Perhaps she’d only imagined it. She went to the bedside table where she’d left the journal and opened it to a random page.
Today Reverend Keeper preached on marriage, and read from the Song of Solomon. It moved me, but not in a way that honors God nor my intentions.
It made me envious of the poet, and his dove-eyed woman.
One is not meant to read the Bible in a state of depravity but I did so. I went home and I read it and God forgive me, I burned.
Oh, Henry. It was his handwriting. But more than that, it was his character.
She remembered how stiff and stern he’d been when she’d given him his tour of the whipping house. She’d thought he’d been tense with condemnation.
She’d misread who that judgment had been aimed at.
Not at her.
At himself.
Slowly, she shut the book.
She could not tell him that she had this. It was kinder, surely, to return it to Elena, who could say it had been found in some forgotten corner by a servant.
She would not read it again. She tucked the book into her satchel and forced her attention to the songbook Henry’d given her, to the musical notations in the book of hymns.
But all she could think were two words.
I burned.
Chapter 17
Henry stood outside Alice’s door, unable to shake the sense he’d ruined something.
She’d scarcely been able to look at him. The sight of him hurt her so severely she’d seemed like she might faint dead away.
He wanted to knock again.
Apologize.
Explain himself.
To say “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I simply don’t know what it would make me if I took your caress as freely as you offered it.”
(A hypocrite.)
But he could not knock again, because she’d so very clearly wanted him to leave. And, of course, he did not need to say the words aloud to her for her to know that there could be nothing between them.
But he hated the thought that he had wounded her.
(He wished it could be different. He wished he could knock and apologize by giving her the kiss he’d dodged last night. He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to.)
He trudged miserably down the stairs to his father’s study, where he’d been summoned with a letter on his breakfast tray demanding “an audience to discuss your upcoming marriage” on his father’s formal stationery.
“Henry, there you are,” his father greeted him brusquely. “You’re late.”
Henry glanced at the clock. It was one minute past the appointed hour. “My apologies, sir.”
His father gestured at a hardback chair in front of his broad desk. “Have a seat.”
Ah, so he planned to address Henry from behind his desk, like an employer, rather than, say, deigning to sit on the sofa near the fire with the son he had not seen in half a decade. Splendid.
(Honor. Thy. Father.)
“I won’t waste time with niceties,” his father said, folding his hands on top of his desk. “I asked you here because I’m ruined.”
The muzzled thoughts in his head—guilt, Alice, want, pain, kissing—stopped swirling abruptly.
“Ruined, sir?”
His father leaned back in his chair, adjusted his silver wig and nodded curtly. “I had hoped to expand production—Jonathan is keen to enlarge the concern—and a few ventures proved riskier than we anticipated.”
Henry’s father was a cautious businessman and notoriously tight with money. Whatever this misadventure had been, it was almost certainly his brother’s doing. And yet his father acted brisk and unconcerned. He’d shown more rage when Henry had declined the lamb at supper.
“There are,” his father stated, “debts.” He leveled his eyes at Henry, piercing him.
Henry said nothing, waiting to hear what this might have to do with him.
“If I cannot raise twenty thousand pounds by quarter’s end, I shall have to sell the factory.”
Henry blinked. That number was a fortune.
“Perhaps you can sell this house,” he offered.
“Already mortgaged,” his father said crisply. “I have two options. I can sell to Bradley-Hough, who will give me half what the concern is worth and stamp his name on my legacy. Or my son can marry his daughter. Who, you see, has a dowry double what I need.”
His father rarely spoke to him so frankly. Some small, malnourished part of him awakened, flattered that he’d been asked to save the family business, even if it was at a cost to himself.
But even as the feeling stirred, he knew that it was pitiful.
He owed his father respect. Not this.
“Sir, I am troubled by your predicament,” he said slowly. “But my circumstances are such that I highly doubt Miss Bradley-Hough would view me as a welcome suitor. I live in rented rooms, keep no servants—”
“Miss Bradley-Hough can afford to keep the both of you. She is the sole heir to her father’s fortune, and has her dowry besides. And in return for lending me the capital, I’ll pay you a handsome dividend, plus interest. You’ll be a rich man, Henry. Richer than I ever was.”
He had never wanted to be rich. He cared little for money.
“And what if you sell to Bradley-Hough instead? Will it cover your debts?”
His father looked, for a brief minute, old. “Just. But I shall lose the enterprise I’ve spent my entire life building up from nothing. You, who have had everything given to you, would not understand.” His expression hardened. “And I shall know my son willed it.”
Henry closed his eyes. This was not fair. He was grateful for his education at the fine public schools his father had insisted he attend, but he hadn’t taken a penny from his family since he’d graduated Oxford. He had taken the position at Saints & Satyrs precisely because he knew his father would balk at supporting him after he’d refused to enter the clergy.
“Sir, I am not unsympathetic to your circumstances,” he said slowly. “But I cannot promise to enter an unsuitable marriage.”
Henry’s father slammed his fist down on the desk. “Unsuitable! You act as though marriage to a fine woman who will make you a wealthy man is a burden. If you don’t like the girl leave her in Bath and go about your ridiculous revivals. I am asking you to see sense, for once in your life. To do what this family requires of you.”
“Marriage is a sacred vow, made before God,” Henry said quietly. “I will not undertake it for venial reasons.”
His father closed his eyes, like this sentence gave him stomach pains.
It troubled Henry, to be the cause of this. He understood what his father would lose.
Was this what the Lord meant, when he commanded ‘honor thy father’? That if one’s parent suffered, one suffered too, however little warmth there was between you?
Henry decided to provide what little mercy he was able. “I will speak to Miss Bradley-Hough. Should I find that she and I might be compatible, I will consider what you ask.”
(We won’t be compatible, however, and I will not do what you ask.)
His father opened his eyes and looked at him. They looked colder than the snowy day outside. “Approach the girl however you like, Henry. But if you don’t leave this house betrothed to her, don’t bother coming back. Ever.”