Chapter 16

16

The broom made a thwick, thwick sound against the floor of Andrew's seed storage. The motion was repetitive and soothing. Cleaning up was the only thing Andrew could do.

"It's my fault." Alan's voice was small. He was watching Andrew sweep, hunched in a ball of misery in the corner. "I told my solicitor. He must have told my uncle."

"Are you sure?" Andrew felt exhausted.

"This is like him." Alan exhaled unhappily. "He believes in sending…messages."

Long ago, Hortense Sallet had pushed Andrew's mother down the stairs. He did indeed enjoy sending messages.

Just one day prior, Andrew would have been delighted to have lost the logbook. But the log in the hands of his father's family posed a danger for both the brothers. Now neither truly had control of the situation, and that was worst of all.

Alan scrunched into a smaller, more miserable ball. Despite his coloring, he did look like Andrew. Andrew had never been a big brother—or rather, he hadn't grown up with one, and hadn't learned how to act like one.

"I suppose I will get what I deserve. He's stolen the log, and there's nothing to be done." Alan buried his head against his knees. "I can't be the earl. Really. I can't. But apparently I will be forced into it."

"You mean you don't want to." Andrew came and sat beside him. "I can hardly blame you for not wanting it."

"I mean that I can't. It sounds so nice—you're an earl! You're in charge! You get to make all the decisions! But what it really means is that everyone in the family looks to you for…everything. Because there is no one else. If I'm not the earl and you're not the earl, there is no earl. The title escheats to the state. And so, they will all need me to marry."

"You might change your mind about marriage." Andrew wished he had the chance. "Someday, you might crave normalcy."

Alan shook his head. "I won't. I promised."

"You promised?"

Alan nodded. "George," he spoke in scarcely a whisper. "I promised George I would never marry. That it would never be anyone but him."

"Oh."

"And I'm weak." Alan shook his head. "Mentally. I'm afraid, if I'm the earl, and my aunt and uncle are all around me, they'll just badger me with ‘you must' and ‘surely you see' and this and that, and they'll be my guardians for years, and I do not know." He wilted in place like an uprooted seedling. "I do not know that I am strong enough."

"You're a child. You're not supposed to be strong enough to stand up to adults. They're supposed to be strong so you don't have to."

Alan hunched into his knees. "I thought you would be more upset that your younger brother is a deviant."

Andrew exhaled. "Is that why you dreamed of having an older brother? Someone who would shoulder the burden, so you'd be free to be yourself?"

Alan nodded. "My dreams were entirely selfish."

"Mine, too. Just in a different way."

"More oriented toward your own goals, you mean?"

"That is what selfish means. But as for you…" There were many selfish things Andrew had done. Near the top, though, was his treatment of his little brother. He had lied to him for two long years.

Andrew sat and put his arm around the sad lump of his brother. "I think you are not giving yourself credit. I think that perhaps you wanted an older brother who would tell you that you weren't a deviant."

Alan looked up at him with wide, glassy eyes. His chin trembled.

"You are not a deviant. You are exactly who you are, and you should be exactly who you want to be. You are my little brother, and you are perfect." He could feel his anger beginning to rise—at the uncle who made Alan feel so insignificant, at himself who had done the same. "You should be surrounded by adults who protect you."

"Ha." Alan wiped his eyes.

"So, here we are." Andrew wrapped his other arm around him and held him close. "I have been selfish. I have not been fair to you. I will be the adult you need. I will make things right for you. I promise. I am going to find the logbook. Information must not stay in the hands of the enemy."

Alan let out a gasp. "Yes!"

"And I will destroy it?—"

"Noooo," moaned Alan.

"You will be the earl," Andrew said. "But I will not leave you. I will be there, and I will help you be strong enough. You will always have me."

Alan just shook his head. "I don't want it! I don't want it." He shivered. "But I may deserve it, I think." He shivered miserably against Andrew.

Andrew held him closer. "Neither of us deserve it. But one of us has to have it. And whoever it is—the other one has to help, understand? However bad it is, it will be better if we are together."

"Sure," Alan said mournfully. "Maybe. Somehow."

It felt later than it was: midnight, perhaps, instead of ten in the evening. Naomi had come by when they hadn't returned after fleeing the inn. She had taken in the scene, made a wounded noise, and turned on her heel.

Andrew knew what was coming. Or rather, he knew who. He ignored it all and worked on cleaning up. Lily had stayed even after he'd told her there was no need. She was putting his journals in order, wiping off his workbench, when Andrew's mother came in.

His mother. Between talking to Lily and avoiding her by throwing himself into dinner preparations, Andrew hadn't had the chance to talk to her. Or, rather, he'd tried his best not to make time.

She looked around the room. Her shoulders drew back; her spine straightened. She came to him and knelt next to where he was on the floor.

"I finally see what you meant." He scooped up stray dirt and poured it into one of the cracked clay cups that had once held his seedlings.

"What I meant? When?"

He carefully, gently, picked up a plant. The roots had torn. Beans didn't do well with their roots disturbed. Andrew had been so clever, with his pots and his incandescent lights. He should have just had patience. "When you said I was the bare minimum."

"Did I say that?" Her voice was dry. "I said that you were letting your own needs fall by the wayside, that you weren't reaching for the things you wanted."

"Mama. Don't pretend I'm adequate. I didn't tell you about the log. Or…my brother."

"I know now."

One of the long bean seedlings had been mangled beyond repair, the main stalk snapped just below the cotyledons. That one would never survive.

