“No.” Honor shook her head firmly. “Not her. I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“What was her name?” Vivian asked, unable to help her curiosity.
“My sister?” Honor asked, looking surprised by the question. When Vivian nodded, her face softened. “Stella. Her name was Stella.”
“Was she younger than you?”
“Barely. We were twins.”
“Twins?” Vivian stared at her. It was impossible to picture two women like Honor in the world. But maybe they’d been nothing alike. “You ever going to stop being full of surprises?”
Honor laughed, a short, humorless sound. “I would have liked to, for your sake,” she said quietly. “Don’t know if that’s possible now.”
Vivian felt her face growing hot and looked away, taking another sip to buy herself a moment. “So. Honor and Stella Huxley. As a reminder to him, I’m guessing? Or was your mother just trying to embarrass him?”
Honor shook her head, her expression wry and resigned. “Not just the Huxley part of it. My entire name was meant to make him feel guilty. Honor, right? As in, where is yours?”
“Oh.” Vivian couldn’t help her choked laugh. “That’s… melodramatic.”
“And then some.”
For a moment they were smiling at each other, both forgetting or ignoring what had brought them there. But it didn’t last. Honor looked away first, her expression growing shuttered once more. “Stella died in ’19.”
“Influenza?” Vivian said. She wasn’t surprised when Honor nodded. Honor and her mother hadn’t been the only ones to lose someone that awful year. Vivian shivered, remembering how the disease had torn through the close quarters of the orphan home, claiming young kids and aging nuns alike. “Did Buchanan try to help her then, at least?”
Honor shook her head. “He was traveling. I think he would have—he never came to see us, but I think for that, he would have. But Stella was gone before he could get back.”
Vivian took a sharp breath. Was it as simple as that—a loved sister dead, the father who could have helped her gone? “What about your mother?”
“Ma got sick when Stella did,” Honor said quietly, not looking away from Vivian’s eyes. “She never recovered.”
The pain that flashed across Honor’s face was so stark it made Vivian catch her breath. “Did you think it was his fault?”
The stillness settled over Honor again, a moment of wariness that came and went so fast that Vivian wondered if she had imagined it. Her jaw tightened. “It was his fault. We were living in a miserable, crowded little place, and half our neighbors had it. It was no surprise that they caught it.” She was looking past Vivian as she spoke, as though she were seeing something beyond the world she had built for herself, the office where she was always in control. “If he’d cared enough to raise us, we’d never have ended up stuck somewhere like that. Or we’d have at least had the money for a doctor.” Her eyes focused on Vivian at last. “So yes, pet. It was his fault, and he knew it.”
Vivian’s hands shook. “So, you blamed him for your sister’s death and—”
“No.”
“No?” Vivian didn’t bother hiding her skepticism. “You just said—”
“No,” Honor repeated, closing her eyes on a sigh. “There’s a difference between knowing it was his fault and blaming him for it. I was angry at him right after, sure. I’ll probably never stop being angry at him. But I couldn’t blame him. He had a good reason not to be there.”
“A good reason not to come when his daughter was dying?” Vivian asked, her own anger tight in her chest. “Even if he didn’t care much for you two, that’s still—”
“He was overseas when it happened,” Honor said quietly, opening her eyes. “Trying to find where his sons were buried in France.”
Vivian’s anger uncoiled like a load of bricks suddenly dropping into her stomach. Everyone knew someone who had died in the Great War, rich and poor alike. Everyone remembered the ache of that grief. “Both of them?”
The play of emotions across Honor’s face, so different from herusual coolness, was hypnotic. Vivian couldn’t tear her eyes away as Honor smiled sadly. “Both of them, poor bastard. Can you imagine being a father, knowing the boys you used to hold in your arms died scared and filthy in a trench, thousands of miles away from home?” She shook her head. “And then coming home to find your daughter—even if you weren’t the one to raise her—had died too? For all his money, sometimes I think Buchanan’s life was harder than mine. It had worse pain in it, at least.” She sighed again, then shrugged. And with the gesture, it was as if she was tucking those emotions away, her expression calm and controlled once more. She turned to pour herself another finger of whisky. “So no, I didn’t blame him. I still don’t.”
Vivian wanted so badly to believe her. But there had been that moment of stillness, of wariness, that she couldn’t quite ignore. She thought Honor was being honest. But even when Honor told the truth, she didn’t always tell all of it.
“Honor.” She hesitated, fingers gripping her glass so tight it made them ache. “Did you want him dead?”
Honor looked up to meet her eyes. “What did Hattie Wilson say to you, after she made sure you knew I was in that room?”
The question caught Vivian off guard enough that she wasn’t ready to hide her reaction. She could feel a hot blush rising to her cheeks even as she mentally scrambled for a reply. “Nothing,” she said, too quickly. Then she lifted her chin. Maybe Honor wouldn’t be honest, but she would. “She pointed out that you’re the one getting the best deal out of his death. Sounds like he left a whole lot behind, and most of it coming to you.”
