“Before what?” Elinor asked, though she already knew the shape of the answer.
Annabelle’s steps slowed. Ahead of them, Newton had abandoned the sparrow and was investigating a patch of clover with intense concentration.
“He was engaged once. Years ago, before our uncle died, before the duchy.” Annabelle’s voice dropped. “Her name was Vivian. She and Lucien grew up together, and he loved her in the way young men love when they believe the world will be kind to them. He had a friend, too, Henry. They were inseparable.”
Elinor’s chest tightened. She knew this. Lucien had told her in the apartment, his voice catching in places he had not expected, his eyes on the fire instead of her face. But hearing it from Annabelle, who had watched her brother break, added a dimension that his own telling had not contained.
“They left together,” Annabelle said. “Vivian and Henry. They took the money Lucien had given Henry out of kindness and used it to sail to America. He found out from a letter.”
Newton returned to Elinor’s ankles, winding between them. She crouched to adjust his lead, grateful for the excuse to look away while she composed herself.
“He told me,” Elinor said.
Annabelle’s eyes widened. “He told you? He has never spoken of it to anyone. Not to me, not to his friends. No one.”
“He told me.”
A long silence stretched between them. Annabelle studied Elinor’s face with an expression that shifted from surprise to something deeper, something that looked like hope confirmed.
“Then he loves you,” Annabelle said, with the quiet certainty of a sister who knew her brother’s heart better than he did. “He may not have said it. He may not even know it yet. But if he trusted you with Vivian, then he loves you, Elinor. That is the one door he swore he would never open again.”
Elinor straightened, Newton’s lead wrapped around her fingers. The park continued around them, birdsong and distant laughter and the rustle of leaves, but she heard none of it.
He loves you.
The guilt hit so hard she could taste it. Because Annabelle believed this. She believed in the engagement, in the courtship, in the love she could see growing between her brother and the woman he had chosen. She had crossed miles to be here for it. And every word of it was built on a lie that Elinor had agreed to, a lie she had stepped into willingly, and now the lie had grown so tangled with truth that she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
She opened her mouth to say something. What, she did not know. A confession, perhaps. An apology. The truth, finally, to the one person who deserved it most.
But Rebecca’s voice cut through the park like a blade.
“There you are, Elinor. I’ve been looking for you.”
Her stepmother appeared on the path with Belinda beside her, both dressed for promenading, both wearing expressions that suggested Elinor’s peaceful morning had been judged and found lacking. Rebecca’s gaze swept from Elinor to Annabelle to Newton and back, and the warmth she assembled for Annabelle’s benefit arrived with practiced speed.
“Lady Annabelle, how lovely to see you. I do hope Elinor is not boring you with her unusual interests.”
“Not at all, Lady Morland.” Annabelle’s smile was polished and pleasant and gave nothing away. “Lady Elinor has been teaching me about Greek mythology. It is fascinating.”
“How … charming.” Rebecca’s hand found Elinor’s arm and squeezed. The grip was firm enough to leave a mark, hidden beneath the fabric of her sleeve. “Elinor, Belinda and I are joining Lady Langley for tea. You will accompany us.”
It was not a request.
“Of course, Stepmother.”
Belinda, who had been eyeing Annabelle with the calculating attention of a woman assessing a rival, leaned in. “Lady Annabelle, I do hope your brother intends to attend Lord Whitfield’s ball next week. It would be such a pity if he were absent again.” Her eyes slid to Elinor. “We would not want people to talk.”
“People always talk, Lady Belinda,” Annabelle’s voice carried the lightness of a woman who had spent nineteen years watching her brother navigate the ton and had learned every trick. “The question is whether one cares. I find I do not.”
Belinda’s smile stiffened. Rebecca steered the conversation toward tea arrangements, and Elinor allowed herself to be ledaway, casting one look back at Annabelle, who raised her hand in a small wave.
He loves you.
The words stayed with her through the tea, through Belinda’s barbs, through Rebecca’s corrections. They stayed with her as she returned to Morland House and climbed the stairs to her room and sat on the edge of her bed with Newton curled beside her and the celestial atlas open to Lyra.
“What am I going to do?”
She said it to Newton, who offered no answer beyond pressing his head into her hand. The atlas lay open on her lap. She traced the constellation with her fingertip, the same pattern that now hung above the door of a building full of children she loved, named for a lesson she had once given.
