Page 37 of The Proposition
His eyes snapped back to her, a squint leading her to believe he was seeing her in a new way. “You are not repulsed by our secrets?”
“I am repulsed, of course,” Clemency replied. “But not by you.” He said nothing, but nor did his eyes stray. “I want to help. I realize it is unfeeling to go against Delphine’s wishes, but I want…” Clemency faltered a little, afraid of the words even as she burned to say them. “If it were me, I would beg for a brother brave enough to do as you are doing. Please, I want to hold your hand as the knife goes in.”
12
It was only a matter of time before Delphine recovered and came to harangue him. Not that he believed himself undeserving of her scorn. She arrived like the presaging of a blizzard, the air in the room going still and flat, a moment of anticipation winding a knot between his shoulders, and then Audric heard the office door hinge squeak, and he let out a long-building breath.
“You should have told her everything,” Delphine murmured, her voice ragged from the sobbing she must have done in her chambers. “If you wanted her to be a partner in your cruel business, you should have made the terms of her participation clear.”
Audric was too cowardly to immediately face her. He stared instead out the window, the desk between him and it, his fists pressed into the hard surface, digging, hurting, to the point where the pain had become punitive.
“How could I tell her?” he asked softly. “When I can hardly tell it to myself?”
“Oh, yes, it is impossible to accept,” Delphine whispered. She sounded exhausted, as if the sadness had broken like a fever, leaving her only weary. “And yet we must accept. And now she must too. It is all so terribly disappointing, Audric.All of it. I thought you were courting her in earnest, and now I have to grieve that lie too.”
The candles in his office had burned low. He stared at one not far from a stack of papers left by his bookkeeper. The flame flickered and danced, and burned its way into his sight, so that when he finally rose and stood straight and turned in profile toward his sister, the fire followed, a yellow smudge blighting his vision. He didn’t know how to respond to Delphine—to deceive her further seemed inconceivably cold, but his own thoughts when turned toward Miss Fry were murky. In his mind, she stubbornly eluded labels like “friend” or “acquaintance.” They had kissed, and he was not fool enough to declare it unwanted. He wanted her but understood their arrangement made any innocent, romantic notions unlikely. Clemency after all despised marriage.
He might remain a hunter ever eluded, and the thought stung. At least he would not become what his father had become to their mother—an ominous, looming taskmaster. A master, not a partner.
“Miss Fry is wary of men and marriage generally,” he said. “One can hardly blame her. My only concern right now is your—”
“My what?” Delphine laughed and crossed the office to where he stood leaning against the desk. She took his hand and held it loosely in the warm weave of her ten fingers. “My safety? My happiness? I am as safe as I can be,” she added, staring up at him. He still could not meet her gaze and winced when she dropped his hand and reached up to fix one curl of his hair. “And I am as happy as I can be. Look to yourself, brother. What about your safety and happiness? Take care, or you will wind up like Father, all alone in anempty house, staring down a long line of loveless memories.”
They rarely spoke of their father. Their mother, Elise, was all but sainted in their eyes. She had endured so much in that big, sprawling house along the river. Even alive, she had been like a specter haunting Fox Ridge, a vanishing smear of sunlight against their father’s encroaching night.
“That is too far,” he whispered, ragged.
“Maybe,” Delphine said. “Maybe someone ought to have told him the truth too. He might have met a better end. We might have loved him more.”
Audric had always pictured their father’s final moments as an oil painting, curling at the edges as it burned. The chamber where he spent most of his time had been consumed by a sudden fire. The damage to the house was not extensive, but their father’s room was obliterated. He imagined his father sitting at his desk, hunched over, his black curtain of hair parting only to reveal empty, staring eyes. He showed no emotion, no regret, no fear, as the flames brought annihilation.
When Audric walked the smoldering remains of that wing, he had found melted glass in hardened pools all around the bedchamber. He never escaped the sense that the fire was not mere accident.
“I will look to my life,” Audric promised. “But we must look to revenge first.”
“That cannot be so,” Delphine chided. With a sigh, she left him, sweeping back toward the door, the gray shawl looped through her elbows and falling to her feet swishing softly across the carpet. It reminded him of some haunted specter glimpsed at the end of a long, dark hall. Like theirmother. Yet the gentleness that entered her voice defied that comparison, and she sounded young, and almost hopeful, and Audric tried to hold tight to that. “For my happiness is tied to yours, brother. Remember that. While you and Miss Fry are on this crusade of yours, remember that.”
She lingered at the door, and Audric risked a quick glance in her direction. Her thin smile was long-suffering with sisterly affection. He owed her better, he knew, yet seemed terminally incapable of providing it. If he let go of the sputtering rage in his heart he knew it would make her glad, but how could he? What would he be, what would inspire him, if he doused that ever-burning ember?
“Are you angry with me,poupette?” he asked. Audric couldn’t remember the last time he sounded so helpless or so small. Only Delphine was allowed to see him like that. “Please, do not be angry with me. Are you?”
“No,” Delphine admitted, sighing at him again. “I have made peace with our disagreement. I know you cannot be dissuaded, and foolishly, I am almost pleased that you are no longer doing this on your own. When I think of you with Miss Fry it brings a smile to my face. What an unlikely pair you make.”
That bolstered his spirits, just a little, enough to convince him it was safe to stop clinging to the desk and truly turn to look at her. She drummed her pale fingers once on the edge of the door, then began to glide away into the gloomy corridor. Of course, she could not do so without having the last word. She had more than earned it.
“Yes, it pleases me to think of you two together.” Delphine’s voice was fading, but still utterly comprehensible, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up inalarm. “My brave but foolhardy champions. I wonder, Audric, if you know what you are getting yourself into with her. I saw something awaken in her eyes tonight; it shakes me to remember it. Strange, but I think you might truly deserve each other.”
—
I am going to destroy you,Clemency thought, watching Turner Boyle sing a full-throated tenor rendition of“No One Shall Govern Me,”one hand flourishing on the words, while Tansy accompanied him artfully on the pianoforte.
Whatever happens to you,she further concluded,you will have earned.
She stood in the airy, vaunted beauty of Lady Margaret Veitch’s drawing room, the rest of the company sprinkled about the room, arranged at intervals like subjects of a Titian painting. It would take a party of no fewer than forty to make the drawing room feel cramped. Instead, they were allowed to sit or stand wherever they pleased, and with so much space, one could almost feel solitude creeping in. The next closest person happened to be her brother, William, seated what felt like a street’s length away on a pink-and-gold chaise longue nearer the pianoforte. Plaster angels soared above them, merry and rotund, and a chandelier dripping crystals presided over the music and tea-drinking. The whole house had a baroque feel to it, though Lady Veitch and her two daughters had done an admirable job of bringing the curtains and carpets and upholsteries up to modern style.
Tansy had apparently made quite an impression during her visit, winning them all an invitation to take tea with thewidow and her daughters, Arabella and Adeline. Sir John Veitch, Clemency was told on the carriage ride over, had died fighting the French. He was, as it turned out, anactualknight and a member of the nobility. Lady Veitch had greeted Turner with an initially chilly demeanor. Clemency’s heart had soared. But Turner quickly mentioned that his close friend Denning Ede sent his regards, and Lady Veitch’s suspicions were all forgotten.
Clemency decided she would not be defeated, burning the name Denning Ede into her brain for later.
