Nell rose from the table, setting a cup of tea on the bedside table next to Rena. “Do you think living well or living happily undoes your grief? That it means you loved him any less?”
“I don’t suffer,” Rena insisted again, staring at the cup’s chipped porcelain. With gentle fingers, Nell untangled the necklace from Rena’s clenched fingers and set it on the bedside table.
“Your home may not be where it once was,” she said. “But it can still be filled with joy. You do not need to suffer to love him; it’s not what Edric would have wanted.”
“I did not follow you here to suffer,” Rena protested. “I followed you here because I love you.”
Nell’s smile warmed. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “But suffering has followed you to England, and I can see as well as anyone that you are lost beneath its weight.”
Rena glanced down at her now empty hands, once again studying the thin bones in her wrists, then the raised calluses on each palm and fingertip. “Would he even recognize me?” Rena finally asked. “Would Edric even know me?”
“He would recognize your spirit.” Nell smoothed her fingers over Rena’s hair. “The rest will heal with time.”
“I sometimes feel like I am five different people at once,” Rena breathed. “Like I have to be countless versions of myself, but none of them make sense after everything else that has happened.” Her words made little sense, but they were the only way she could think to make Nell understand.
Rena had to be strong but humble. Pressed by grief but driven by love. She was a foreign girl, sick for home, and yet this was her home too.
“We do not grieve as those without hope,” Nell answered softly, smoothing the blankets over Rena’s legs.
Hope. Rena had once placed all of her hope in Edric, in their future together, and where was he now? Six feet beneath the ground, covered in rot. Shuddering, Rena fought the urge to pull the blankets up over her head, as she had often done as a frightened child spooked by an unruly wind. She imagined Edric snatched and dragged to the underworld by Yama, the Hindu lord of death, who by some accounts judged the good and the wicked and decided how they were to be punished. As a child, Rena’s mother had shown her icons of Yama’s blue skin and red eyes—he was a striking figure who yielded up a mace in one hand and a noose in the other, with which to drag the unfortunate soul down to his palace of Kalichi. For a moment, Rena tried to believe Edric had been greeted by this figure, perhaps had seen Yama’s four-eyed hounds, but each of these images felt empty. Untrue. Nell told Rena to hope, but her heart was adrift within her and could not find its mooring.
“Hope,” she repeated brokenly, wishing she could snarl at the word and make it scatter. “In what do we hope?”
“After all these months we’ve spent together,” Nell said, a hint of challenge touching her voice. “And still you don’t know?”
Of course Rena knew. Every time the older woman stooped her shoulders to pray, she sought to answer Rena’s grief. Every time she pleaded with Rena to come to church, she sought to soothe and fix her. But Nell’s god was still not Rena’s god, and too many pieces of Rena had already been dashed to the wind like heaping handfuls of sand. Was she to leave the gods of her childhood too?
In answer, Rena kissed Nell on the cheek, blew out her candle, and rolled onto her side. Still, it took several hours before she shuttered her mind against the icy questions that hovered close.
CHAPTER 10
Paris, France
Barric stared at the red door for several moments without knocking. Flat 324. He’d been summoned to this door more times than he could count, like a dog called back to its master. Gritting his teeth, Barric pounded his fist twice on the door, completely ignoring the bronze knocker. The goal was to bring Charlie home, he reminded himself, where he belonged. Allowing his temper to slip his hold would get him nowhere.
The door flew open with hardly a pause, as if Charlie had been waiting for him all afternoon.
“Jack,” Charlie said, the name a sigh of unmistakable relief.
Barric took a stiff inventory of his brother. Charlie’s coat was lined in rich plum velvet, the rest of his clothes pressed and artfully tailored as usual. Charlie had inherited their mother’s blond curls, which were left unruly over well-trimmed sideburns. An expensive-looking walking stick—encased in tortoiseshell and topped with a carved ivory eagle’s head—dangled absently from his right hand, as if he’d been about to go for a midday stroll.
