Most recently, he’d been half-heartedly courting Mary Tierney, a pretty, good sort of girl whose family had pushed her onhim in desperation because she’d reached the age of twenty-five without a proposal. But she hadn’t sparked in Arthur any of the feelings his beloved romance novels said he should have when he fell in love. The only women who ever had were unattainable: married women, for example, or strangers who were but passing ships to Seacliff. He wasn’t sure why he fell briefly in love with such women, but he suspected, uncomfortably, that it was preciselybecausethey were unattainable.
His courtship with Mary had broken off when she’d absconded to Glenwhistle with the cash Arthur had given her and a young lover of whom her mother disapproved. No one else knew what had happened, and he hoped no one ever would—Charlotte least of all. He’d found it dreadfully romantic, the situation between Mary and her beau. Charlotte would’ve found it foolish.
He sat beside her. “I’m sorry I told the children that story. I won’t do it again.”
Charlotte laughed wetly. “You will, Arthur. You know you will. The second Sasha asks.”
He wanted to protest but didn’t, because it was true. He found it hard to deny Sasha anything, no matter how he knew he ought to.
“Well, then—” he bumped Charlotte with his shoulder “—next time I’ll make sure you don’t hear it.”
Chuckling ruefully, she fished a handkerchief from her skirt. She dabbed her eyes, gazing at her still-laced boots with a sigh.
“You had the right idea, getting into your nightclothes early.”
“Would you like help with your boots?”
“Not in the slightest. But I suppose I need it. If I bend over at this point, I don’t think I’m getting back up.” Charlotte grimaced. “My hair, too. My fingers are...”
She flexed her hands and rubbed them together, breathing on them for warmth. She’d taken ill back in February; since then, her joints often ached or swelled, or both. She’d had spells of faintness and dizziness, too, occasional palpitations or difficulty breathing, and, on some days, a fog in her brain so dense she could hardly think.
She’d tried to hide it, at first, and still often did. Arthur helped as much as he could—quietly, since Charlotte’s answer upon being asked whether she needed help was usually no. Agreeing to it tonight was a sort of accomplishment, Arthur thought, though he knew she felt differently. Agreeing to use the cane, especially down to the village and back, had been another.
He knelt at her feet, unlaced her boots, removed them, and placed them beside her bedside table with its whistle rack and stack of old medical texts. The texts had been their father’s; the whistles, three in various sizes, were Charlotte’s, not that she played much anymore. Her husband had made the small cherrywood whistle sitting in the place of pride at the top of the rack.
“Are we all right?” Arthur asked.
The corner of her mouth turned up.
“Of course we are.” Charlotte spoke so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “I like when you tell the stories, you know. They remind me of Dad, too. It’s just...”
He patted her knee. “I know.”
Exhaustion radiated from her. She caught him looking at her in concern and said, “I’m fine. Help me up.”
Thatfinewas automatic. She constantly said that—but she hadn’t always. When she’d been young, she’d divulged when things bothered her, when she’d hurt herself, when a healing had been unsuccessful. Since John’s death, she’d become closed off. Like she wanted to distance herself from their mother, who,after George’s disappearance, had wept and wailed over every pain life threw at them. Now, whether it was her body hurting her or life, Charlotte said flatly,I’m fine, and moved on.
Arthur waited as she changed behind a screen, in case she needed additional help. She’d been mortified the first time she needed help changing after her illness. The screen had been a compromise so he could be nearby, just in case, when she’d had a bad day. Sasha sometimes helped instead (if it wasn’t past the children’s bedtime), but she struggled with some of the pieces of Charlotte’s wardrobe that, as an eight-year-old, she was years from wearing.
Charlotte emerged in her nightgown and sat in bed. Arthur sat beside her, took her hair out of its chignon, and started braiding it. He hadn’t quite gotten the hang of braids, but he practiced on Sasha whenever she’d let him.
“What’s your new book about?” Charlotte asked, and Arthur grinned. On nights like this, when she needed help with her clothes and hair, he told her the stories in his romance novels. Agnes Livingston, a wealthy woman with a collection of timepieces to which Arthur could only aspire, had given him a new book this afternoon, declaring it didn’t suit her taste, when he’d returned her newly repaired tabletop clock. It was mostly thanks to her library that his small cache of novels had grown over the last three decades.
“I’ll get you reading romance yet.”
“Thank you, no. I much prefer my radio shows.”
“You’ll like this one. It’s more like your radio shows, listen—”
Arthur launched into an explanation of his new book, in which the intrepid heroine picked her way through a forest filled with creatures that wanted nothing more than to eat her, until a monster saved her. Subsequently, of course, she realized he wasn’t a monster (except anatomically) and fell in love with him.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Anatomically?”
Arthur flushed. “Well—it’s—helookslike a monster, that’s all,” he said, although, since he hadn’t yet reached an intimate scene, he couldn’t be sure the love interest’s monstrous anatomydidn’textend to his nether regions.
Charlotte grinned. “Good heavens, Arthur, what did you think I meant?”
Arthur flicked her shoulder, but he liked seeing her grin. He returned to her hair and his story.
