“Then the world will have to wait its turn.”
“Even so,” she said, glancing once more at the portraits, “it is nice to have a reminder.”
“I agree,” he murmured.
Outside, the rain continued its steady fall.
Inside, two people who had found one another against long habit and old wounds stood together, surrounded by quiet evidence of the love between them.
Fiona watched the firelight catch on the charcoal lines of his portrait and felt a small, steady warmth settle in her chest.
It had been, she thought, a very fine rainy day.
And there would be others.
Chapter Eleven
The letter arrived on a grey Thursday morning, delivered by a rider who had clearly urged his horse hard along the muddy roads.
Fiona was in the breakfast room when Mrs Blackley brought it in—not the yellow parlour, but the smaller, more intimate chamber where she and Christian had lately taken to sharing their morning meals. He sat across from her, still a little rumpled with sleep, the late hour of the previous night very much in evidence. His hair, no longer confined to its usual queue, fell loosely about his shoulders, and there was a quiet ease in his expression that softened the habitual severity of his features.
She had done that, Fiona thought with a private flicker of satisfaction. She had put that softness there.
“A letter for Miss Hart, Your Grace.” Mrs Blackley set the silver salver carefully upon the table, the precision of the gesture suggesting she already suspected the contents might prove unwelcome. “From London.”
Fiona’s stomach tightened.
She recognised the hand at once—bold, impatient strokes that could belong to no one else.
Mother.
“Thank you, Mrs Blackley.” She kept her voice steady as she took the letter, waiting until the housekeeper had withdrawn before breaking the seal.
Christian watched her across the table, a faint line forming between his brows.
“Fiona?” he said quietly. “What is it?”
She did not answer.
She was already reading, her eyes moving rapidly over the familiar script as a slow dread began to gather in her chest.
Fiona,
I have received the most distressing accounts from your Aunt Prudence regarding your continued stay at Thornwick Castle. At first I hoped her report might be exaggerated—you know her tendency toward alarm—but further intelligence has unfortunately confirmed the substance of her concerns.
You have been residing, unmarried and without proper chaperonage, in the household of an unmarried gentleman for nearly three weeks. The servants speak of it. The villagers speak of it. The matter has already travelled as far as Whitby, and from there—inevitably—to London, where I have been obliged to endure the most uncomfortable enquiries from acquaintances of long standing.
Mrs Ashborn had the impertinence to ask me, at Lady Arlington’s card party, whether my daughter had “secured herself a duke at last.” The implication was perfectly clear and profoundly mortifying.
I do not know what has possessed you. You have always been the sensible one, the practical one—the daughter upon whose judgement I believed I might depend. To discover that you have abandoned such good sense for—what, precisely? A man? The idle fancies of a circulating-library romance?—is a disappointment I scarcely know how to express.
Your father is exceedingly angry. He has spoken more than once of travelling to Yorkshire himself in order to bring you home, though I have thus far persuaded him that sucha journey would only inflame the gossip already surrounding your name. I cannot promise to restrain him much longer.
You must return at once.
Come home, Fiona—before matters proceed beyond remedy. Whatever this gentleman may have led you to expect, no private attachment can justify the ruin you now risk.
Your mother,
