“Also blond,” he said flatly.
“All right,” I sighed. “Whatcanyou tell me about your family?”
He paused. “I have twelve sisters, including Phoebe.”
“That’s a start.” I looked over to him, but he was focused on the path ahead, arms crossed. “Do you remember any of them?”
“I remember the first five; the rest are a mystery to me. I wasn’t there.” He dug in his pockets for cigarettes. “I have visited Phoebe almost every year since she was born. I will never forget that carrot top when I first saw her.” He paused for a minute. “Phoebe and I spent a normal amount of time together, more than I did with any other siblings. They had been married off in what seemed like the blink of an eye, so I learned to never get attached. I just happened to visit London when Phoebe’s arrival was announced.”
“And then you became attached?”
“How can you not? When something so small, so innocent and washed of any blame is thrust into this world like that, and for it to be in the palm of your hand, something changes in you when you realize she will end up like all the others.”
“All the others?”
He waved his hand, “I didn’t want to see her disappear like the rest of them, that is all.” He offered out hiscigarettes to me, but I declined. “I had a rather nasty fallout with my father when she turned sixteen, and I didn’t visit for a while. We disagreed on certain practices that my father treated as tradition.”
“What were those?”
“It wasn’t important. I wish I had continued to see her, then maybe she wouldn’t have been as angry when I showed up those years ago.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I told her I returned for the city life and crashing her parties,” he laughed, “she was so cross with me. She says it was because I eat her guests, but I know some of that anger is from my time away.” I could see the leather of his gloves tauten as he clenched his fists. “I came back because I got word that my father planned on shipping her away. Marrying her off to wash his hands of her.”
“She was betrothed?” I shot him a look over my shoulder.
“Not yet,” he said with a shrug, “but you solved that issue for me, taking her here.”
“Oh.” I frowned, turning to face forward again. “It seems I really knew nothing about her.”
“Nobody really knows anyone,” he said solemnly. “People are too complex to be understood in a single lifetime.”
Somehow his words made me feel better, but only a little.
“What is your real name? You and Phoebe have different last names.”
“We take our mother’s last names. Silas is my birth name. It is all real.” He gave a tired smile.
“So what is your father’s real name? I called him Mr. Astor.”
“Astor is the last surname he took.”
I nodded in understanding, not wanting to push it any further.
“What about your mother?” he asked, draping his arm over the back of the seat bench to play with a piece of untucked hair. The gesture was so simple, yet it still made me blush.
“Passed in childbirth,” I explained, leaning back against his arm.
“I suppose you don’t have much to tell me about your family either.”
“I like to pretend that I knew her. That she had my eyes and my black hair. I at least knew those two things were true. I imagine she was kind and decorated the house with dried flowers. Sometimes I try to imagine her voice. As a child, I desperately wished I could know her voice, to know the comfort of a mother.”
“We have more in common than you would like to admit.” His arm tightened slightly around me as I spoke, a small, comforting gesture.
“I don’t think I want to know how much we share.” I rolled my eyes, but it accompanied a laugh, and he couldn’t help a suppressed smile.
48