“Still a scoundrel, I see,” Barric said by way of greeting. But there was something strangely altered in Charlie’s expression, which set Barric even more on his guard. Charlie’s lazy care-for-nothing grin, Barric realized after a moment’s consideration—it was missing.
When Charlie didn’t rise to the insult, Barric entered a bit reluctantly, tossing his hat on a table by the door. Charlie’s quarters were modest in size, though they were lavishly furnished, and his ceiling-high windows overlooked the Seine. Barric took notice of several new framed pieces of art, as well as a small piano which had not been there before. He plunked out a few notes on the ivory keys, waiting for his brother to speak.
“Care for some wine?” Charlie finally offered, propping his walking stick by the door. He sounded distracted, the words merely tossed out to fill the silence.
Again, Barric dragged his fingers over the piano keys, conjuring an unpleasantly jumbled noise. “I’d care to know what I’m doing back in Paris,” he retorted flatly.
“I’m in a fair amount of trouble,” Charlie admitted, pouring two glasses from a crystal decanter despite his brother’s terse answer.
Barric was not surprised. Charlie had been in trouble since he’d been five years old, when he had accidentally caught their drawing room curtains on fire. Still, Charlie never had any scruples about trouble. On the contrary. He almost always had a plan, one which involved a sizable score of Barric’s money.
Not wanting to seem uneasy, Barric settled into an armchair and took the glass when Charlie offered it. “Unable to pay your debts again?” he guessed, taking a moment to savor the tartness of Charlie’s most expensive vintage.
“No, Jack.” Charlie wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You’ve settled my debts quite well enough.”
“Then a woman, I suppose.”
Charlie quaffed off his own wine. “It’s always a woman,” he muttered darkly, palming the empty glass nearly tight enough to shatter it.
Charlie’s sudden passion made Barric feel uneasy. His brother had never been very serious, except for those dark, cavernous months after their parents had died. But Charlie had created his own new world in Paris, one where he never needed to be serious again, where women kept him company and his friends kept him in the usual kinds of trouble.
“What happened to Celeste?” Barric prodded. “You were quite enamored of her in your last letter.”
Matching Barric’s uncertain gaze, Charlie quietly answered, “She’s with child.”
Barric swore under his breath. If he was honest with himself, he was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner, that his brother didn’t have a whole host of illegitimates scampering around Europe.
“How much does she want?” he asked at length, setting his glass on the table. He should’ve known his brother’s cryptic plea would mean something especially sordid.
Charlie shook his head defensively. “It isn’t like that.”
“The devil it isn’t. How much does she want?”
“She doesn’t want anything. She’s left Paris. My letters all come back unopened.”
Typically, Charlie asked him to pay away his scandals, to make his mistresses disappear when things turned ugly or tedious—but this mistress was already gone.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Barric spoke hesitantly. “But I fail to see how I can help. To your way of thinking, isn’t the problem quite settled?”
“She won’t answer my letters,” Charlie said again, his tone uncharacteristically bothered. “Jack, she’s having my child, and
she’s run off and won’t even speak to me.”
“Come, now, don’t tell me she’s made an honest man out of you.”
Charlie set his glass on the piano with a clatter and stood. “Don’t make jokes, Jack. I need you to find her. I need you to talk to her.”
Barric shook his head, exasperated and confused. “And what, exactly, am I supposed to say to the girl?”
“Tell her I meant what I said,” Charlie ordered, speaking rather fast. He ran his hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic show of loss. “Tell her I’m sorry for everything, and she can depend on me, and I’ll still marry her. Just tell her to come back, and I’ll take care of them both.”
As soon as those words were out, the room fell into silence. Charlie would marry her? Barric had never heard anything so impossible in all his life. After a moment, he rose and closed the space between them, his voice gruff. “You mean to tell me you’ve proposed to this woman?”
