Page 35 of Rejected
She only looked up from her desk when she heard a thump against her door.
She looked up with a groan, wrenching herself from the writing with difficulty, and lit up a fresh candle. Drawing her mother’s robe tightly around her—she always imagined it still smelled like Mama, but of course that wasn’t possible— she left the comfort of her lovely room, in search of the source of the disturbance.
She discovered her brother in the green salon, by a dying fire, deep in his cups. She had not even known he was in the house, but apparently he had shown up sometime after two o’ clock, and had just kept on drinking. The long-suffering servant Justin was keeping awake told her somberly that the viscount was refusing to eat.
Jo tried everything to take her brother’s mind off his despondent thoughts, but she realized that, with Papa gone, and those the last words he had spoken of his own son, there was little she could do to fix the pain that was tormenting her brother.
Instead, she attempted a conversation.
What better time to talk of Laurie, now, when her brother was so intoxicated, he would remember little or nothing of the conversation in a few hours?
“Laurie looked so cold at the funeral,” she said. “Did you not think so? So polite and distant—as if he was barely an acquaintance. And he has not been to this house once. Do you not think this odd?”
Justin poked the fire, swaying slightly. Gave no indication he had heard her.
“Do you know where he has been all these months?” Jo pressed on. “I know nothing about him,you see; have known nothing these past four months. Were you together in London? Or has he been abroad?
“Who, love?” Justin asked carelessly, his tone flippant and arrogant, as if he were speaking to one of his paramours. He folded his long frame into the settee close to her, and at that moment, his whole demeanor was so disgusting, that Jo felt the seeds of an intense dislike grow within her.
She turned her face away, so that he would not see her expression go sour with distaste.
“Laurie,” she repeated. Her brother shrugged—but at least he did not call her ‘love’ again. Then, to shock him more than anything, she added: “He proposed to me, you know.”
“Who did?”
“Laurie,” Jo explained patiently. “He proposed to me at Margaret’s wedding. He told me he loved me.”
“You are not serious, m’ dear. You… Did you talk to your father about it?”
Now it was ‘your father’, was it? The boy was growing more immature by the minute.
“No, but what does it matter now?” Jo said. “He is gone. Everyone is.”
Her brother turned to look at her with something akin to sharp pain in his eyes. Then his façade of indifference came back over him, wiping any other expression clean off his face.
“I am not gone,” he said, more softly than he had spoken to her in the last ten years.
But you are, she thought.You are always away in London, and even when you are here, you are so cold and remote you might as well be in India.And even if that weren’t true, you need more protection than you can give, God help you.
But she held her tongue, and went upstairs to bed. She was woken barely two hours later, by her maid frantically tugging on her sleeve.
“What is it, Hannah?”
“Miss, oh miss…” The girl was crying.
“Tell me,” Jo said, a shiver of fear running down her spine.It’s just me now, to deal with whatever is happening. There is no one else.“Calm yourself and tell me.”
“It’s master…” Hannah said. “Well, the new master.”
“What has Justin done now?”
“He’s gone to duel!”
Jo threw the covers aside, groaning in disgust. Her brother was going to kill someone. Again.
Dear Beth,
On the day you died I could not stop crying. The only thing I remember from those dark hours, and the days that followed, is Teddy. Holding me up, holding me together, holding me tightly enough that I would not break.
