Chapter 30

It was with a pounding head that Seth snapped to wakefulness. Through the crack in the dark blue velvet drapes in his room, sunlight filtered in, hitting him directly in the face and making him wince. Blindly, he lifted one large hand, trying to block the light in the otherwise blissfully dark room. Groggily, he came more fully awake, realising that he had slept in his shirt and breeches, having kicked off his shoes somewhere near the door, and wrestled his jacket off and flung it to parts unknown.

He lay diagonally across his bed, with his feet stuffed under a pile of pillows and his head down at the foot of the bed. With a groan, he rubbed at his head. He had not partaken of anything stronger than lemonade, but the combination of the noise and crowd of the party had all conspired to make him feel as if he'd swum in a barrel of whiskey.

All in all, he was groggy, grumpy, and generally in a foul humour. This was compounded when his bedroom door opened, and a strange man was standing there, holding a tray. The man was dressed well, and was doing his level best to ignore the generally dishevelled state of Seth.

"Good morning, my Lord," the man said, expertly balancing the tray and depositing it on the nightstand. Without comment, or acting as if it were in any way strange, he bent and began quickly picking up the discarded clothing.

Seth sat up slowly, one hand still pressed to his head. "Who—"

"A thousand pardons, my Lord," the man said, pausing and bowing in Seth's direction. "I'm Turnbull, your Lordship's valet."

"My valet?" Seth repeated, feeling as if he had missed an entire day somehow. "I did not—"

"No, my Lord, it was her Ladyship who hired me," the valet finished, having whisked all the offending clothing away and placed the shoes in Seth's dressing room. "She wanted to make sure that your transition to acting Viscount was as smooth as possible."

"I…that is very well and good, but I—" Seth paused, the smell from the tray hitting his nose: Coffee, fragrant and rich, steaming hot. He shifted closer to it, sniffing appreciatively despite himself. Before he could reach for it, the valet was there, handing him a warm cup that Seth gratefully wrapped his fingers around.

"I would suggest a hearty breakfast today, my Lord," the valet said, busying himself in Seth's closets, his voice muffled among the shirts and jackets. "Your diary appears to be rather full."

"It does? With what?" Seth asked, wondering if he had woken up in the wrong house entirely.

"Well, things are rather abuzz this morning generally, with new staff being taken on, and others departing," Turnbull said, his well-pomaded head reappearing from the dressing room, bearing a dark red jacket and breeches. "This jacket will suit your Lordship quite well, and I imagine the lady will appreciate it."

"Lady?" Seth asked, still staring. "What lady?" He sipped the coffee again, something prickling at the back of his mind. "Wait—who is leaving the household?"

"Why, Miss Catherine is preparing to depart this very moment," Turnbull said, putting the jacket on a stand so that he might brush it.

"Miss Catherine? Miss Catherine is leaving?" Seth asked carefully, the world slowing to a crawl around him. From out in the hall, there was indeed the muffled sound of feet going back and forth.

"Oh yes my Lord," Turnbull replied nonchalantly, pausing in his brushing for a moment with an inscrutable expression on his face. "It's not everyday that a lady's companion makes such a good match. Why, I imagine that she has her Ladyship to thank for—"

Seth never heard what it was that Turnbull believed Miss Catherine—Kitty—had to thank Lady Veronica for, because he was up in a trice, dropping his cup of coffee in his haste. The poor valet let out a sound of alarm, but Seth was too preoccupied to care about the coffee staining his rug. In a whirlwind of flailing arms and legs, he propelled himself toward the door, grasping furtively at the latch.

"Oh—oh! But my Lord, you are not properly dressed !" Turnbull cried, clearly distressed. For the viscount to be seen in any state of dishevelment was a reflection on his valet, and Turnbull was most assuredly aware of this.

Seth did not have time to worry about his valet's finer feelings, however, and he proceeded to yank the door open so suddenly that it caused a poor maid in the hall to squeak and drop a small packing case. Shoes spilled out, tumbling across the floor in a calamity of silk and leather.

"Your Lordship!" the maid gasped, "please forgive me, I did not see you there, and— eep !" She had caught sight of Seth, in all of his bare-ankled, cravatless glory. It was too much for the young maid, who blushed furiously and looked down at the cluttered floor, refusing to look up again.

"These are Ki—Miss Catherine's things?" Seth asked.

The maid nodded, only the tip of her nose and her pink cheeks visible from beneath her ruffled cotton cap. "Yes, my Lord, it was her wish to depart directly."

"I doubt that very much," Seth muttered darkly to himself. With an awkward hop and stretch of his legs, he was clear of the pile of shoes and resumed his march down the hall. The door to Kitty's rooms was standing quite open, and Lady Veronica's maid was helping to carefully fold clothing and coil ribbons into a trunk.

