates himself for marrying again when he loved my mother…so…so if I can free him of that, perhaps…”
He looked at the letter in his hand. Perhaps what? Nothing would change. If there had been a fire in this room, he would have cast the letter straight on it.
Then her voice came, quiet, but firm. “Getting yourself free of the Taits would be a very good move.”
He lifted his eyes from the letter, exposing himself to all the sympathy of her steady regard. She was merciless with it; her compassion a surgeon’s knife, cutting deep.
She took a step forward, and he watched her come, close enough that he could smell her, could feel the feather touch of her breath on his jaw. She took the letter and tucked it back inside his coat, her fingers skating for a moment between the lining of coat and shirt. Then she pressed her palm over where it lay hidden. Over his heart.
“Do it. Give him the letter and get him to do it. That guilt you speak of… When you have loved so deeply, promised yourself,and—” She broke off, a catch in her voice. His hand closed over hers.
She took a breath. “It will help him. To be free.”
She reached past him for the door, hand slipping out from under his.
“It’s torture,” she whispered as she left him, “feeling torn.”
Twenty-One
