by Cora Lee
He was still hunched over the desk when Kit came to fetch him for dinner some hours later.
“I thought you wanted to sleep,” his brother said, swinging the chamber door open wide.
“I did,” Thomas replied, not looking up from his work, “but I couldn’t.”
“Well, everyone is gathering in the parlour. You still have a few minutes to dress for dinner, but I’d hurry if I were you.” Kit gave him a playful slap on the back. “If I can distract mother long enough, you’ll be able to sit beside Maddie tonight.”
Thomas lifted his head, meeting his brother’s eyes but not really seeing them. “Yes, that sounds good.”
He returned to the letter he was composing, determined to finish it before he did anything else. He could walk into the village first thing tomorrow to post it and the others he’d completed.
“I’ll see you downstairs, then, I suppose,” Kit muttered, shrugging his shoulders as he exited the room.
“I’ll be down shortly,” Thomas called belatedly after his brother.
He managed to find a clean shirt and his best tailcoat, washing hurriedly in the basin before changing his clothing and dashing down the staircase. The assembled company were just about to go in to dinner when he arrived in the parlour, and Kit had their mother on his arm.
“Excellent,” Thomas said under his breath, approaching Maddie. “May I?” he asked her, offering his arm.
Her grin was as large and foolish as his had been the night before. “Yes,” she said softly, twining her arm with his.
She was wearing a green gown tonight, but he could smell delicate roses about her instead of her usual perfume, reminding him of the little bottle and accompanying flower he’d hidden away in his bedchamber. If they could find some time alone together tonight, he could give them to her. Even better if he could locate that bit of mistletoe he’d scavenged the day before.
But first, he had more letters to write. He already had letters for his uncle’s friends in Edinburgh, but there were other people who might be able to help. Thomas’s father had lived in London for some years before marrying — perhaps his mother would remember something of her late husband’s friends and business associates.
“Did you hear me?”
“Hmm?”
He glanced in the direction the voice had come from and found Maddie staring at him, her brows lifted in inquiry. “Oh, my apologies. I missed the last thing you said.”
“I think you missed everything I said,” she replied, returning to the slice of roast goose on her plate. “Where is your head today, Thomas?”
“Stuck on practical matters, I’m afraid,” he said, poking a bit of carrot with his fork.
“Anything I should know about?”
He shook his head, not wanting to have this particular conversation surrounded by their families. “Not at the moment.”
Her eyes flicked back to his and held his gaze, then returned to her food. “Later, then.”
He speared the carrot and popped it into his mouth. “Perhaps.”
<<<
What had happened to her affectionate, attentive Thomas? When Kit said his brother hadn’t slept well the night before, Maddie brushed off Thomas’s aloofness as fatigue. But dinner progressed and the families moved into the parlour for whatever evening entertainment her mother had cooked up, but Thomas still seemed far away.
Well, there was no rule that said he had to hang on her every word, was there? Neither would she want him to. But such an abrupt change from his demeanour the previous evening made Maddie wonder if something bigger was afoot.
She waited for a break in the revels — singing carols and sharing stories of Christmases past — to try to draw him away from the group for a quick word.
“Thomas, could you help me with something?” she asked, tapping a finger on his shoulder to gain his attention.
“Perhaps Kit should help you,” her mother responded from her place on the sofa.
“No, Mama, I need Thomas for this.”
His eyes swung to hers and he flashed her a smile — a genuine, warm smile of the kind she’d come to expect from him. “I am at your service.”
“Thank you,” she said, returning the smile. “It’s this way.”
Maddie gestured toward the door and Thomas followed her into the hallway, giving her an odd look when she continued on toward the dining room.
“What exactly do you need my help with?” he asked, trailing behind her.
“Nothing,” she replied sheepishly, pushing open the dining room door and tugging him inside. “I merely wanted a moment alone with you.”
She reached for his hand and he allowed her to take it, but his posture was rigid, the expression on his face somewhere between discomfort and fear.
“Thomas, what’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing you need concern yourself about.”
Maddie held his hand in both of hers, taking a step closer to him as she studied his features. “If something has upset you, then it concerns me. I’d like to help if I can.”
“Nothing has upset me,” he snapped back.
She flinched, releasing his hand. “Yes, I can see that.”
“I’m sorry, darling,” he said softly, reaching for her hand, and clasping it once more. “I’m just having a hard time dealing with my sudden lack of employment.”
Well that certainly made sense. What would she do if someone sent her a letter saying she no longer had access to a home or the basic necessities of life? She certainly wouldn’t be cheerful about it.
“I have some news that may help,” she said, a hopeful note in her voice. “There was a letter from my grandmother in the post you brought home. Her current companion is to be married, and she wants me to come and live with her in the companion’s place.”
“How is that helpful?” Thomas seemed genuinely curious, though there was a hard edge to the question.
