Letitia’s jaw was set. Her eyes filled with tears, and they dripped onto her cheeks. It took Cecily everything she had not to weep with her.
She came into the room and pulled Cecily into a tight hug. Cecily held on and breathed carefully through her nose, trying not to cry.
“He is an idiot,” Letitia murmured into her shoulder.
“Letitia…” Cecily croaked.
“He is,” Letitia said, pulling back. Her eyes were very red. “I am going to tell him so.”
“Give him some time first,” Cecily said.
“How much time?”
“Some.”
Letitia looked at her for a long moment. “All right.” And then, more quietly, in a tiny voice: “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you too,” Cecily said. “Both of you.”
She meant it wholeheartedly.
The carriage was brought around at four. Cecily went down the stairs with nothing in her hands, what with Ellen having seen to the trunk. The entrance hall was quiet. Mr. Prentiss stood at the door with a grave expression.
She did not look in the direction of the study. She put on her coat and accepted her gloves from Ellen.
She stood in the entrance hall of Blackmoor House, which had been her home for two months and she had only admitted it recently, looked at it once—the staircase, the portraits above the fireplace, the longcase clock that she had learned to tell the time by—and then walked out the door.
The afternoon was grey and cold. She descended the front steps and walked to the carriage without looking back.
She stood with her hand on the carriage door and the cold air against her face, and looked up at the study window. She saw his silhouette move to stand by the window, watching her.
She exhaled and climbed into the carriage.
The carriage rolled through the gates and onto the street, and the house fell away behind her. She sat very still and did not think about any of the things that constituted the last two months of her life. Instead, she thought with deliberate firmness that she would be all right.
She had been all right before.
She briefly pressed her fingers to her lips once more, then folded her hands in her lap and looked at the road ahead, remaining very quiet all the way to Beatrice’s house.
CHAPTER 26
“Your Grace.” Beatrice’s footman opened the door and looked at her, at the single trunk being brought down from the carriage, then at whatever was currently on her face, and his composure faltered. “Shall I inform Her Grace you’ve arrived?”
“Please,” Cecily said.
He showed her into the entrance hall before disappearing.
She stood in the familiar warmth of Beatrice’s house and took in the yellow wallpaper Edward hated but Beatrice had kept anyway, the small portrait of Eloise at eighteen months that hung by the stairs, the smell of good wood and fresh flowers, and felt the distance between here and Blackmoor House settle into her like weight.
She had not sent word ahead. It occurred to her that she should have, that arriving unannounced at her sister’s door with a trunkand no explanation was the sort of thing that required, at a minimum, a note. But she had not thought of it in time, and she was not sure she could have written a note even if she’d thought of it, because she was not entirely sure what the note would have said.
Dear Beatrice,
I have made a terrible mistake. Not in leaving, but in staying as long as I did and letting myself believe it was something it wasn’t. I’ll be at your door around four. Please have tea prepared?
Beatrice came down the stairs with speed. She stopped on the third step and looked at Cecily. At the coat still on, the gloves still in her hands, the trunk being carried through the door behind her.
“Cecily,” she greeted.
