“He hates anything above his chest,” Mary said. “I told you. He will tolerate it to the waist, but the moment it touches his ribs, he kicks.”
Charlotte laughed. Tommy lay on his back in the crib, eyes wide, legs pumping in the air with the focused determination of a baby training for an event no one had explained to him. William sat in the rocking chair beside the window, a book open on his knee,watching Charlotte and Tommy with an expression that had not changed since the day he arrived: quiet, steady wonder.
“He looks bigger,” Charlotte said. “Even in the two days since I’ve been here. Is that possible?”
“Mrs. Bridwell says they change overnight at this age. One morning, you look at them, and something is different, and you cannot name what it is, but the baby you put to bed is not quite the same baby you lifted out in the morning.”
“That frightens me.” Charlotte rested her hand on Tommy’s stomach. “I have already missed so much. What if I keep missing things? What if he changes in ways I do not notice because I was not here for the beginning?”
Mary put her hand over Charlotte’s. “You will notice. You will learn from him the way I did, one day at a time. And whatever I miss, you will write to me about it. Every tooth. Every new sound. Every ridiculous thing he does with a cloth at bath time.”
Charlotte smiled, but the smile faltered at the edges. “And you will write to me in France.”
“Every week.”
“From London.”
“From London.”
The word settled between them. London. Where Mary would be. France. Where Tommy would be. The channel between them, narrow on a map and enormous in practice, and every letter Mary wrote would be a bridge across water she could not swim.
William closed his book and stood. “I will leave you two for a while. I promised Richard I would look at the lease agreement Evander drafted for the Paris apartment.” He kissed Charlotte’s temple and paused beside the crib. His hand rested on Tommy’s head for a moment, gentle and proprietary, and then he left.
The nursery was quiet. Tommy kicked his blanket off again. Charlotte picked it up and folded it across his waist, exactly where Mary had taught her.
“Tell me about the wedding,” Mary said.
Charlotte’s face brightened. “We will marry in France, once we are settled. William wants a small church near the university. Just the two of us, and whoever we can convince to cross the Channel.” Charlotte squeezed Mary’s hand. “A month, perhaps. Once we have a home. It will not be grand, Mary. But it will be ours.”
“He wants to get it right.”
“He wants it to be perfect. I told him that perfect is a myth and that I would marry him in a cow pasture if he asked me, and he said he would keep that as a fourth option.” Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “It will not be grand, Mary. But it will be ours.”
Mary smiled. The ache in her chest pressed against her ribs, quiet and persistent, and she held the smile because Charlotte deserved to talk about her wedding without watching her sister grieve.
“And your home in France?” Mary asked. “What are you imagining?”
“A small apartment. Near the university, so William can walk to his lectures. A room for Tommy with a window that faces the morning sun, because he likes the light. I saw that. He turns toward the window every morning.” Charlotte’s voice softened. “A kitchen where I can learn to cook, because I cannot, and William cannot either, and between the two of us we will poison ourselves within the first week if I do not learn.”
Mary laughed. Charlotte laughed, too, and the laughter carried through the nursery and woke Tommy, who blinked at them both with startled indignation.
“And on Sundays,” Charlotte continued, lifting Tommy from the crib, “we will walk along the Seine. William says there are booksellers lining the riverbank, and cafés where you can sit for hours, and no one asks you to leave. He says Paris does not care who you were in England. You can simply be who you are.”
“That sounds like heaven.”
“It sounds like a beginning.” She settled Tommy against her shoulder, and he grabbed her collar, and the motion was so familiar that Mary’s heart clenched. “Will you visit? In thespring, perhaps? I want Tommy to know his aunt. I want him to grow up hearing your voice.”
“Try to keep me away.”
“I want a life that belongs to us,” Charlotte said. “Not arranged by Papa. Not managed by society. A life that William and I build together, for Tommy, where the only opinions that matter are the ones inside our own walls.”
Mary pressed her thumbnail into the pad of her finger and focused on the small, sharp pain. Charlotte was describing everything Mary wanted. A home built on love. A partnership. A husband who wrote three drafts of his wedding vows because getting it right mattered more than getting it done.
And Mary had that man. He lived in this house. He had defended her family, arranged passage to France, threatened lords at ballrooms, and told a fox story to a baby in the dark. He had kissed her in corridors and carriages and a kitchen at three in the morning…
But he could not give her what Charlotte had. He could not cross the distance between wanting and choosing. He could not tear down the walls he had spent fourteen years building, not even for her.
“Mary.” Charlotte’s voice was gentle. “What is it?”
