Chapter Seventeen

God, it hurt. It hurt ever so much more than even Rafe had expected. His heart seemed to beat sluggishly, struggling through the pain of the slice that had been carved straight out of it. He had done it to himself, he knew, but that knowledge had not eased the terrible ache.

His pen, stilled for some moments and left hovering above the paper, at last loosed a drop of ink from the nib, which spread out first in feathery tendrils and then in thin, jagged lines reminiscent of the legs of a spider.

Another page ruined. A dozen times already he'd tried—and failed—to put his thoughts, his feelings, to paper. But the words had soured even as he'd penned them, and his lip had curled as if the rotten scent of them had wafted from the page to assault his nose.

Only excuses. It would never matter how noble his intentions, what the reasons behind his actions had been. There was no excuse for a betrayal such as this, no reason he might provide which would erase the hurt and the harm he had done. Emma had earned the right to every ounce of her hatred, and there existed no combination of words that could relieve it, or even to mitigate the enormity of his actions. He had only been wasting his effort on an impossible task, one which could never hope to earn him forgiveness, one which Emma would not even appreciate.

The only thing he had to offer her was his absence.

His hand slipped into the depths of his pocket and closed around the key she had given him all those weeks ago. He hadn't meant to take it with him, had expected her to reclaim it after he and Chris had confessed what they had done. But she had surprised him from the first, and he—

He'd fled. Like a coward. He had faced down would-be assassins, apprehended criminals, danced along the precipice of disaster, weathered all manner of situations that could have had consequences most dire. And he had done it all with an unshakable serenity of spirit, without even the tiniest jangle of nerves or nervousness.

It was Emma alone whom he could not bring himself to face. Emma alone who had inspired a crisis of conscience so profound that he doubted the shame for it would ever leave him.

She would never again share her troubles with him, nor trust him with the keeping of her secrets. Possibly, he thought, he had ruined even her friendship with Diana. Would she keep her distance even from her closest friend, just on the chance that she might, at some point, encounter him?

I'm sorry. Such a pathetic phrase, too insipid, too insufficient to capture the truth of it. There weren't words meaningful enough to express himself, words which carried the weight, the gravity, required.

And still they had been the burden he'd carried for a decade now, weighing more heavily upon his shoulders as the years stretched out. A remorse he could never have told her of, that she had not even known he'd borne. A burden that was now hers as well, though it had not lifted his with it.

With one hand he gathered up the ruined pages, forming a neat stack of them. One by one he fed them into the fire, turning every part and parcel of those thoughts he'd compiled upon the pages into what they were in truth. Nothing more than smoke. Insubstantial, without significance or meaning.

She wouldn't have wanted them anyway.

∞∞∞

Emma awoke with a burning headache behind her eyes and a lingering exhaustion that stretched straight to her soul. Probably it hadn't been helped by the fact that she'd snatched perhaps two hours of sleep before dawn had come pouring through the window, rousing her from an uneasy slumber.

However much she might have wished to draw the curtains around her bed and retreat from the world to nurse her wounds, she had not the time for such things. Despite the havoc Kit and Rafe had wreaked upon her life, still she had twenty children in her care and a cipher to break besides.

If such a thing were even possible. She had had to admit to herself, in the early morning hours before she had at last given up the ghost for the evening, that she would likely fare no better than they had. She hadn't known the man she had married. Not even well enough to have suspected he had been keeping a secret of such magnitude. Three years of marriage, and they had been little better than strangers, despite how desperately she might have wished otherwise. And if he had not forced Rafe's hand and precipitated his own demise, he might have dragged her down with him into ignominy.

She flicked aside the tiniest whisper that floated through her brain: If not for Kit. If not for Rafe. Perhaps there would come a day when she could acknowledge that, when she could gain a bit of distance from all that had occurred and—if not forgive, at least come to some acceptance of it. But it would not be today, when the humiliation still felt so fresh.

She paused outside the dining room, braced for the ruckus that would not doubt assault her ears the moment she threw open the door. Even the faint strains of it that floated through the heavy wood of the door pinged around her brain, ringing in her ears to the point of pain. With one hand she pressed upon her aching eyes and drew in a deep, cleansing breath.

"My lady?" Neil's crisp, clear voice came from somewhere over her left shoulder. "Dannyboy to see you."