"Is something the matter, my Lord?" O'Toole said, looking up with alarm at Seth. Upon reflection, he was certain that he looked like a madman, scarcely dressed, hair loose, one hand clutching the doorframe so hard it creaked a little in protest.

"Where is Miss Catherine?" he demanded, his eyes searching the room wildly.

"She has already gone downstairs, my Lord," O'Toole answered warily, scanning him from top to bottom. "The carriage awaits her."

With an irritated grunt, Seth pushed off from the doorway and was striding down the hall in a manner that could best be described as harried . He did not pause at the maid who was still picking up shoes, merely springing over the mess, which caused the maid to squeak in distress yet again.

Though the hour was early, there was already a veritable legion of servants at work around the house, quietly removing all evidence of the ball last night. They worked in teams, some collecting hundreds of scattered glasses while another balanced a tray, others removing the wilted flowers and used-up candles. All over, melted wax frozen into great drips that would never fall hung from every surface and candlestick. Therefore, Seth's haste was greatly curtailed by the necessity of dodging all of this work to erase the disorder of the night before.

Darting from room to room, he would poke his head in only long enough to ascertain that Kitty was not within, then move onto the next. He was at the point of despairing of the enterprise entirely when a door behind him opened, the sound drawing him up short. Slowly, he turned back around, his heart thudding around in his ribs like a bird trying to get loose.

It was Kitty, emerging from the servants' area downstairs. She had not spotted Seth yet, concentrating on closing the door as softly as possible so as not to disturb anyone; clearly, she was completely ignorant of the chaos that had transpired upstairs. She was already dressed for travel, a long dark grey pelisse and an equally gloomy bonnet on her head. With gloved hands, she reached up and pressed the backs of her fingers to her eyes for a moment, as if willing tears not to fall.

Suddenly, her head whipped around, catching Seth watching her. He was inclined to blush as if he had intruded on a private moment.

"My Lord?" she asked, a quizzical look on her face. "What are you doing?"

"I—you are leaving," he said, feeling foolish for stating such a patently obvious fact.

Kitty huffed out a watery laugh. "That is what I am doing, my Lord," she replied, stepping a little closer.

"Why?" he asked simply, plaintively.

"Because I cannot stay," she answered, equally simply. A sad wistfulness passed over her features. "We both have a role to play, just…just not the one that we hoped for—at least, I hoped for it. And, truthfully, I have intruded on your life long enough."

"Want you to stay," Seth managed at last, daring to shift closer to her, so close that he might easily have reached out and touched her.

"Oh Seth," she sighed, her shoulders falling a little. "What we want is not what we need, " was all that she replied. There was so much in that space between them that they may as well have been on different continents, an ocean separating them again. Her eyes, still wet with sentiment, roved all over his face, as if trying desperately to memorise it. She nodded, as if to herself, and then stepped back once, twice.

She turned her back to him, squared her shoulders a little, and with a slow regality, began to walk away down the hall to the front door. Dumbly, Seth watched her go, wishing that she would stop, but not knowing how to make her stay. For an instant, she paused, and he thought that perhaps she had heard his silent wish.

She turned part-way back around, just enough so that he could catch sight of her face past the wings of her bonnet. There was a familiar expression on it, one of sly mischief and good humour. "Thank you for dressing up for the occasion of seeing me off," she said with a last glance down to Seth's bare feet significantly.

An uncontrollable bark of laughter escaped Seth before he could stifle the impulse. Kitty, looking satisfied, turned back around, walking toward a future that neither of them wanted. A strange feeling came over Seth—it was the same feeling that he had experienced standing on the deck of a ship, watching the English coastline vanish into the distance behind him. It was the same feeling as he had felt when that same ship had deposited him on a foreign shore, and then pulled away slowly, vanishing into the grey fog until it may as well have never existed.

It was not simply isolation or loneliness, or even homesickness, not entirely; it was as if the very concept of home had never existed. This time, there was no task for him to throw himself into, no forest to cut back or wagons to push up a hill. The stark new reality was inescapable, and it settled into a cold stone in his stomach.

The front door opened and closed, a wave of cold air rushing along the floor and curling around his ankles. The sensation made him shiver, breaking his immobility. With a face like thunder, all of his ire at the situation seemed to coalesce onto one person, the only person who could possibly bear the blame for any of this.

Seth's bare feet sounded comically unintimidating as he ran across the bare wooden floors, the rugs still rolled up from the party. With one hand, he caught the bottom post of the bannister on the main stairs, using it to anchor himself as he swung up onto the stairway. It creaked from the weight and force, the flowers and ribbons still wrapped around it quaking a little.