"You have been very alone," his mother said quietly. "Feeling the weight of this burden, not wanting it to fall on anyone else because you know how heavily it sits on your shoulders."

"Don't be kind." He clenched his fist around the broken plant. "Just say it. It's my fault. If I'd told you…" He shook his head. "If I'd told Lily, if I'd told Alan earlier…" He deposited the mess in a bucket. "All of this could have been avoided."

It had not even been a week earlier when Lily had arrived. He'd been measuring the long bean leaves and counting his harvests. He'd believed in his own capacity to deliver.

Foolishly. He had let himself forget whose son he was.

"This," his mother said, sweeping an arm around to take in the destruction, "is not your doing. Your mistakes do not justify someone invading your shed and destroying your treasures."

"Stop being kind to me. I didn't tell you. I know you must be disappointed."

It was the one thing Andrew feared above all else. Her exasperation? Well, that was normal. Her disappointment? That cut him. It meant he'd failed her the way his father had.

"I am sad," she said. "Sad that you have grown to adulthood with so much fear. Sad that the past I brought with me has left you so alone that you fear allowing anyone close. I wish I had been able to shield you from that."

"Don't say such things. It's not your fault."

"I am not disappointed that in this difficult time, you were not perfect. I am proud that you tried."

This seedling… Alan moved the shards of pottery around gently. This one was smashed, but the roots were mostly intact. If he snipped off the top pair of leaves…

"Mama," he said quietly. "What do I do?"

"You're the one who understands plants. I think you know that better than I do."

"I meant about everything else."

She set a hand over his. "Start with the long beans."

That, perhaps, was the best advice she could have given. He could start with the long beans. They might all die; they probably would. It was too cold at night to plant them outside still, but after a calamity like this, trying to transplant them twice might also kill them.

Andrew had very little confidence, but he had stubbornness, and at a distance, that rhymed with hope.

Carefully, gently, Andrew reached for the seedling that might be salvageable. There were one, maybe two others. He'd made dozens of mistakes already. One of them was this: he'd thought he could do everything himself.

He could not. He needed help, even for this tiny step.

"Lily," he called, "there is something that must be done, but I cannot carry everything I need myself. May I ask you to fetch some things for me?"

The garden outside the inn was impossibly dark, the moon hidden by clouds that could at any point bring freezing rains. Andrew, in his shirtsleeves, shivered.

Lily came toward him, walking slowly so as not to drop anything. In the scant light shifting through the clouds, he could see that she had a stack of bowls and a vase cradled against her belly with one hand. In the other, she held a steaming bucket.

"Are you planting them?"

"Yes." He didn't speak the worries running through his mind. His jacket was wrapped around what remained of the seedlings. It was too cold out here for them; they'd been uprooted too abruptly. Instead, he took the vase from her and placed it in the small hole he'd dug while waiting for her. He packed dirt around it, then carefully ladled hot water from the bucket into the vase.

"That's clever," she remarked. "You'll keep the ground near the seedlings warm? I suppose you'll have to dig the vase out every evening."

He shook his head. "Can't disturb the roots. I'll siphon the water out in the evening and replace it. That should do the trick."

Next, he planted the seedlings. He clipped a few leaves as he worked. "With the roots broken," he said, "they can't sustain as large a plant."

She hadn't asked, but it made him feel that what he was doing mattered, that they'd still have a chance. He patted the soil in place, then covered the ground with straw. Finally, he set a bowl over each of the three seedlings he'd tried to save.

"Will that do?" Lily asked.

Andrew could not bring himself to answer. Instead, after a long while, he said, "When I think of yard-long beans growing in Kentish soil, I think of Wedgeford: a place of refuge where we are not chased out or made to forget where we came from. I worked for these—so hard. And…"

She took his head. "And if anyone can save them, you can."

He gave a jerky shake of his head. "Wedgeford has always been special to me. I was born here. It sheltered me. But even as I grew, I knew that I was the one poison that could destroy it. That if anyone found out about me?—"

"You are not a poison."

"I have tried so hard, and I don't know what to do anymore. What if Alan's uncle realizes that the Earl of Arsell has a living, legal heir? This destruction is what resulted when he only intended to retrieve a book." His throat closed. "Am I being selfish by staying now? What would he do if he knew there were a person?"

"When looking at this?" Lily spread a hand, indicating the room. "I think it probably wouldn't matter if you were here."

"Probably."

"Don't start your decision by thinking about the worst person," Lily said. "What about you? What do you want?"

Andrew had no space for his wants. He rarely let himself dream about things he couldn't have. He wanted so hard that if he let any of them come out, he'd never be able to fit them back into place. But here in the dark, with his seedlings dying in front of him, it was almost impossible to contain his yearning.

He wanted Lily. He'd always known he wanted Lily, but now he let himself feel the burning desire to be a part of her life. He wanted to help her accomplish as much as she could. He wanted to be able to be hers— to help her print pages of her poetry translation on her press and make her dinner with the long beans he grew in his garden. He wanted to be a man who was, not one who wasn't.

Instead, his worst fears were coming true, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Andrew's uncle had the log. He might figure out what it signified that the evidence had been found in Wedgeford. It wasn't just proof that Alan was a bastard; it demonstrated that the real countess was alive and in Britain, with a real heir alongside her.

"Let me think," Lily said. "We'll come up with something."

"Really?" Alan felt exhausted. "What's there to come up with?"

"A plan."

"There's no time."

"Tomorrow," Lily said gently, "is Sunday. And if there's one thing I know about gentry, it's this—they won't do anything that looks like work until after the Sabbath. There's time. We will have a plan. I refuse to not fix this."