Chapter 13

13

Lily could watch the course of discovery chart across Andrew's face: a few rapid blinks of confusion, followed by paling skin and widening eyes as he realized what she had found. The book had left a faint pink oblong mark on his forehead, and it gave her enormous satisfaction.

Then—slowly, so slowly—his mind seemed to turn back on, and she could imagine him sorting through his own emotions, one by one, searching for one that fit. His eyes moved rapidly from side to side. Finally, something seemed to occur to him and his eyebrows drew down. An angry flush pinked his cheeks, and he finally met her eyes.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said in a low voice, "that you trusted me so little that you kissed me as a distraction?"

She jumped to the ground, hands curling into fists. "Trust? You want to talk about trust right now? You hypocrite. You stole the logbook from my underthings. You pretended to care! You went through all that rigmarole with me—you took me to Bristol as a sham! And you didn't once think to talk to me instead?"

"Oh, yes, let's talk about the gentle art of conversation. How long have you suspected that I stole the log?"

She rolled her eyes. "I knew immediately."

"Immediately?" He looked shocked by this. "How?"

"You're not good at lying." Lily tossed her head.

"No, I'm not, but…" He frowned at her. "You're not good at knowing when someone is lying."

"That was true seven years ago," she gritted out. "I have learned."

"So, why didn't you say anything?" he demanded.

"Because I was…" Lily's hands clenched into fists. "Trying to be patient, you dolt. To let you decide when to tell me. I didn't need the whole truth. Even just a ‘Lily, I didn't want to be an earl' in the beginning would have sufficed. You just had to say something to show that you actually valued me as a person."

"Oh, are we talking about how we value one another?" He turned to her. "How about how you let me pour out all my feelings to you just so you could take advantage of my distraction with a kiss?"

"I?" Lily stared at him a moment. "Take advantage?" The world made absolutely no sense at the moment. "You are joking?" That was the only explanation she could imagine him making. That's what people usually said about stunningly painful remarks. It's a joke, Lily. Don't harp on a mere jest.

"I wish it were a joke." He looked upward. "You kissed me to distract me. I feel…" His hand tensed, then stretched at his side. "I feel used. I thought for one fleeting moment that what happened when we were younger meant something?—"

"Absolutely not." Lily shook her head. "We are not changing the subject to the time that we?—"

"Absolutely yes," Andrew replied grimly. "We are talking about it. We are going to talk about the time I made love to you."

She could feel her cheeks heat.

"I fucked you," Andrew said. His words felt blunt, without a hint of misdirection. "I ejaculated inside your body. We held each other, and I felt you come. Twice."

Lily's breath scraped against her lungs.

"It meant so much to me, and now that moment is connected to this deception. Thank you, Lily, for tarnishing a very dear memory of mine."

"Deception?" she gasped. "If you hadn't lied to me and stolen from me, I wouldn't have—never mind that." She folded her arms. "I didn't hear you complaining back then."

"‘Andrew,'" he said, mimicking her voice in a way that made her sound nasal and shrill, "‘I need a special favor. Take me to bed. As a friend.'"

Had that been wrong? "How was I supposed to say it?"

"You should have—" He started to speak, then stopped, shook his head and put a hand over his eyes. "No. You should have said it just like that. Forget I said that. You weren't supposed to say anything except what you meant. I never resented it."

"Really." Lily looked at the tense line of his shoulders and the set of his jaw and came to a surprising conclusion. "I think you actually did."

He scoffed. "So, you're telling me what I think now?"

"No. You are. I know I'm not much good at reading people, but—your entire—" She gestured at him, up and down. "Your entire being. Your accusations. The way you look. You wouldn't snap at me if you didn't feel something. Obviously you're angry about it. I don't know why, but—" She thought back, and came to a horrifying conclusion. "Oh, no. You probably felt you couldn't say no when I asked."

Lily could feel bile rising in her throat. The way she had put her request to him—if he turned her down, she'd be forced to marry—how could he have told her no? She'd done an awful thing and had only now realized.

"I feel ill." She turned away. "I should never have involved you." She wrapped her arms around herself. "I should have just —just—" What could she have done? "Gone to a tavern in Dover, and?—"

"No." Andrew set a hand on her shoulder and turned her around. "I would have resented that more."

She looked up at him. "I don't understand."

"Lily." He looked pained. "Just because I can't have you doesn't mean I don't want you."

Those words made no sense. They echoed through an impossibly large space. If he wanted her, why hadn't he said anything? Why had he let her leave? Why had she bawled, seasick, and cramping from Madame Lee's yuan hua in the middle of the ocean?

In the aftermath of her weeping session, she'd had one point of clarity. Afterward, standing on the deck, she'd made a vow: to speak the truth in hard moments.

