Theresa glanced at him. “Am not.”
But she was. She wasn’t sure entirely how it had happened. The dowager hadn’t done anything, really, except try to teach Theresa manners and put her in pretty gowns…and then, when she’d realized that both of these things were going extremely badly, she had shifted tacks.
Theresa loved Judith and Judith loved Theresa.
But you harbored a different love for someone who had known you since you were a child—a love tempered by the tantrums that you had once thrown. Judith’s affection felt so conditional—given only when Theresa behaved. Somehow, that made Theresa not want to behave at all.
The dowager liked Theresa—General Register Office visits, terrible embroidery, and all.
“She’s just got good ideas,” Theresa said instead. “She understands me. Judith wants me to be a lady. The dowager wants me to be happy.”
And she likes me, just as I am.
The dowager had told her that once, and Theresa had never realized she wanted to hear it until it had been said.
But Theresa didn’t say that. It made her seem vulnerable, and the one thing she knew for certain was that she could never let her brother see her vulnerability.
* * *
Adrian had made plans to leave with Camilla tomorrow.
Mr. Singh checked the schedules to Lackwich for Adrian. Tomorrow he and Camilla would need to be up before dawn; that meant this was the last morning here before…
His thoughts wandered, and he pulled them back to the land of rationality. No point in feeling odd about the matter—they would go to Lackwich, hopefully find proof of Bishop Lassiter’s wrongdoing, head immediately to his uncle, and file the paperwork for annulment with his assistance. It was what he wanted.
Definitely that.
And if they had one more day together? He had a great deal to do. He’d show Camilla the plates and ask her opinion. They’d talk; he would go to work. It would be just like every other day.
At that thought, he heard the tap of footsteps and he looked up.
She stood at the top of the staircase, smiling down at him, and…
It took him a moment to remember that she wasn’t his.
She could not be. The early morning sunlight cascaded through the east-facing window, catching on motes of sunlight. It danced across her face, as if the daybreak itself were smiling along with her. Oh, no. What was he doing, thinking those thoughts about her?
And then she skipped down the stairs and his heart squeezed in his chest. Oh, damn. What was he doing?
Right. The china. He was showing her the first run of the china plates that Harvil was bringing to the exhibition this year.
He should offer her his arm for the walk, but even that seemed too much. Instead he gave her a smile that he hoped was friendly and not stupid with the pent-up desires that he could not indulge in. Not here. Not about her.
“You don’t have to come.” His voice felt rough.
“Of course I don’t have to.” She smiled up at him. “But I want to. How else will I know what you’ve been doing all day, every day?”
“Well.” It was a good thing she couldn’t see him blush like a schoolboy. “Let’s be off, then.”
He didn’t offer her his arm, and she didn’t try to take it. Still, he felt the phantom pressure where her hand ought to have rested on the crook of his elbow as they walked.
You know, he could have said. I like you. I think you’re lovely. I think you’re brave. I think I want you.
He hadn’t said the words, and she hadn’t said them back. But he felt them on the tip of his tongue. He could see them in the way she tipped her head back to catch his expression, in the way her eyes followed him, bright with happiness.
It wasn’t love. It was attraction, and there was no place for attraction between them now. He wanted to choose someone, not to give in to lust and physical ardor, trapping himself for the rest of his life.
“They’re really just review pieces,” he told her as they approached the building. “You’ll see. We have a lot to do. Once we’ve settled on the design, we have to make a copperplate for transfer printing the underglaze.”
He shuffled the keys into his hand and opened the door.
“None of those words made sense to me,” Camilla said at his side.
“Well… I’ll explain it if you want. Probably in greater detail than you want. Most people don’t want to hear. In any event, after it’s been glaze fired, we enamel it.” Their steps echoed in the corridor. He stopped at the door to the studio. “That was last night. I haven’t seen the review plates since they were fired.”
“Does firing change it?”
“Um…yes. The overglaze colors, see, are made of flux, minerals, and—” He stopped, catching himself. “Right. You don’t need to know.”
Her eyes glowed at him. “Oh, you can tell me anything. I don’t mind.” That shy little dip of her head, the splay of pink across her cheeks. She was so damned lovely, the way she blushed so easily. “I’d like to hear anything you find interesting, really.”
And he wanted to tell her.
He pulled away. “Well, I should show you the plates. I would go on forever, and it would make more sense if you were looking at something first, don’t you think?”
They had been laid out in a row on the sideboard.
“Here,” he said, gesturing her forward. “They tell a story. We’ll start from the beginning.”
She didn’t need to tell him how she felt—not when she already proclaimed it with every smile, with every little blush.
He didn’t need to tell her, either. Not when there were the plates, after all.
She came to stand beside him.
His heart beat heavily.
“Here,” he said, pointing. “This is the first one. You’ll notice that faint green patterned background, redolent of leaves and bamboo? That’s the underglaze painting.”
She had frozen in place, her eyes trained on the plate. “Adrian.”
