Sally suddenly grinned. “The man who threatened to cut me was the same man I had shot. He told me his shoulder ached in the cold; I told him I was sorry for it, and regretted not shooting him in the heart.” Her mirth faded as she shook her head. “Listen to me, talking as if I were brave, when I could not even denounce Ventnor to the world. All I can do is look after those in my care, and I never let anyone be harmed on my watch.”
“You never let yourself love again either,” Martha said softly. “Time has passed. You have grieved. The past cannot hold you forever.”
A look fluttered between Sally and Martha, a deeply intimate exchange that made Thea hastily pivot away. She stared out the window, where Rafe had gone. How foolish of her, to have quarreled with him, to have wasted so much time.
“If only we could show the world what Ventnor truly is, if the world could stop admiring itself long enough to listen.” Thea turned back to the others. “It’s not right, that everyone believes lies about you, so you were forced to skulk away like a villain.”
Sally snorted. “They believe the lies because they fear me, though I would do them no harm.”
“They should fear you.” Thea laughed at Sally’s outraged expression. “After all, you are rather fearsome.”
A heartbeat later, Sally laughed too. “I am rather, aren’t I?”
Thea paced away from the window, powered by her growing fury. “You were threatened, and Katharine was killed, and Rafe is slandered, and I was cast out. Ventnor and Percy and their ilk merrily go about their lives, while the rest of us live like exiles because of them.”
“Who are we to take on a powerful viscount?” Sally gestured at the three of them. “A Sapphic actress, a foreigner, and a scandalous outcast.”
A scandalous outcast with a fortune, Thea silently amended. She had not let herself think about the money Rafe had secured for her; Pa would be displeased if she took her dowry while remaining unmarried. But fifteen thousand pounds… Oh, the mischief that could buy! Her pamphlet would be the first step. Then she’d find a way to ruin Lord Ventnor’s life. And then… Well, the world offered no shortage of villains for her to bring down.
And maybe, one day, news of her activities would reach Somersetshire and Rafe would—
No. She must not start painting futures where there were none. Optimism was one thing. Delusion was another. Rafe did not want to be in the world. The world was poorer without him in it, but that was his choice. She would concentrate her effort on the things she could do, and keep such magical notions for the outlandish stories that flowed from her pen.
With as much consciousness as an automaton, Rafe marched in the direction of his greenhouse, but in the woods, he impulsively veered off along another path, ending up in the small clearing, standing by Katharine’s grave.
Dropping into a crouch, he ran his fingers through the glossy leaves of the morning glory vine and parted them to reread the words he had ordered carved on her headstone: Come unto Me and I will give you rest. Perhaps he had chosen those words for himself rather than for her; in the grip of his grief and guilt, he had found some solace in the thought that finally, Katharine could know peace.
So many years had passed, taking his grief with them. He had shed it during his travels, dropping bits behind him as he roamed. Such was the nature of grief; grief for his wife, for his father, for his brother. But guilt, ah, guilt never faded. Guilt lurked always, taunting him with the intolerable injustice that he remained, when all the rest were gone.
He let the vines drop over the stone and stepped back. He had planted this morning glory the day he left England, and never tended it since. It had flourished over the years. And, he realized, it was trained to grow over the grave. He took another few steps back. The grass was trimmed. The granite headstone was clean. Someone was tending this grave carefully, and that someone was not him.
Sally.
He had never guessed her feelings; he had been insensitive and she had hid them too well. He dug into his memory, turning up images like fresh earth. Katharine teaching Sally to play cricket on the lawn. The two of them at the pianoforte at night, singing in harmony, while he and John chatted idly over their port. Their heads bent together as they read or sewed.
“You were loved,” he whispered to the grave. “You were loved.”
Rafe left Katharine’s grave and walked. He walked and walked and walked, until the light began to fade and he returned to the house. Inside, sounds came from the dining room: Thea and Nicholas, Sally and Martha; he lingered in a hallway, listening to their muffled merriment, then he continued his walk upstairs. A tray of food had been left in his room; numbly, he ate, exhausted from turning his life over. He had been so sure he could not change the past, but later, as he slid into sleep, his past broke around him, and rebuilt itself as something new.
When Rafe awoke, the sunlight was already a golden glow slicing through the edges of the curtains. He washed and pulled on his trousers, stockings, and shirt, wondering at the quiet, belatedly realizing it was Sunday. Only a skeleton staff worked on Sunday, and Nicholas would have gone to church. Martha traveled further, to a Catholic Mass, and Sally had taken to accompanying her. Thea would likely have joined one of the parties. Or perhaps she had left for good.
Taking a neatly pressed neckcloth from the drawer full of neatly pressed neckcloths, Rafe paused and looked around his clean room. He stepped into the silent corridor, the wooden floorboards cool through his stockings, and studied the row of windows overlooking the courtyard garden. There were too many windows—an extravagance on his father’s part, given the taxes on windows and glass—but they were all spotless. The candle sconces along the wall gleamed. The door frames were polished.
He opened the next door down; this room too was fresh and tidy, albeit with signs of Nicholas’s occupation. Rafe shut the door and kept walking, opening each empty room in turn. In each room, he found the same thing: The curtains were closed against the sun, but nothing was under dust covers. Everything was clean and fresh. One might think the house was fully occupied, and that the entire family and their friends would soon come crowding back. Every day, while Rafe went about his life, scores of invisible hands were keeping this house ready to welcome its inhabitants home.
I have kept this house in readiness for the day you brought home another bride, to house a new, happy family, Sally had said. Because if you could free yourself of the past, maybe I could too.
Then Thea had arrived.
How right she had looked in the library, in the drawing room. How easily she had slid into place, as if she was the one the house had been waiting for. Thea, an outcast wearing her sister’s clothes, the merchant’s daughter who had learned to walk and talk like a lady, the optimistic survivor who had a plan for fixing her life that did not include Rafe.
Rafe walked on, faster now, until he reached her rooms. He knocked. No reply. His heart thudded a violent protest. Surely she would not leave without first saying goodbye?
His chest tight, Rafe shoved open her sitting room door; her belongings were still there. He crossed to the window and looked out, over the gardens, and beyond, the woodlands and fields. And below him, a flash of yellow.
A chestnut-haired woman in a butter-yellow gown was traipsing through the flowerbeds.