Ha. She wasn't doing so well at that, was she? His mother had told Lily to be patient. She'd thought she had been trying. But she hadn't been patient; she'd been silent.

Now here they were in a hard, heart-sick moment, lobbing accusations instead of speaking plainly.

Lily's fingers were crushed into a fist. Slowly, she relaxed them.

Hard moments. What could be harder than this instant where her heart was breaking, and yet she wanted to rebut his points one by one, to leave him destroyed by her logic in smoking rubble so that she could sneak off and cry?

What if she didn't do that? What if she told the truth, hard as it was?

"Are you telling me," she said quietly, "that we were both wanting to speak back then?"

Andrew stared at her.

"It was cowardly of me. My excuse was only that I was so young at the time—I realized when I got on the ship that all along, I'd wanted you to say…" Her throat was closing. She couldn't look at him. "I wanted you to care for me. I wanted you to tell me to stay with you. Stupid." Her throat closed. "We were neither of us prepared for more. But still, a part of me hoped that if we had intercourse, that maybe you'd consider caring for me." She wrapped her arms around herself. "The way I did you."

"I'd already realized by then that I wished I could marry you."

She looked at him in confusion. "And you didn't say anything? Nothing at all? Not after we had intercourse?"

"No," he said quietly. "I didn't."

"Because we were so young?"

"Not because of that."

Well. That hurt.

"Partially," Andrew said, "it was because you'd made it clear you didn't want anything but freedom from such strictures. I did hope sometimes, you know. But you never gave so much as a sign that you were interested."

"A sign?" She had thought her feelings so obvious. "We were always together."

"But you didn't flirt or make little pronouncements or show in any way you wanted more."

Lily felt dizzy. "Other than telling you repeatedly that you were the best person I knew?"

"Yes, but you always said it so matter-of-factly. It didn't mean…"

Lily could feel the grimace that contorted her face. "You thought that I didn't like you because, when I said I liked you best, it sounded like I was sincere?"

"When you put it that way…" He sighed.

The world seemed topsy-turvy, and Lily wasn't sure how to catch her balance again. "I have no idea how to flirt. It just seems like…wrong words? Everyone knows what they mean but me."

The anger that had been so evident on Andrew's face was waning, and now he just looked…young. Horrifyingly young, as if he were remembering who he had once been.

"Lily," he said, "that was brave of you just now, telling me what you did. I have never wanted to hurt you. I'm afraid I must." He seemed to steel himself, bringing his spine up straight.

She knew what he was going to say. "You like me well enough but can't imagine me as your wife."

"Nonsense." He reached out and set his hands on her arms. "Listen to me, Lily. I can imagine you as my wife. I do, far too often." He reached out and traced a line down the side of her face. "And I care for you too much to risk it."

"Risk? What risk?"

He exhaled slowly. "You have every right to be livid. I didn't trust you with the truth. I'm sorry. I'm so deeply sorry. Too many people already know, and keeping silent about it is just so…me. It is what I do."

"Know?" Her confusion mounted. "Silence?" Andrew was the last person who made her think of silence. He was always laughing, always talking. He would tell a rock his life story and make it giggle in response.

"Lily," Andrew said, "My mother fled my father's family. Do you think I would ever do anything that would put her in danger?"

Her jaw dropped, but not for long; it took a few seconds to collect herself and realize how obviously true his statement had to be. She had recognized when the log disappeared that he had to have known his parentage; but she hadn't considered any of the questions that followed, such as why.

She did that now. She thought about the kind of danger that beautiful Mrs. Uchida might have found herself in, married to a man who was an earl, that would lead her to keep such a secret for the entirety of Andrew's life.

"You've been scared." It felt like a revelation when Lily said it.

"Terrified." He looked off to the curtains.

Lily set her hand on his. "I'm so sorry for adding to your fear."

He gave a minute shake of his head. "There are things I should have said when you first approached me. I knew it. But sometimes, telling a lie for this long becomes a part of you. When the opportunity to tell the truth comes along, concealing it is all you have."

"You were afraid. Fear transforms you."

"If I had been braver, I might have said something. At a young age, I decided I would never be an earl. My father gave me the most extraordinary gift: without once meeting me, he taught me how not to live my life."

Lily took hold of his hand.

"I owe you this." He gripped her fingers in return, almost crushing them. "The truth. The actual truth. When my father brought my mother home to his family, all hell broke loose. His father was the third son of the seventh Earl of Arsell. My grandfather married into a wealthy family in the Netherlands; third sons often need money. My father had English aristocracy in his veins and money in his pocket. He was three steps—then, after an unfortunate bout with measles, two—from an earldom. He was supposed to marry a girl from a good English family and combine money and blue blood again."

"Oh, dear."