This time Charlie didn’t drop his eyes. “Yes.”
“But she’s an actress. And there isn’t a penny to either of your names.”
“Yes,” Charlie said again.
Barric didn’t know if he should be angry with his brother for getting into this mess in the first place or impressed by his sudden attempt at making a sacrifice for the sake of someone else. In all their years together, Charlie had never once elected to do the right or honorable thing. He was too wrapped up in his own wants to realize how selfish a man he really was.
“And what did she say in response to your offer?”
“That she’d sooner marry the devil.” As he repeated her words, Charlie looked ready to toss his wine glass at the wall. Barric knew the feeling all too well—the Fairfax family temper. His father had had it too, and Uncle George had been the first to suggest, many years ago, that Barric’s red hair was an omen he would out-temper them all.
“Just calm down a moment.” Barric held up a barring hand. “Sit down and let me think.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Charlie went on. “I never meant for any of it to turn out like this. What would Father say if he could see me now? Or Mother?”
“A lesser man would have walked away,” Barric reasoned quickly, disturbed that Charlie brought up their parents for the first time in so many years. “A lesser man wouldn’t have cared if she left.” Which meant his brother still had a conscience—and maybe there was still hope for even the blackest sheep in the Fairfax family.
“I’m tired of feeling this way,” Charlie muttered, gesturing to the lavish room. “I’m sick to death of all of it.”
Barric took note of the dark rims beneath his brother’s eyes. Charlie’s grief seemed genuine, but that didn’t make Barric any less uncomfortable to witness it. Of all the outcomes Barric had anticipated from this particular visit, an outright admission of guilt had been farthest from his thoughts. When he’d received Charlie’s letter, he had thought it would be an appeal for money, but it had never occurred to Barric that his brother might need him.
“Then it’s high time you did something about it,” Barric decided. “Wallowing won’t help anything.”
Charlie gestured lamely at his brother. “If I was anything like you, I wouldn’t even be in this mess.”
Barric sighed. “I’ve too many faults of my own to be considered by you for sainthood.”
“Faults?” Charlie scoffed. “What faults?”
Barric didn’t wish to discuss his temper with Charlie, or the fact he’d gotten into enough rows in his earlier years to dishonor the family name a hundred times over. “Leave Paris,” he said instead. “Sell everything you have that will fetch a price and send Celeste all the money. You move back home with me, where I will find you work. You send her all the money you can, without expectation of anything in return. And you live a better life until, maybe, she’ll listen.”
Charlie paled as he listened to Barric’s instructions. He set his hand on his new piano, his fingers splayed on the royal mahogany. “Sell all of it?”
Barric nodded his affirmation. “Anything you don’t need.” Which they both knew was practically everything Charlie kept in his apartment, down to the last piano key.
“And move back to Abbotsville?” Charlie shook his head and gazed out at the river, already weighing his losses. “Oh, but it’s so very dull there, isn’t it?”
Not so dull, Barric answered inwardly, allowing his thoughts to drift to Rena. He pondered those last few moments they’d shared together, huddled beside each other in front of the fire.
Snagged unpleasantly by the memory, Barric blinked and looked back at Charlie, who still stared drearily down at the river. How many women had his brother brought to this very room? Barric wondered. Actresses were Charlie’s usual fare, musicians and travelers, anyone with an interesting story and a pretty face. Suddenly Barric felt less confident in his plan to bring Charlie back to Abbotsville. Rena was exactly Charlie’s type.
Different, exotic, with just enough of a past to hold his interest.
Alarmed by his own unease, Barric spoke before he could stop himself. “If you do come, you’ll keep your hands off the women who work for me.”
Charlie’s mouth twisted as if disgusted his brother needed to set such a stipulation. Still, he didn’t refuse.
