“Della, listen to me,” Clara leaned against the desk, resting one hand on Della’s shoulder. Her presence, for once, was steadying. “I think you’d find that the moment you left Westfield Manor, for London or otherwise, we would follow you. There’s noallowinganything. No one gets left behind.” She emphasized the phrase again, as if she couldn’t underscore its importance enough.
“You’ve discussed this with Mr. Stanton?” Della asked. She still didn’t like this. There was so much to lose, for her and everyone else, but she was beginning to consider it, just because she didn’t see any other way. Sitting around here waiting for news was not her place. Nor was it Clara’s.
“Well, no.” Clara turned to face Della. Her cheeks were flushed, and she didn’t know if that was from the exertion of this conversation or from the mention of her Mr. Stanton. “But I believe he could be convinced.” Her smile turned almost smug, and Della felt a flash of envy.
“It must be nice, having a man so willing to do anything for you,” she muttered. It was a whisper, a sentence she felt guilty even uttering.
“Della,” Clara looked at her with almost annoyance on her face. It was gentle, but it was annoyance nonetheless. “You have a man of common birth going all over London, confronting a viscount, not tomention your mother, who is a beast of her own, just to help you get what is yours. Please do not act as if you do not have such a man.”
That guilt rose up again, and as the cloud of her own mixed feelings dissipated, Della finally saw the path forward. It was dark and shadowed, possibly far too difficult to pass, but she had to take it. There was no other choice. Andrew was on the other side.
More soon,he’d said. From the bottom of her heart, Della fervently hoped so.
Chapter Twenty-One
In the end,Mr. Stanton had been able to be convinced. Della knew no further details of how, and she didn’t particularly want to. She watched them now, Clara and Harry, sitting on the other side of the carriage. Clara’s head rested on Harry’s shoulder, and his head had sort of drifted over to rest atop hers. They made an excellent pair. Della had never seen them quite that close together. At Westfield Manor, they seemed to revolve around each other. Hovering, moving in the same directions, but never exactly meeting in the middle. To see them now, pressed against each other with their faces relaxed in sleep, it would seem that they ended each day this very same way. In truth, Della felt as if she were intruding on some private moment.
She turned her gaze toward the window, her fingers peeling back the curtain just slightly. She couldn’t see much, given the impending dark. They could be anywhere by now. She’d lost track of things like the day or the time. Della let the curtain go, flexing and fisting her hand over and over in an attempt to ease the throbbing, as even that miniscule action had sent an ache all the way up to her elbow. This journey was proving to be more physically taxing than she’d thought. Her own fragility had been a reason she’d immediately rebuked Clara’s idea to go to London, but it was much less significant than the realities of how their lives would change should this all go wrong. She could lose Andrew. She could lose Clara and Harry and Mrs. Goldsmith andGwen. The family and the home she’d built at Westfield Manor. At the slightest mishap, this trip could cost her everything.
Just as she had that sobering thought, the carriage hit a bump. Her hips slid forward, and she had to grip the seat below her so as not to pitch forward into the floor. A hiss left her lips. Her hands were well beyond the point of comfortably clutching anything, and every point where bones connected between her knees and her chest felt as if it were aflame.
“Are you all right?” Clara whispered. It was a quiet huff for her, but it was a normal volume of speech for anyone else. Harry hadn’t moved, his eyes still closed in the comfort of sleep.
“I’m well, thank you.” Della tried to appear so. She straightened her posture, went through as much of her daily stretching routine as she could in the close confines of the carriage. She didn’t know how well Clara could see her. The light was low, almost nonexistent, and most of it drifted in intermittently from the window when they passed something particularly well-lit along the road.
“Do you suppose this is dangerous?” Clara asked. She’d turned toward the window, and a sliver of light hit the contours of her face.
“Traveling into the night, you mean?” Della responded. They had perhaps pushed too far, choosing not to stop at the last coaching inn they’d passed before evening set in. They’d stop at the next one, but she worried that their quick pace would prove costly.
She did feel some better, though, having moved around a bit. Her body had made truly terrifying creaks and groans, but Della had long ago accepted those as a particular eccentricity of hers. She considered them the sound of the pain leaving her body. It hadn’t left just then, not completely. It had subsided. Calmed. It had taken a few steps away from her, but it had not left her alone entirely. She supposed she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if it did.
“That, too,” Clara remarked. Her face had pulled into a smirk, an expression of her natural humor. That was something Della hadalways admired about her. She could tell a crowd the most heartbreaking story and still make them all laugh. The problem was that those heartbreaking stories were usually Clara’s own. Della sensed an anxiety in her that she found unfamiliar. She couldn’t see it on her face, not past that smirk, but she felt it thicken the air between them.
“We can turn back, Clara. I promise. I don’t want you to risk yourself like this for me, and I don’t want you to worry. This is dangerous, and we both know it.” Della didn’t know how to make her understand. That she didn’t need to do this for her. That Clara had already done so much more than anyone else ever had. Than anyone else had ever considered doing.
“No,” Clara shook her head. That smirk was nowhere to be seen, but Clara wasn’t looking at her. She stared out the window, her expression inexplicably blank. “We have come too far.”
“I don’t even know where we are,” Della argued.
“No,” Clara repeated. She met her eyes now, a desperation there that begged Della to understand. “That’s not what I meant. We have come too far.”
They sat with that for long moments. Time was transient here, in this liminal space of the carriage. There was no way to know how many minutes passed before Della dared to speak again.
“If you are certain you don’t want to turn back, then why are you so...” She struggled to articulate what she meant. What she saw in Clara’s eyes. “Forlorn?”
Clara laughed, it was something sudden and inappropriate and almost surprised.
“I’m not certain I even know what that means.” Her voice had become oddly wet. Della couldn’t see her well enough at the moment to confirm that she was crying, but she would almost bet she was. She didn’t know how to handle a crying Clara. It was an experience they’d never shared.
When she spoke again, her voice was more sure somehow.Perhaps there was something cleansing about this, crying in the dark. Suspended in time and space.
“I am not... forlorn.” Clara sniffed. “I’ve just been thinking, along this journey, about what happens after this is all over. It feels as if nothing will be the same when we return home, no matter what.”
Della nodded, and she realized that was an exercise in futility in such a darkened space. She’d just wanted to silently acknowledge that she understood. That she knew what she was asking of them.
“You are the only family I have, Della,” she said in a low voice. Della could see the tears now, streaming unbidden down her face. She made no effort to swipe them away. It was as if she were pretending they didn’t exist. That she was only really crying if she admitted she was.
“As are you to me,” Della whispered back. “You may not be the only family I have by blood,” she sighed. “But you are the only family I care about.”