"In fact," Andrew said, "my father had an English fiancée waiting at home. She was a nice girl, the sister of his brother-in-law. Coming back from his travels abroad with a wife? That was not what he was supposed to do. Particularly since while he was at sea, on his way home, the prior earl died without issue. He was now the heir after his father."

"Oh, dear."

"But he was married," Andrew said. "And my mother was pregnant. The deal was done, and it could not be undone."

"I would think so."

"His sister and brother believed otherwise. They told my mother to leave. The fire with the logbook…" He shook his head. "Was probably not poor Kenneth's fault. They did their best to erase all trace of that marriage, to free their innocent twenty-seven-year-old brother from the grasping, calculating machinations of my not yet sixteen-year-old mother."

"Your poor mother."

"I only know what my mother has told me of that time." Andrew's shoulders hunched. "I think she spared me much of it. But I know enough. Things went from unpleasant to nasty. The wedding to the other woman was not called off; my father kept saying he would tell his other fiancée that he wouldn't go through with the ceremony, and he…kept not doing it."

Lily couldn't imagine how awful that would be, to feel so lonely and unsupported in a strange land.

"The arguments grew worse," Andrew said, "and then his brother-in-law pushed my mother down the stairs."

Lily gasped. "While she was pregnant?"

"That was when my mother confronted my father. She said this all had to stop—that she could understand why he was taking his time with other things—but she had to draw the line at being murdered." Andrew made a face. "I think she said it more politely than that."

"She shouldn't have." Lily could feel so many things click into place—Andrew's mother commenting on Mrs. Grimsley. Mrs. Uchida saying she had taken pride in Lily for what she had done, helping Letta leave her husband. And the comment about patience? She hadn't been asking for Lily to tolerate theft. She'd known that her son stood under the shadow of long-ago violence, and he was afraid.

"My father said something like: ‘You must understand, he's only looking after his sister's prospects. Men can't stop themselves from being protective. Besides, if you lose this baby, we can always have another.' As if his brother-in-law's murder attempt was just a little…foible. As if a sister was worthy of protection, but not his own wife."

Lily felt a heaviness in her chest. "Your poor mother."

"And then," Andrew said, "My auntie showed up, having followed her sister across the world because she feared what would become of her if she were alone. They absconded from the family home in the Netherlands to England. They would have gone home, but Auntie was married to Uncle Kwan by that point, and home was a confusing concept. Besides, my mother wanted me to have the choice of what to do about the earldom, if it ever came down to that."

"Your poor mother," Lily said for a third time.

"My very brave mother. She was practically a child then—the same age we were when—never mind. When she told me all this, I was eleven. I knew then that I would always protect her. I would never put her in harm's way. I knew what an earl looked like, and I vowed to do the exact opposite at every turn."

Lily's head was ringing with the implications. Andrew had lived more than half his life with the knowledge that his own father hadn't cared if he survived.

She could hear a group just outside the shed moving, talking. Life in Wedgeford remained normal even while such awful things happened in the world. She and Andrew felt far removed from the village in here with the curtains drawn, surrounded by light emanating from an almost magical source.

"You tried to hint to me," Lily said slowly.

He shook his head. "I did not. Do not excuse me that far."

"Andrew." Her heart felt heavy with unshed tears. "I cannot imagine how you must have felt when I showed up with the log."

Andrew seemed to shrink down at the memory. "I have always known that my life would not be easy if my father's family found out about my existence. No matter what happens, even if it is never proven, I will always legally be that man's heir. And that constrains what I can allow myself. I live in Wedgeford; but I cannot ever truly belong here. If the earl's family ever finds out, I might have to leave at any moment."

She couldn't imagine feeling trapped, knowing that she came from such a family. Knowing she could not escape.

"My father took a wife cavalierly," Andrew said. "I will not. I will not put a woman I care about, or children I might have, in danger. So no, Lily, I wanted you. But I have always known I can't have you. I am not the kind of man who puts women in peril."

"And here I was," Lily said slowly, "showing up after a seven-year absence shouting, ‘Andrew, you're an earl, and I have proof.'"

He let out a huff. "That was a shock. I reacted badly."

Lily tried to gather all her thoughts. How awful she must have made him feel. How terrible, that he felt he couldn't just explain. But before she could get her thoughts in order, the door to the shed burst open and a young man stumbled in.

He had sandy, mussed hair; he was wearing a cravat and a sharply tailored waistcoat that would have belonged on a London lord. He staggered sideways, as if he'd been pressing his ear against the door and had opened it before he'd moved his weight away. And the expression on his face was triumphant—exuberant, even.

He straightened, dusting himself off, then turned to Andrew. "My good mother of trout!" He raised his hands in the air as if worshipping the sun. "There's proof that you're the Earl of Arse?"

Lily blinked.

"Huzzah!" He cried this to the ceiling. "I have been saved at the eleventh hour! I don't have to be the earl!"