Dannyboy. A strange sense of relief assailed her. In the weeks that had passed, she'd grown rather fond of the boy. It would have been one more awful lash to her heart never to see him again only because she had fallen out with his employer. As she turned to greet him, her fingers twitched with the effort to restrain herself from brushing the boy's shaggy bangs away from his face. "Good morning," she said. "Have you come for breakfast?"

"Aye," he said, scrubbing at one dirty cheek with the cuff of his sleeve. "I hope ye got eggs. And bacon."

Somehow his tactless yet enthusiastic tone warmed her heart. "Every day," she said. "And you are always welcome." She hesitated as her fingers brushed the door handle. "Have you—have you a message for me from your employer?" she asked. There was some strange pain in her chest at the very thought of it. As if her heart tore itself in two in a futile attempt to stretch itself across the vast gulf between anticipation and anxiety. Neither welcome; neither comfortable.

"Naw," Dannyboy said, with a swift shake of his head. "'E said ye wouldn't want one today. And I wasn't to bother ye none about sendin' one back, neither, since there weren't no note ‘e sent wiv me."

"So he sent you here only for breakfast?" she asked, flustered by the thought.

"Naw," he said again. "It's just ‘e didn't send no note." Dannyboy shoved one hand into his pocket and groped around within it, searching for something. At last he pulled free his clenched fist and extended it to her, and when she opened her palm, something cold and metallic dropped into her hand.

The key to her terrace door. Her fingers closed around it slowly, with a queer sense of finality. It hadn't even occurred to her, in the chaos of last evening, to demand it back from him before he'd left. There had been too much else to contend with that she hadn't given it even a sliver of her attention.

But Rafe had, even if he had sent no note along with it, nor even the smallest effort to explain himself. Would she have extended the grace required to read one, had he sent it? In her present humor, she could admit it to herself in all honesty—no. And she thought perhaps he had known that, too. That there was no right step to make when he'd made so many wrong ones already.

He had left last evening even before she would have demanded it of him, as if to spare her the unpleasantness of his company. Because he had known all along exactly how she would react. He had always known, and that, she thought—that made it all so much worse.

"I'll put it back in its place, my lady," Neil said softly, his voice nearly drowned out by the sudden rush of noise through the door as Dannyboy scampered into the dining room to breakfast with the rest of the children. Neil meant to relieve her of the burden of it, she knew, to relieve even her mind of having to think upon what it meant. What once it had meant, but no longer.

"Thank you," she said, "but I can manage."

But it felt heavier than it ought to in her hand as she wound through the house, to the housekeeper's quarters. And when she placed the key back onto its hook, it settled into the groove with a distinct snick that sounded too much like a lock falling into place.

An ending she had not anticipated, and a door bolted between them. She had been a fool to open it in the first place.

∞∞∞

A scratch at the door of his study pulled Rafe from the muddle of his thoughts, from the fog created by having downed a good deal more gin than was wise. "Enter," he called, rubbing his eyes with one hand to alleviate the vague burn behind them. It didn't do much, but then he hadn't expected it would.

The door opened, and Mrs. Morris poked her head in. "Lady Weatherford has come to pay a call."

Bloody fucking hell. Diana hadn't come to pay a call. She'd come to interrogate him. And he was in no particular mood to be interrogated—but Diana sailed into the room before he could dredge up an excuse. She drew in a deep breath as she did, and the slash of her brows behind the rims of her spectacles suggested she had arrived in high dudgeon and would not be easily ejected. She hadn't brought Hannah along with her, either, which meant she meant business.

He thought about rising, suggesting that she'd come at an inopportune time, that he had somewhere else to be. He was not entirely certain that he could hold his feet if he did. He was even less certain that they remained connected to his legs. Instead he said, "Thank you, Mrs. Morris," and resigned himself to his fate.

Diana had hardly let the door close behind her before she flailed her hands in a helpless little gesture meant to express the depths of her disquiet and inquired in a rapid rush of words, "Are you having an affair with Emma?"

"No," he said, and comforted himself that it was the truth. Whatever it was in which they had been engaged, it was now definitively ended. Relegated to the past.

Her lips tightened, nostrils flaring as if she had caught the acrid scent of the deliberate obfuscation. The silence that had fallen in the wake of his words stretched out between them. But he had always been comfortable with it, that silence that most people were perturbed by. So he let her make of it what she would.

