"I will.”
He tipped his hat one more time before shoving his hands in his pockets and defending the steps towards an old Renault parked in the circle drive. My gaze followed behind him, wondering if his final words were simply good natured advice or a warning.
I shut the door behind him, my fingers glancing over the lock. It was the middle of the day. Humphrey and Mrs. Winters and Rowan would all be coming and going. I wasn’t in London anymore where locking your door was second nature. There was no reason to need locked doors in a house this size, but Longborn’s words lingered in the air around me. I drew my hand back, deciding that it was ridiculous to lock the door in the middle of the afternoon. Then, I went to look for Belle.
I found Nora with Penny in the nursery, rocking her softly. Daylight streamed around her, casting a shimmering glow. She looked up at me and smiled. I returned it and edged quietly out of the room. I appreciated having her here to help. I just couldn’t quite get used to finding her with the baby. That would take time. A quick search of the bedroom yielded no results. I finally found Belle sitting behind my desk, chair turned to face the window overlooking the grounds.
"Waiting for me, beautiful?” I asked, repeating how she greeted me earlier.
She didn’t respond, and I walked into the office toward her. As I reached the desk, I realized its doors were open, a number of items strewn across the top of it, including my father’s gun. It took me a moment to process what I was seeing. “Were you looking for something?”
"Not exactly.”
I picked up the gun and placed it in the back of the center drawer. Then I did the same for a few files. My hands shook a little, rocked by finding her here with a gun so close by, even if it wasn’t loaded. I couldn’t shake the feeling she had been rummaging through my drawers for a reason.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Whatever you’re hiding,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Hiding?” I had nothing to hide from Belle. My life was an open book to her. If only I could say the same about her. “I’m not hiding anything from you, beautiful.”
I waited for her to respond.
“qHey, I mean it.” I spun the leather chair around to discover her clutching a familiar frame in her hands.
“You weren’t hiding this?” she asked, her lower lip trembling.
I should have tossed the photograph of Margot the day I found it. “I don’t know how that got here,” I said honestly. “I put it in a box.”
“It was in your desk drawer,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. That couldn’t be right. I put it in the box myself. “It was,” I admitted. “I’m not sure why you put it there. When I saw it, I threw it in an empty box to toss it.”
“I didn’t put it there,” she said, her voice pitching up an octave. “I just found it there.”
“I don’t mean today.” I had no idea how the photograph had gotten out of the box back into my desk drawer. “When you are unpacking, you must’ve put it in the drawer.”
“Why would I put a picture of your dead wife there?” Belle snapped.
“Why would you do anything?” I asked, losing my cool. Instantly, I regretted it. If Belle had been hurt before, now she was livid. She threw the photograph on the desk with such force the glass cracked, splintering around Margot’s smile. “Oops. Sorry.”
I ignored the edge of challenge in her voice. She wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not that I cared about the damn photograph. “It should never have gotten here in the first place. I didn’t realize I still have it. I’m sorry you found it.”
“The first time or this time?” She pushed up from the chair, backing away from me as she shook her head. “I’m not crazy, Smith. I didn’t put that in your drawer.”
“You were the only one unpacking in here,” I said. It didn’t make any sense.
“I put a few books on the shelf.” She crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “Your pens in your desk. I looked past the gun I found there. But I had nothing to do with your fucking photo. I won’t make a mistake of digging into your secrets anymore, though. I wouldn’t want you to have to be honest with me.”
“Honest? Where is this coming from? I don’t have anything to hide from you.”
“How did you know I was coming home?” She leveled her blue eyes at me, and I knew I was caught. “I know you didn’t see us coming up the drive.”
It had been a bad lie, and I knew it at the time. If I had seen them, I would’ve stayed outside and helped her carry the baby in. Instead, she found me, shoes off, at the door. But being honest with her about that undermined my arrangement with Nora.
"Fine.” She threw her hands in the air when I didn’t confess. “Don’t tell me. But don’t tell me that you have no secrets either. You’re keeping something from me.”
She stormed out of the room, leaving me to stare after her. I didn’t have secrets from my wife.
But—I did.
I didn’t regret asking Nora to give me updates, especially given that Belle had resisted opening up to me herself. She hadn’t been honest with me about that day at the restaurant. I’d given her plenty of time to tell me. I could live with the intention of those lies. But what about Longborn and the bones? Belle didn’t want to be at Thornham. That much was clear. But I wasn’t certain our problems could be solved by going back to London. And, try as I might, I couldn’t forget the sinister gift she’d received at her baby shower. No one had claimed responsibility for that. There’d been no follow-up. All I could do was understand the message as it was intended when it was sent. In London we were so tangled in the royal family’s vines, that the dangerous weeds that grew into them, bastardizing them even more, could always reach us. As long as we stayed there in Alexander and Clara’s orbit, we would never be free of our pasts. We would never make our own choices. We would always be in danger for standing by the ones we loved. I owed more to Belle and Penny than a life like that. It’s why I couldn’t tell her about the bones. Not until I’d seen the file and what was inside it. Maybe everything had been blown out of proportion. The bones were decades old, he said. But that could be twenty years or ninety years. That made a difference. There was no point upsetting her further until I knew more, not while I couldn’t seem to reach her at even the most basic levels.
That was the real problem. I’d lost my grip on Belle before, watching her slip away from me after she lost our first child to miscarriage. I hadn’t been enough to comfort her then. Now? I was losing her once more. I didn’t want to. I just didn’t know how to reach her.
I glanced at the shattered picture of Margot and shook my head. Reaching for it, I threw it across the room. It hit the wall, the already broken glass tinkling to the ground as the frame cracking into two separate pieces.
Was it even possible to learn from past mistakes? I thought we had everything. Too much, even. We’d had to decide what we wanted. That’s how we’d wound up here in the country with Penny. But somewhere along the line I’d made the wrong decision. I’d calculated based on certain assumptions, and now I needed to backtrack until I figured out where I’d gone wrong. I only knew one thing: I had to reach Belle before it was too late.