Maddie took a breath and held it for an extra fraction of a second. “In addition to the pin money I have from Papa, I’d have a small wage from Gran, too. She only lives a few miles away, so if you stayed with Kit you could...” She let her voice trail off and tried scrutinizing his expression again. “Are you listening to me, Thomas?”
“Yes,” he replied with weary air. “You’re saying that because I can’t provide for you, you’re going to work for a living yourself.”
“What? No — this is as much for Gran as it is for anything else. She needs someone to look after her, and she doesn’t want to leave the house my grandfather built for her.” She squinted slightly, confused by his lack of empathy. “I thought you’d understand that. The money is just an added benefit.”
“What am I to do in the meantime?” he asked, pulling out a chair from the dining table and dropping onto it. “Am I to wait until you’ve saved enough money? Then you’ll propose marriage to me?”
For the second time, Maddie broke physical contact with him and moved back a step.
“You could live with Kit,” she answered in a small voice, “and give lessons in Latin and Greek until you find something more to your liking.”
His only response was to sigh and look past her, and Maddie could feel her hands clenching into fists. “What difference does it make where the money comes from, Thomas? The sooner we save enough, the sooner we can be together.”
“Will you still want to be with me when I’m a bitter man who can’t provide for his own wife? Because that is likely what I’ll become without a real place in the world.”
She took another breath, a deep one this time, and let it out slowly. “If I’m earning money, you’ll have time to find yourself a new situation. Can’t you see that? Then you’ll be able to find employment that fulfils you, my Gran will be cared for, and we won’t have to wait so long to be wed. That is, if you actually want to marry me.”
“Perhaps you’d be better off with another man,” he replied in a voice devoid of emotion. “Wasn’t that your plan all along?”
Maddie felt as if she’d been struck. She instinctively covered her heart with her hand as if to protect a wound there.
“My plan was to find someone who wasn’t Kit; someone who would love me and who I could love in return, who would be my partner in life,” she choked out. “I thought I had succeeded.”
“You have succeeded in finding a man with no livelihood, Maddie,” he returned quietly. “I saw you in the village, flitting from shop to shop. You were enjoying yourself immensely. How much will you enjoy wearing the same two dresses all the time because we can’t afford new clothing? Or having no books to read because we’ve sold them all to pay for food?”
“Thomas—”
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” he continued, rising from the chair. “It doesn’t matter how much we might love each other if we don’t have enough money to live on. And I don’t need to be reminded of how little I have to offer you every day of our lives. Perhaps you should marry my brother after all — he, at least, would be able to take proper care of you.”
He strode from the room, shutting the door carefully behind him, leaving Maddie alone with the furniture.
“I think that was the end of our courtship,” she told the table, running a finger over its smooth, cold surface. “Thomas, like all the others, thinks I belong with Kit.”
Chapter Seven
Instead of returning to the parlour and re-joining the two families, Thomas continued on to the staircase and made for the bedchamber he shared with his brother. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do there, only that the very last thing he wanted was to sing songs and celebrate.
He entered the room and sat down on his bed, bracing his hands against the mattress. What had just happened? What had he done?
He’d put his own feelings aside for Maddie’s future happiness — that’s what he had done. The Haywards weren’t wealthy, but the status Maddie would sink to as Thomas’s wife was more than he could bear. She deserved better than he could give her. She deserved better than him.
A knock sounded on the door a split second before the door swung open. “Are you well, brother?”
“Go away, Kit.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Kit replied, entering the room, and shutting the door behind him. “What happened? I found Maddie crying in the dining room.”
Thomas tried to ignore the stabbing pain in his chest and concentrate on getting Kit out of there. He knew that if he didn’t give his brother at least some information, Kit would remain in the room until he wrung out every detail. “I set Maddie free.”
“You what?”
“I told her she was better off with a man who had more money than I do.”
Kit stood in the center of the room, staring at Thomas. “Why would you do such a foolish thing? I thought you loved her.”
“I did it because I love her,” Thomas replied, unwilling to lift his gaze from the carpet. “Perhaps I’ll find employment again and save enough money to support a wife, but she shouldn’t have to sit by and wait to see if that happens.”
“Did you ask her what she wanted?”
Thomas’s gaze dropped lower, to a stocking peeking out from underneath his bed. “She wants to become a paid companion for her grandmother, to make money when I can’t.”
Kit grunted at that. “And that hurt your pride.”
His tone was gentler, more understanding, and Thomas ventured a glance at his brother. “Quite possibly. But that’s not what this is about.”
“No. It’s about your insecurities, isn’t it?” Kit crossed his arms over his chest and frowned down at Thomas. “Things were actually going well with Maddie. I may have been keeping my distance, but I saw the two of you together enough to know your feelings for her were growing... and mutual. Then you stumble over one stupid rock in your path and you quit the race altogether.”
Thomas sighed and stood, starting a list in his mind of the things he would need to take with him. If he couldn’t get rid of Kit, then he would remove himself from the house. “There was no race, Kit.”
“I know that — it’s a metaphor. A poor one, perhaps, but never mind. The point is that at the first sign of trouble, you gave up.”