Diana fisted her hands upon on her hips, and her dark eyes raked over him in intense judgment of his disheveled, slovenly appearance. He knew what she would see, though he'd hardly been able to give his reflection within a mirror more than a glance—cravat loosely-knotted and wrinkled beyond repair. Waistcoat unbuttoned. Hair uncombed. Eyes likely more than a little bloodshot. A day and a half of a new growth of beard shadowing his jaw. Half-empty bottle of gin set strategically near a convenient glass.

"You are ever so clever at dancing about with your words, Rafe," she said, her voice clipped and more than a little menacing. "So I suppose I must be more specific. Were you having an affair with Emma?"

"That is none of your damned business."

"She is my friend!" Another queer little flutter of her fingertips, agitation evident in the jerky lift and fall of her shoulders.

"Then you may ask her," he said. "But I will not share anything which rightly ought to be kept in confidence." At least—at least Emma deserved to be able to trust him that far. To know that he had not violated her right to privacy in what had passed between them.

"I can't," she said. "She was meant to come to tea today. And she didn't. Of course I was concerned, so I called upon her, and she—she was not at home."

"Perhaps something pressing came up."

"She wasn't out, Rafe. She was not at home. To me!" With a wretched sigh, she dropped into a chair, gripping the arms in her hands. "She won't see me, and I must know...is it because of me, or because of you?"

Rafe sank back in his chair, and even that small movement made his head swim. He shaded his eyes with one hand against the suddenly too-sharp intrusion of afternoon sunlight. "The fault is mine," he admitted. "Don't stop trying. And when she does see you, tell her—tell her she never has to see me again."

"What have you done?" Diana asked, her voice quavered over the words. "For God's sake, Rafe. What have you done?"

Rather too much than could be fit into a single conversation. More even than he was at liberty to confess, given the sensitivity of the matter. And now, it seemed, he had taken more from her than he had known. Even the comfort she might have found in the companionship of her dearest friend had been lost to her.

He could only shake his head, and reach for his abandoned glass with fingers that trembled. "Just keep trying," he said as he cast back the rest of the liquor. There was no taste to it anymore, no bitter, punishing burn to coat his throat in fire. He'd consumed more than was prudent already, but there did not exist enough liquor in the whole of England to drown the guilt of it all.

He could run, he supposed, when this was all through. Take a post in some distant country, bury himself in work, and resign himself to never returning to England's shores. He'd made himself invisible enough that eventually, he would be forgotten. The unneeded spare; the middle brother who had made himself so scarce for so long that probably it would take a few months—a year, perhaps—for anyone to realize they'd not seen him in some time. Probably Diana and Marcus would spare him the occasional thought, until their families grew so large and busy that they hadn't the time or the inclination even for that much any longer.

It would be a sort of death, but perhaps a kinder one than he deserved. Not to die, but to be erased from memory. Perhaps Emma, too, would forget—and that would be a kindness in itself, too.

But no matter how far afield he fled, he'd still be in his own company. His sins would catch up to him eventually. They always did.

∞∞∞

"You're going to do wonderfully," Emma said as she adjusted the lapels of Josiah's coat just outside the drawing room. He'd acquired a new, confident set to his shoulders in this last week, his spirits brighter. No longer half so nervous as he once had been, and ever so much closer, now, to the man he was becoming than the boy he'd been when first he had arrived at her home.

It hurt her heart, just a little. Another of her boys, grown at last. Halfway out the door already; only this one obstacle left to clear.

"I know," he said, and managed a sliver of a smile. "I've done the work. I can't let a little thing like nerves shake me now." He drew in a steady breath, let it out slowly. "I will stand tall upon my accomplishments," he said, in a faintly reflective voice, as if he were quoting someone.

"Of course you will," she said. "As it happens, the gentleman who will conduct your interview, Mr. Rutledge, offers instruction in philosophy. He has a particular fondness for Aristotle. He will want to hear your own interpretations in your own words."

"Aristotle," Josiah said, and a flicker of relief passed over his face. "I can do that."