“The way we get that light green underglaze is a family secret.” He smiled. “As is the orange in the enamel—that’s these colors here, you see, the stripes—”
“Adrian. It’s a tiger and her cubs.”
He felt a lump in his throat. “Well. So. It is.”
“What’s she chasing, that one cub? Is she headed to the river?”
He didn’t object to her pronoun. Now that the plate had been glazed, that little stylized dream looked like a glistening star. They’d specially made a paint for it, a mix of blues and greens so light that you could only see the color when the plate tilted into the light. Gold flecks—real gold—gave it a luminous look.
“I don’t know,” Adrian said. “Maybe it’s a star. Maybe it’s a dream. You decide.”
“It’s lovely. What’s the next one?”
He gestured her on.
On this plate, the underglaze was the cobalt blue of traditional china pottery, painted in waves and roils depicting a raging river.
The tiger kitten, caught in the current, tossed and turned, one paw still outstretched to that stylized star as if to catch it even in the midst of drowning.
Alongside the riverbank, her mother ran, desperate to catch her.
“Adrian, is that a waterfall ahead?”
“Um…yes?”
“You’re sending a kitten into a waterfall?”
“Maybe?”
She turned to the next plate. The tiger cub stood on a riverbank, looking up a sheer cliff down which the waterfall thundered. At the very top, small in the distance, were the faces of the mother tiger and her other cubs.
“You separated them?” Camilla stood in place, looking at the scene. She set a hand over her heart. “That’s not right.”
A fourth plate showed the cub sitting at the base of the cliff. Claw marks marked her attempt to climb back up, futilely. The kitten looked almost despondent—but just to the side, leading away from the cliff, that dream glittered.
In th
e fifth plate, the cub, slightly older, traversed a swamp, nervously avoiding being caught by some ugly sharp-toothed reptile.
In the sixth, the cub, now juvenile, padded through a dark forest inhabited by fantastical looking birds—drawn forward, forever in pursuit of that glittering dream.
In the seventh, the tiger stalked the stars themselves, a thousand dreams flashing around her paws.
In the final plate, fully grown, she descended a mountain, crowned in stars, to the valley where her mother awaited.
Camilla set the final plate down and looked at Adrian. “I don’t know a thing about art. I couldn’t give you any advice at all.” Her eyes shimmered.
“Did you like it?”
“It gave me feelings.” She tapped her chest. “Here.”
“That’s always a good sign.”
She swallowed and turned to him. “It’s…it’s about a tiger.”
“Yes?”
Her eyes found his. “You tell me I’m a tiger sometimes.”
“Well.” He put his hands in his pockets, the better not to touch her with them. “Yes. I do.”
Her eyes were so wide, so bright with hope. “Are these about me? The tiger cub, lost from home so young? Searching for years as she grows, going from place to place?”
“Never giving up?” he added. “Looking forward, always forward?”
She made a little sound in her throat.
“Really,” he said, “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. It’s about all of us. Mr. Alabi left his home at twelve, when war came to his home city. Mrs. Song came to Britain in search of a child who had been impressed in the pig trade.”
She looked away. “Oh.”
“As for me,” Adrian said, “my family left me in England during the rebellion. We were reunited afterward, but I lost three of my brothers. That’s why at the end, some tigers are missing.”
She turned to him. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. And here I’ve been complaining to you. I should never have done it.”
He looked away. “I don’t talk much about it. I’m the lucky one. I didn’t die. I didn’t even have to go to war. There are untold millions who will never have what I have. There’s no point asking for sympathy for me when so many have less.”
“Adrian. You don’t need to ask for sympathy. You deserve it.”
God. If he looked down on her now, he would take every inch of comfort she was offering—the liquid warmth of her eyes. She almost reached for him, then pulled back.
“In any event, the plates.” He cleared his throat. “I just help my lead artists put things together. All the feelings you saw in there—they weren’t all mine. The tiger’s journey wasn’t entirely about you. It was about all of us. But…”
Her breath caught on that word, entirely, betraying as it was. She looked up at him.
“But.” His voice was low. “It was partially about you.”
Because I think you could belong. He didn’t say it, though. They were going to Lackwich tomorrow, and—and—
And the sound of a door opening echoed down the corridor. Camilla jumped away from him, blushing, and Adrian exhaled.
“I thought,” Adrian said in the moments before whoever it was arrived, “that even if you moved on, after…this, that…this way you might stay here a little, too?”
Even if. There—he’d said it, put the possibility out in the world. Her eyes widened.
Behind them, the door to the studio opened. Mr. Alabi strode in.
“Ah,” he said. “Miss Winters! What do you think of my plates?”
Camilla straightened, smiling at Mr. Alabi as if, a moment ago, she hadn’t looked as if Adrian had handed her the stars.
“Your plates?” She shook her head. “And here I thought they were everyone’s plates.”
“But I am a part of everyone.”
“I hate your plates,” Camilla said.
Alabi’s face fell.
“They almost made me cry, they were so perfect.” She gestured to him. “Here. I’ll tell you what I thought. Let’s start from the beginning.”
* * *
By the time Adrian returned that night, he had made all the arrangements to start final production in earnest.
