She kept walking. She did not look back. She went to the nursery and held Tommy until Mrs. Bridwell gently took him for his evening feed, and Mary sat in the rocking chair and pressed her hands against her knees and stared at the ceiling and thought about corridors and kitchens and a word whispered in the dark.
Charlotte was right. Evander did not need to cross a county. He needed to cross a corridor.
But Mary could not force him through it. She could not batter down his walls or argue him out of his fear or love him hard enough to make him choose her. She had told him what she wanted. She had been brave and honest and clear, and the next move belonged to him.
All she could do was wait.
Waiting, Mary was discovering, was the hardest kind of courage.
CHAPTER 31
“Iowe you an apology.”
Richard looked up from his coffee. They sat in Evander’s study, the door closed, the morning light falling across the desk between them.
Richard had shaved for the first time since his return, and the face beneath the stubble looked younger than Evander expected. Closer to the boy who had played chess on the rug in this very house fourteen years ago.
“For what?” Richard asked.
“For not believing you.” Evander set his own cup down. “When you told us what happened with Charlotte, I did not say it, but part of me doubted you. Part of me still expected the worst because expecting the worst from you has been easier than trusting you for a very long time.”
Richard’s jaw tightened, but he did not look away. “You had reason.”
“I had a habit. There is a difference.” Evander leaned back in his chair. “You were reckless, Richard. The gambling. The debts. The boxing ring. I spent years cleaning up after you, and I let that become the entire story. The irresponsible younger brother. The one who needed managing.” He paused. “But what you did for Charlotte was not reckless. It was brave, and I failed to see it.”
Richard stared at his coffee. A muscle worked in his cheek, and his grip on the cup tightened. “I should have told you. From the beginning. Instead of running, instead of hiding, I should have walked into this study and told you everything and trusted you to help.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was ashamed.” Richard set the cup down. “Not of Charlotte. Of myself. Of the mess I had made of my life before any of this happened. The debts, the fights, the nights I stumbled home and could not look at you because I knew you were comparing me to Father, and I was terrified you were right.”
The words landed in the quiet study. Evander looked at his brother and saw, with painful clarity, the cost of the story he had built. The irresponsible brother. The one who needed managing. He had told that story so many times, to himself and to others, that Richard had started to believe it.
“I was wrong,” Evander said. “About you. About what you were capable of.”
Richard’s eyes shone. He pressed his lips together and nodded, once, and the nod held the weight of twenty years of trying to earn something he should never have had to earn.
“Marry her,” Evander said.
Richard blinked. “What?”
“Lucrezia. Marry her. I can see what she is to you, and I can see what you are when you speak about her. If that is what you want, I will arrange for you to live in Europe. Italy, if she prefers. I have connections in Rome and Florence, and your linguistic abilities would serve you well in either city.”
Richard stared at him. “Evander, you do not have to?—”
“I have spent my life telling you what to do and how to do it. This is the one time I am telling you to do what makes you happy.” Evander met his brother’s gaze. “You deserve that, Richard. You have earned it.”
Richard stood. He crossed the desk and pulled Evander out of his chair and embraced him. It was graceless and sudden, the kind of embrace brothers gave when words had run out, and the body had to finish what the words could not. Evander stood rigid for a moment, the instinct to resist physical contact warring withsomething older and deeper, and then his arms came up, and he hugged his brother back.
They stood like that in the morning light, two men raised in a house where affection had been rationed, and damage had been constant, and the embrace was awkward and brief and the most honest thing that had passed between them in years.
Richard pulled back. His eyes were wet. “Thank you.”
“Go and write to Lucrezia. Tell her to start looking at apartments in Florence.”
Richard laughed, rough and unsteady, and left the study. Evander sat back down and stared at the desk and pressed his hand flat against the surface and felt, beneath the relief, the sharp awareness that he had just told his brother to pursue love while he himself sat in a locked study, avoiding his wife.
“Smile.”