Thomas found his hat and winter gloves, tossing them on the bed and attempted to don his greatcoat. The deuced thing was acting as if it had a mind of its own. “I didn’t want to let her go, Kit.”
“I believe you,” Kit replied, stepping aside as Thomas flung his arm out in an effort to tame his coat. “But it was easier to do that than to face your problems, wasn’t it? How afraid are you to allow someone to depend on you?”
Thomas looked at his brother, then yanked on the lapels of the greatcoat. “I can’t have Maddie without money.”
“You can’t have Maddie if you’re unwilling to work through your troubles, either.”
Thomas rolled his eyes, but didn’t respond. The famous Mathison stubborn streak was rising up again — likely in both of them — and he was not in the mood to waste his time.
Kit went on with his lecture as if Thomas was a dolt completely incapable of intelligent thought. “She presented you with a perfectly good way for the two of you to be together, and you pretended as though it was beneath you. Do you know how much that hurt her?”
Thomas felt the pain in his chest again — the last thing he’d ever want to do is hurt Maddie. He brushed the thought away, though, and continued dressing to go outdoors. What he needed right now was to get away from here, away from the judgment of his brother and the wreck of his dreams. If Maddie truly wanted him, she wouldn’t have been so quick to throw his inadequacies in his face.
Perhaps she didn’t want him all that badly after all.
He pulled his heavy winter gloves from the pockets of his greatcoat and drew them on.
“Does she know how much she’s hurt me?”
Thomas snatched up his hat from his bed and marched out the door. He breathed a sigh of relief when he made it to the front door of the house without seeing anyone else about — the only thing he wanted right then was to be alone.
He walked the two miles to his childhood home at full speed, hoping to burn off some of the anger and pain that boiled inside him. But they only seemed to build. Perhaps he should have expected Maddie to act the way she did — he was, after all, a second son with nothing but his mother’s love, and one couldn’t pay the rent with that.
But Thomas had expected his brother to take his side, and Kit had sided with her. That hurt more than Thomas was willing to admit.
“I really shouldn’t be surprised, though,” he said to the front door of the old house as he put the key in the lock and turned it. “If he hadn’t been so partial to her, none of this would have happened in the first place.”
Thomas burst into the house and shut the door firmly behind him, blocking out that thought as well. He was in an untenable situation, but he also couldn’t wish he’d never met Maddie. He could — and did — wish he’d never kissed her, never caressed her, never opened his heart to her. That had only compounded the sting of losing his employment and his ability to make his own way in life. Would his uncle’s departure have hurt in other circumstances? Absolutely.
“But these aren’t other circumstances,” he said through gritted teeth. “This was my chance to have everything I wanted, and it’s gone.”
He stomped around the house collecting firewood, kindling, and a tinderbox, shucking his outer garments as he went, the vigorous movement warming him even in the chilly house. Once he got the fire going, Thomas found himself unable to sit still. Well, Kit had shown him how to make some of the small repairs, perhaps that would be a good way to spend the rest of the evening.
Then at least something good would come of the day.
<<<
Maddie ran into her chamber and threw herself down on her bed, frustration boiling over into anger. Why wouldn’t Thomas just listen to her? Maybe working as her grandmother’s companion wasn’t going to being in a lot
of money, but it would certainly help. And he’d dismissed the idea as if she’d insulted him by even suggesting it. Was this just a one-time occurrence? Or was this how he would always treat her when there was a problem?
If this was how he dealt with setbacks, then perhaps it was better that they part.
A knock sounded on her door, and she slid off the bed to answer it. When she saw her best friend waiting with open arms, her throat became tight again.
“I know I’m supposed to keep my distance,” he said, his voice low and serious, “but I thought you might need a friendly ear and a good hug tonight.”
“I heard footsteps and the front door, and assumed that was Thomas leaving. You didn’t go with him?”
Kit dropped his empty arms and shook his head. “He’s my brother and I love him, but in this case, he’s being an ass. I don’t know what got into him.”
Maddie opened the door wider and gestured Kit inside. “He’s more interested in money than me.”
“I doubt that very much,” Kit replied, closing the door behind him. “I probably shouldn’t be telling his secrets, but in this case, I think it’s justified. He’s loved you for some time now, and he was over the moon when you two decided to pursue a romantic relationship.”
Her heart did a little flip — Thomas loved her! — until she recalled the way he’d reacted to Gran’s offer. “He’s not acting like it.”
“I know.” Kit held out his arms again. “And I’m sorry for it.”
Maddie finally allowed herself to embrace her friend, letting the comfort and relief of his arms push the turmoil from her mind. “You aren’t the one who should be sorry, Kit. But I appreciate the thought.”
He gave her a squeeze and pulled back a little to look her in the eyes. “Is there anything I can do?”
“You’re doing it,” she said, giving him a watery smile.
“All right, then.” He pulled her close again and rested his cheek against her temple. “I’ll just stay right here until you tell me to go.”