Their train left early the next morning; he had already tasked Mr. Singh to pick them up at the break of dawn. A valise sat by the door—Camilla’s. It did not escape his notice that she had, once again, packed everything she owned into her one piece of luggage. She’d leave nothing behind.
She wasn’t wrong to do so; if she simply walked into Rector Miles’s house and walked off with a record book, showing everything that had been done, then they’d go off to his uncle, present him with the evidence, have their annulment, and…what?
Never see each other again.
God.
This might be the last evening they had together. He made his way into the parlor.
Camilla sat on the edge of her chair, biting her lip. She had a ball of yarn in her hands; she was crocheting…something? He didn’t know what that misshapen lump could be. They greeted each other; they always did. She asked about his day; he inquired as to hers. Then silence fell.
It was a silence stalked by the memory of tigers and plates.
After ten minutes of glancing her way, he gave up on pretending.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“I keep thinking,” she said. “I’m thinking of what to say when I arrive at the rectory. There’s part of me that says that they lied first, and so I shouldn’t let myself be bothered by it. But I am.”
“They did lie,” he said, with as much authority as he—someone who had once spent a few months acting as page for a bishop—could provide. “You shouldn’t feel badly at all.”
She bit her lip again. “What if they don’t believe me?”
“Don’t worry. I’m sending a telegram before hand, remember, purporting to be from Bishop Lassiter. Miles will be out of the house to respond; nobody there will know the truth in his absence. They’ll respond positively if you sound certain. It’s human nature.”
She nodded slowly.
“Go through it, then,” he said gently. “Tell me what you are going to do. The more you think it through, the more real it will be, the easier it will be to execute in the moment. Let’s practice now.”
She nodded, this time less slowly. “I will come in shortly after he has left.”
“Not looking like that,” he said, smiling at her. “If you come in looking like that, all nervous, they’ll doubt you. Look at them the way you looked at Alabi this morning. When you were sassing him.”
She shut her eyes and looked away. One inhalation, then another, and she stood. When she opened her eyes, there was a light smile on her face and a sparkle in her eyes.
He felt a knot form in his chest. God, she was lovely. “Like that.” His throat felt dry as he spoke. “Do it just like that. What will you say to them?”
She spun around, her skirt flaring briefly around her ankles, before smiling at him. “I’ve just realized.” Her smile broadened. “I’m definitely going to tell them the truth. Two lies don’t right a wrong, now, do they? And the more truth I tell, the stronger I will feel.”
He didn’t want to contradict her, not when her confidence seemed so shaky. But he had to say it. “I’m not precisely sure the truth will be effective.”
Camilla just licked her lips and took a step toward him. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Albert,” she said, and her voice had an almost amused quality to it. “You didn’t actually believe all that, did you? That was a stage drama.”
He swallowed.
She sashayed toward Adrian, one step at a time. “The whole thing was a ruse. Half-Price Camilla? The rector simply didn’t want anyone to take me seriously.”
“Well.” He tried to get into his role as—who was Albert again? It didn’t help that he knew almost nothing of the man, save a vague memory of brown hair. “Why would he do that?”
“Did you not notice that he c
alled me into his office to consult, occasionally, on serious matters? I’ve been in communication with other members of the church, of course.”
She came next to Adrian and sat on the arm of his chair. She seemed so absolutely in control, so utterly right and perfect in the role. Adrian could hardly bring himself to breathe.
“Don’t tell me you actually believed any of that. I thought you smarter than that.” She reached out and set a finger on the top button of his coat.
“Camilla.” His voice came out hoarse.
“He wanted the bishop to think me discredited so I could go assist with some other matters. But here I am.” She tilted her head in an inch, so close that he could almost taste her. “I’ve returned. Did you miss me?”
And in that moment, he did. It made no rational sense; he’d talked to her every day for weeks; he could not possibly miss her. But he felt the distance between them, that bare inch, so keenly that he almost vibrated with it.
“Cam…” Her name came out almost a groan. She swayed toward him, not quite completing what he wanted, and he reached out. Maybe it was to steady her in place. Maybe it was just to touch her. His hand found her waist.
She exhaled, and he could feel her breath—on his lips, in his heart.
“One of my favorite duties,” she whispered, “used to be starting the morning fires. Our room was cold, coal being too dear to waste on servants who would warm themselves in labor. So I’d dress in the morning, my hands too numb to do my buttons, and rush downstairs. There was pride to be had in adding kindling, bit by bit. Blowing on the banked coals. Encouraging them to catch flame in a blast of heat.”
He could almost taste her words. He could feel the picture she painted, that warmth of the fire.
His hand was on her waist. She leaned in a little more, so her forehead touched his.
“I always dawdled as much as I could about the job, letting my hands grow warm. I’d find some excuse—I needed to make sure the fire caught everywhere, so that it burned evenly. I wouldn’t leave, even if I threatened to bake through.”
“Cam.” He felt almost hoarse.
“I have always been susceptible to flame,” she told him.
After the Wedding Page 19