“The decision is yours, of course,” Barric went on, keeping his voice neutral as he crossed to the door and picked up his hat. “I’m staying at the Grand Hotel du Louvre; I leave for England at the end of the week. Either you’re with me when I leave, or you stay here. I have no scruples about leaving you here, and I promise I’ll not come back again.”
No one whispered about Rena that morning or slid surreptitious glances toward her when they thought she wouldn’t notice. All eyes were fixed up front, where Barric sat in his usual pew with a blond-haired stranger at his side. It’d been nearly a month since Lord Barric had mysteriously disappeared to France, and according to Alice, he had returned with his brother, Charlie. The two looked remarkably like brothers—with profiles etched of hard lines, hair slightly askew, and chins lifted at a similarly haughty angle.
As if feeling Rena’s gaze, Charlie reached a hand up, scratching faintly at the back of his neck. Rena dropped her eyes, trying not to watch him like the rest, knowing all too well the weight of unfamiliar stares. But that didn’t stop her from hearing the women in the pew behind her.
“So, Charlie Fairfax has returned,” one observed to her friend. “You think he ran himself out of trouble in France? Or is it money that’s run out?”
“Probably bored,” whispered the other. “Though I have a hard time believing Barric would let him carry on here.”
“Charlie carries on everywhere,” her friend returned, voice twisting with delight. “And I’m sure there are many young ladies in these pews who are rather thrilled to have him back.”
Rena hunched forward, wishing she could block her ears. The whispers were always worse than the stares. She wanted to turn and hiss the women into silence, but she focused on the parson’s voice instead, following the litany as it unwound like a colorful ribbon in her mind.
Over the past few weeks, she’d come to admit the services were rather lovely. Laced with music, built on a soft rise of groaning petitions, the words often pulled at the parts of her heart which had fallen silent. Even Lord Barric’s sharpness seemed affected by the service that morning, his usually stern demeanor replaced with a more thoughtful expression as he spoke his responses. Once, after communion, Rena saw his head bent in prayer when the others were singing.
When the service finished and people began to gather their things, Rena followed Nell out of the pew. People on all sides of the church paused to steal one last glimpse of Charlie Fairfax, but Rena refused to look back for even a moment.
“Another lovely service,” Nell observed, pausing in the aisle as she let another young family pass. Three mop-headed children stole quick, open glances at Rena before ducking their faces down and falling in line behind the
ir mother.
Rena did not answer Nell’s observation. Instead, as soon as the family had left them enough room, she took Nell’s arm and steered her toward the back of the church, where the parson waited on the outer steps to greet his parishioners. Though she realized her flight was a silly impulse, she was not yet ready to face Lord Barric, even in such a harmless setting. For weeks she had tried to take Nell’s advice, to live with less sorrow, but seeing him now filled her only with dread.
“I’m sorry, are we in a hurry?” Nell placed a steadying hand on Rena’s shoulder. “I thought you’d want to walk home with Alice.”
Uneasy, Rena glanced toward the front, where William and Alice had been seated and were now deep in conversation with one of the tenant farmers. Lord Barric was already making his way down the aisle, two pews past their friends and gaining. Rena was trying to think of an excuse to continue home alone, but Nell didn’t give her the chance.
“Unless, of course, you aren’t finished avoiding Lord Barric.”
Rena started, staring at her mother-in-law with unreserved shock. “Avoiding him?” she repeated defensively. “I most certainly am not.”
“What a relief.” Nell smiled, smoothing a flyaway lock of Rena’s hair. “Because here he comes now.”
Rena spun just in time to face him.
When he removed his hat in a silent, pointed greeting, she stumbled over her responding curtsy, feeling oddly exposed after their last conversation, as if he could read her thoughts without her approval.
“Good morning to you both,” Lord Barric finally said, his eyes traveling from Rena to Nell and back again.
“Good morning, Lord Barric.” Since the man had such a marked talent for elegant boredom, Rena made sure her voice sounded twice as bland as his. “It has been many weeks since we’ve spoken.”
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