“I’m not.”
“Clara…”
“I mean it.” She drew back, her damp eyes finding his. “I only wish we had more time together.”
He rested his forehead gently against hers. And the emotion imbued in that single gesture was so sweet, so tender, she felt she might drown in it. That she might lose herself entirely.
Until he spoke.
“I have nothing to offer you,” he said.
Her hands slid from his neck. She stood there, frozen, as he released her from his arms and moved away from her. “I haven’t asked anything of you. I wouldn’t.”
“You d-don’t understand.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I c-can’t ever leave here. I’m…” His throat worked on a swallow. “There’s n-no future with me.”
The bare wooden floor seemed to shift beneath Clara’s feet, like the deck of a ship. She reached behind her to grip the windowsill. “Yes, I see.”
But she didn’t see at all.
All she knew was that she’d done it once more. Despite his professions of admiration, and her abundance of caution. Despite everything she’d been guarding against these past four years. Somehow, she’d managed to make an idiot of herself again.
She turned briefly to dash a tear from her cheek. “I’ve been very foolish.”
He didn’t disagree.
Indeed, he didn’t say anything. She didn’t know if he was struggling for words or merely bereft of them. She couldn’t bear to look at him to find out.
Was he regretful? Ashamed?
In other circumstances, she’d have endeavored to discover the answer. But not now.
Now, all she wanted was to leave his presence. To abandon the scene of her latest disgrace as swiftly as possible.
“It was a mistake to stay so long. I must get back.” She moved past him to the door, her footsteps brisk and purposeful, for all that her heart was breaking.
And she waited for him to object again. To tell her, as he’d done before, that he wanted her to stay.
But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t offer to escort her back to the Abbey or even bid her good day.
When she walked out the door, he simply let her go.
Neville stared, unseeing, at the column of figures he’d entered into the ledger. They blurred before his tired eyes. He’d been hunched over the library desk for hours, trying to distract himself with work.
A fruitless endeavor.
He was unable to focus on anything.
At times like these, he was best suited to being out with the horses. But he’d already spent most of the morning in the stables, avoiding the house guests.
Avoiding her.
Across the room, Justin stood at the window, gazing out through the rain-streaked glass. His countenance was grim. “Miss Hartwright won’t be leaving tomorrow.”
Neville’s head jerked up. His heart gave a bitter lurch at the very mention of her name. “Why not?”
“Because,” Justin said with infuriating logic, “by this evening the cliff road will have washed out.”
Tom folded his newspaper and rose from his chair to join Justin at the window. He peered out, frowning. “It looks as though it already has.”
“Not yet, but soon. Given the way this storm is progressing, we’ll be lucky if it’s passable again by Twelfth Night.”
“What do you suggest?” Tom asked.
“If she can make herself ready within an hour’s time, I’ll have Danvers drive her to the railway station in Abbot’s Holcombe. It will be easier for her than enduring the mail coach all the way to Barnstaple.”
Tom nodded. “I’ll tell Alex.” He strode from the room, shutting the library door behind him.
Neville returned to his work. He scratched out a figure in the ledger and entered a new one, his fingers clenched around the quill so tightly it threatened to break in his hand. He forced himself to relax. To turn his attention to something else. Anything other than the stricken way Clara had looked when he’d told her he had nothing to offer her.
And now she was leaving.
Not on Twelfth Night, and not tomorrow, but this very day. Within the hour. And there was nothing he could do about it. Not even if he wanted to. She would climb into the carriage, and Danvers would drive her straight out of his life.
Neville was paralyzed by the emotion of it.
He lay down his quill and rested his head in his hands.
“Do you know,” Justin said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever observed Boothroyd looking half so miserable balancing the estate accounts as you do.”
“I’m not Boothroyd.”
“No, indeed.” Justin came to stand beside the desk. He flipped through the last two pages of the ledger. “He has a knack for poring over paperwork for hours at a time without suffering the smallest degree of boredom.”
Neville sat back in his chair as Justin closed the ledger. “I’m not bored. I’m…distracted.”
“It is rather distracting having so many people about. I’ve enjoyed it, of course, but I shall be glad when everyone returns to their own lives and leaves us to ours.”
Neville didn’t say anything. In truth, he didn’t know what to say.
Somehow, over the years, his life had become knotted up with Justin’s. It was a bond forged in the orphanage, born of shared misery. A tie of brotherhood and friendship. The same thing that bound Neville to Alex and Tom.
He’d long thought of them as his family. And they were that. Neville couldn’t imagine a world without them in it. But that bond hadn’t stopped the others from striking out on their own. From finding love and personal fulfillment.
In the past year Tom had married Jenny, the pair of them traveling the world together. Alex had wed Laura and would soon be leaving for France. And Justin and Lady Helena were expecting a child. All of them had forged separate lives.
All of them except Neville.
He supposed he existed as part of Justin’s family. An appendage from the past, kept close for reasons of affection, loyalty, and lingering guilt over Neville’s accident.
But Neville’s life was his own, surely. He deserved happiness as much as the rest of them. He deserved—
He started at the feel of a hand coming to rest on his shoulder.
“You drifted off,” Justin said.
Neville glanced at the clock. He didn’t know how long he’d spent staring fixedly at the closed ledger, thinking about the orphanage, and his accident, and what it was he deserved. Minutes, probably. Perhaps longer.