“So you don’t want me to be sorry,” Will said. He was smiling very slightly now, the sort of smile a small child might bend upon the castle he has just built out of toy blocks, before he destroys it with a wave of his arm.
“I don’t care whether you’re sorry or not,” Tessa said. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to tell you to be kind to my brother. He’s been through an awful ordeal. He doesn’t need to be interrogated like some sort of criminal.”
Will replied more quietly than Tessa would have thought. “I understand that. But if he’s hiding anything—”
“Everyone hides things!” Tessa burst out, surprising herself. “There are things I know he’s ashamed of, but that doesn’t mean they need to matter to you. It’s not as if you tell everyone everything, do you?”
Will looked wary. “What are you on about?”
What about your parents, Will? Why did you refuse to see them? Why do you have nowhere to go but here? And why, in the attic, did you send me away? But Tessa said none of those things. Instead she said, “What about Jem? Why didn’t you tell me he was ill the way he is?”
“Jem?” Will’s surprise seemed genuine. “He didn’t want me to. He considers it his business. Which it is. You might recall, I wasn’t even in favor of him telling you himself. He thought he owed you an explanation, but he didn’t. Jem owes nothing to anyone. What happened to him wasn’t his fault, and yet he carries the burden of it and is ashamed—”
“He has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“You might think so. Others see no difference between his illness and an addiction, and they despise him for being weak. As if he could just stop taking the drug if he had enough willpower.” Will sounded surprisingly bitter. “They’ve said as much, sometimes to his face. I didn’t want him to have to hear you say it too.”
“I would never have said that.”
“How would I have guessed what you might say?” Will said. “I don’t really know you, Tessa, do I? Any more than you know me.”
“You don’t want anyone to know you,” Tessa snapped. “And very well, I won’t try. But don’t pretend that Jem is just like you. Perhaps he’d rather people knew the truth of who he is.”
“Don’t,” Will said, his blue eyes darkening. “Don’t think you know Jem better than I do.”
“If you care about him so much, why aren’t you doing anything to help him? Why not look for a cure?”
“Do you think we haven’t? Do you think Charlotte hasn’t looked, Henry hasn’t looked, that we haven’t hired warlocks, paid for information, called in favors? Do you imagine Jem’s death is just something we have all accepted without ever fighting against it?”
“Jem told me that he had asked you all to stop looking,” Tessa said, calm in the face of his anger, “and that you had. Haven’t you?”
“He told you that, did he?”
“Have you stopped?”
“There is nothing to find, Tessa. There is no cure.”
“You don’t know that. You could keep looking and not ever tell him you were looking. There might be something. Even the littlest chance—”
Will raised his eyebrows. The flickering corridor light deepened the shadows under his eyes, the angular bones of his cheeks. “You think we should disregard his wishes?”
“I think that you should do whatever you can, even if it means you must lie to him. I think I don’t understand your acceptance of his death.”
“And I think that you do not understand that sometimes the only choice is between acceptance and madness.”
Behind them in the corridor someone cleared their throat. “What’s going on here, then?” asked a familiar voice. Both Tessa and Will had been so caught up in their conversation that they had not heard Jem approaching. Will gave a guilty start before turning to look at his friend, who was regarding them both with calm interest. Jem was fully dressed but looked as if he had just woken from a feverish sleep, his hair mussed and his cheeks burning with color.
Will looked surprised, and not entirely pleased, to see him. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I ran into Charlotte in the hall. She said we were all meeting in the drawing room to talk with Tessa’s brother.” Jem’s tone was mild, and it was impossible to tell from his expression how much of Tessa and Will’s conversation he had overheard. “I’m well enough to listen, at least.”
“Oh, good, you’re all here.” It was Charlotte, hurrying up the corridor. Behind her strode Henry, and on either side of him, Jessamine and Sophie. Jessie had changed into one of her nicest dresses, Tessa observed, a sheer blue muslin, and she was carrying a folded blanket. Sophie, beside her, held a tray with tea and sandwiches on it.
“Are those for Nate?” Tessa asked, surprised. “The tea, and the blankets?”
Sophie nodded. “Mrs. Branwell thought he’d likely be hungry—”
“And I thought he might be cold. He was shivering so last night,” Jessamine put in eagerly. “Should we bring these things in to him, then?”
Charlotte looked to Tessa for her approval, which disarmed her. Charlotte would be kind to Nate; she couldn’t help it. “Yes. He’s waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Tessa,” Charlotte said softly, and then she pushed the drawing room door open and went in, followed by the others. As Tessa moved to go after them, she felt a hand on her arm, a touch so light she almost might not have noticed it.
It was Jem. “Wait,” he said. “Just a moment.”
She turned to look at him. Through the open doorway she could hear a murmur of voices—Henry’s friendly baritone, Jessamine’s eager falsetto rising as she said Nate’s name. “What is it?”
He hesitated. His hand on her arm was cool; his fingers felt like thin stems of glass against her skin. She wondered if the skin over the bones of his cheeks, where he was flushed and feverish, would be warmer to the touch.
“But my sister—” Nate’s voice floated into the hallway, sounding anxious. “Is she joining us? Where is she?”
“Never mind. It’s nothing.” With a reassuring smile Jem dropped his hand. Tessa wondered, but turned and went into the drawing room, Jem behind her.
Sophie was kneeling by the grate, building up the fire; Nate was still in the armchair, where he sat with Jessamine’s blanket thrown over his lap. Jessamine, upright on a stool nearby, was beaming proudly. Henry and Charlotte sat on the sofa opposite Nate—Charlotte clearly bursting with curiosity—and Will, as usual, was holding up the nearest wall by leaning against it and looking both irritable and amused at the same time.
As Jem went to join Will, Tessa fixed her attention on her brother. Some of the tension had gone out of him when she’d come back into the room, but he still looked miserable. He was plucking at Jessamine’s blanket with his fingertips. She crossed the room and sank down onto the ottoman at his feet, resisting the urge to ruffle his hair or pat his shoulder. She could feel all the eyes in the room on her. Everyone was watching her and her brother, and she could have heard a pin drop.