He didn't care; he had his destination in mind, and that was all. He paid no heed to the pair of footmen precariously balancing a trunk between them down the stairs, or their pained expressions as he barrelled right past them. Turnbull, from somewhere down the hall in the direction of Seth's room, made another distressed sound, which Seth also roundly ignored.

There was no deterring him until he reached his mother's room. He did not even bother knocking, simply burst through, breathing fiercely through his nose. His anger was only stoked by the incongruously calm manner in which his mother greeted him.

"And a very good morning to you, too," she said, sat up in her bed among about a dozen pillows of various shapes and sizes. A shawl was draped around her shoulders, a breakfast tray over her lap. Delicate porcelain and crystal dishes adorned it, full of tea, sugar, jellies, a pair of boiled eggs, and a selection of little buns. Lady Veronica was the picture of dignified, feminine elegance. She did not react to Seth's sudden entrance beyond this mundane greeting.

"Mother," he replied, somehow making that single word sound like an accusation.

"I'm glad to see you have risen early," she commented blithely, completely ignoring his distress. She lifted a letter, reading it as she raised a steaming teacup to her lips. "I believe our ball was a success, though you might have been more attentive to your guests."

"They weren't my guests," he retorted. "I couldn't care a jot for the whole lot of them."

"Really Seth," Lady Veronica sighed, "Lord Byron might be able to get away with his whole ‘disaffected noble' routine, but it can be quite tiresome to—"

"Kitty has gone," Seth interrupted, watching her face closely.

"Who?"

"Miss Catherine," Seth ground out. "You know bloody well who I mean."

"Has she? Good, then. I hope the new housekeeper settled whatever was owing on her," Lady Veronica said between sips of tea.

" Why has she gone?" Seth demanded, taking a step closer.

"Because it was time for her to do so, silly boy," Lady Veronica said slowly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Because you decided," Seth countered.

Lady Veronica looked up from her letter, sighed, and made a great show of setting it aside. "If you would like to know the truth, then yes, I did decide," she said, staring levelly at Seth. "But I was not alone in this decision."

"What possible complaint could you have about her? She is the reason this house kept running during those lean months," Seth asked incredulously. He took another step forward, his voice rising in anger. "You treated her as a servant when you had no right to do so; she came to you to be a companion, not a maid-of-all-work!"

"I'm aware of that," Lady Veronica replied, lifting her letter again. "And she was compensated generously for her efforts."

"Compensated," Seth repeated flatly. "That is not what I meant."

"Frankly, I do not know what you mean most of the time since you returned, Seth," Lady Veronica shot back, her own voice rising a little. From the foot of her bed, a ball of fluff stood up, turning beady black eyes on Seth and favouring him with a most uninspiring growl of displeasure. "Your predilection for chopping wood and sleeping on floors could be overlooked, but I could not excuse your over-familiarity with my companion—it was unseemly! You made a spectacle of yourself with her; you should be grateful that Miss Alcott is the understanding sort."

"I don't care what sort she is," Seth retorted, "for I am not going to be marrying her."

"Aren't you?" Lady Veronica asked bemusedly, which only flamed Seth's temper more. "And who might you be marrying instead? Miss Catherine?"

"If she will have me, I'd marry her this afternoon," Seth answered without hesitation.

"I doubt that very much, seeing as she is already betrothed." Lady Veronica fixed him with another coolly detached stare.

"You lie," Seth said, his nostrils flaring.

"It was all arranged last night," Lady Veronica continued, lifting a little spoon and tapping one of her eggs to crack the shell. "She had her dance with you, and then accepted Sir Wright that very hour."

"She wouldn't," Seth protested again, a little weaker this time.

"Of course she would," Lady Veronica replied, lifting the salt dish and sprinkling a little on her egg. "Whatever you may think of her, Miss Catherine was clever and mercenary behind that pretty face. She did what was best for everyone. I shouldn't be surprised if she didn't use your dance together to her own advantage," she continued. "What better way to inflame a little jealousy among a suitor than to dance with a handsome young nobleman?"

Seth's hands clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms. He did not know how to respond, not because he believed her, but because he didn't think he could speak without saying something truly egregious in that moment. Taking his silence for acceptance, Lady Veronica favoured him with a patronising smile.

"Miss Catherine is a thoroughly sensible girl; she believed, and I agreed, that it was only appropriate that she be married from her father's house, and not from this one. Now," Lady Veronica said, changing tac as easily as if she were selecting a pair of gloves, "let us focus on your own courtship."

"Mother," Seth asked, lifting the still disgruntled Quincey with one hand and settling on the foot of his mother's bed. "Why are you so keen on Miss Alcott? I have no desire to marry her, and I believe she feels the same."

Lady Veronica's face grew pinched, and she glanced away, then back at Seth with a resolute cast to her mouth. "Perhaps it is time that you become acquainted with some hard facts."