"I imagine you can," Emma said, since Josiah had a good many opinions about a great many things, and a particular talent for expressing himself with both an enthusiasm and an eloquence seldom seen in boys of his age. "We've a few minutes still," she said. "The tea has arrived, but Mr. Rutledge is quite fond of sugar biscuits. So long as we are not late…"

Josiah ducked his head, a ruffled lock of his bangs drifting over his eyes. "I'd like to go in alone," he said, abashed. "I'm sorry. I know I said—"

"Don't apologize," Emma instructed. "It's not in the least necessary. I only want you to be comfortable." But was he? He had thrust one hand into his pocket and closed his hand into a fist, holding tight to—something. "What have you got there?" she asked.

"It's nothing," he said sheepishly, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Only a note." But he pulled it out of his pocket and passed it over to her anyway.

The paper was worn, as if it had been opened and folded closed time and again, read and re-read dozens upon dozens of times. The ink was somewhat blurred from the constant touch of fingers.

But still, even absent a signature, she recognized the tidy script that flourished across the paper.

Hold your head high and keep your shoulders straight. It is just as important to be perceived as confident as it is to be confident.

Speak slowly, clearly, and calmly. Give yourself as much time to formulate your thoughts as you would give your listener to digest them.

Be firm in your convictions. Disagreement is not in itself disrespect.

Above all, stand tall upon your accomplishments. Where you have come from will never matter half so much as where you are going.

Somehow, in just a few well-chosen words, Rafe had given Josiah the courage to stand upon his own two feet. To brave the interview that had once had him so very terrified alone, without even Emma's support. All the reassurances in the world could not have come close to offering Josiah what Rafe had: clear, direct instructions on how to navigate perhaps the most daunting experience of his young life.

"Could I—could I have it back?" Josiah asked, a swallow bobbing in his throat. At his side, his fingers flexed in a little nervous gesture, as if waiting for the comfort of the paper placed back into them. It had become a talisman, she thought, to a boy who had desperately needed more than platitudes and reassurances. Rafe hadn't told him what would happen—he had told the boy how to secure his future for himself, by himself.

"It's…it's good advice," she heard herself saying. "Do you know who sent it?"

Josiah shook his head. "Neil delivered it a few days past," he said. "Said it had come for me."

Because she had told him, Emma realized. She had told Rafe of Josiah's unfortunate struggle with nerves, and he had taken a few moments out of his day to provide the boy with some desperately-needed advice. Not because he had had to. But because he had wanted to.

What was she meant to make of that? Nothing sent to her for over a week now, not even so much as a single word of explanation. But he had delivered this to Josiah, because the boy had been in need of it.

"I'm ready," Josiah said, firming his shoulders. "Would you wait for me, ma'am?"

"Of course," Emma said. "Of course. I'll be just outside." Ready to celebrate him as he deserved, when he had been admitted.

Straightening his shoulders and holding his head high, just as Rafe had instructed, Josiah took a deep breath and walked through the door at last. That first crucial step toward the bright future that lay before him.

Emma blew out a breath and pressed her back against the wall outside the drawing room. "Josiah," she heard the affable Mr. Rutledge say. "I've heard much about you. A true scholar, to my understanding. If you don't mind, I thought we would conduct your interview in Classical Greek."

She heard Josiah respond in kind, something in Greek—which she had never studied—but by Mr. Rutledge's delighted chortle, she assumed it had been enough to impress. It took only a few moments for their discourse to begin in truth, turning animated, vibrant, sprightly. Moments sped into minutes; a quarter of an hour elapsing in the blink of an eye. A half hour. Three quarters.

She had never known an interview take quite so long before. A fresh pot of tea came, and more biscuits, and still Emma waited there in the hallway.

At long last, Mr. Rutledge said, "Good heavens. Is it so late already?" A startled laugh followed, and in its wake a rueful sigh. "I do beg your pardon; I've found myself entirely diverted from my purpose. The time has quite gotten away from me."

That was good. She was certain of it.

"My apologies, Professor. I hope I have not wasted your time," Josiah said, though to his credit it sounded less contrite and more hopeful.

"Dear boy, never say so." There was the clink of china as Mr. Rutledge set aside his teacup. "It has been a very long time indeed since I have had the pleasure of so robust a conversation with a prospective student. It is my very great honor to welcome you to Oxford."

Emma had never been worried, not really. But Josiah had been, and now—now he had secured a place for himself, all on his own. That confidence that he had gained was a gift she had not quite been able to give him. But somehow, Rafe had known exactly what he had needed to hear in order to find it for himself.