Page 82 of A Rare Find

“No reason to be sorry.” They grunted. “She’s alive. It’s reason to rejoice.”

“Yes,” said Elf. “But it can hurt too.” She hesitated. “Her leaving.”

For an instant, the hurt was there, tearing through them. They were glad she couldn’t see their face.

“Shall I tell you why she left? It’s all right.” They arrested her quick gesture of demurral with a squeeze to the shoulder. “I started down this road.” They could hardly believe they had. But they’d taken the first step in the cave, another in the lightning, and here in the dark with Elf, safe in her arms, continuing felt imperative.

“It was love,” they said. “She paid the fisherwoman for her lies and absconded with Lady Beverly. How can I grudge her that happiness?” They cleared sudden hoarseness from their throat. “My father never grudged her anything. He was classical himself. Theirs was the sort of marriage I thought to have with Phipps, only they saw fit to reproduce.”

“They told you all this?” Elf lifted her head.

“There wasn’t any need. I kissed Jane, and the scales fell from my eyes.”

Her eyes had a faint shine, reflecting the light of that dying candle. “But why would your mother abscond, if she could see Lady Beverly within the confines of your home?”

Anne’s claim marched through their mind.

“The compromise was too great,” they said. “That’s how I felt as well, with Phipps. I realized sooner than she did.”

She lowered her head slowly. “Does the Major know?”

“No one does. I’m afraid to tell Harry. What if he tried to track her down? I thank God I found the letter before he did. My father built model ships. His study was filled with them. The King George was my favorite, a cutter. When I was eight or nine, I painted over the lettering. Made it the King Georgie. He never noticed.” A laugh caught in their chest. “I was moving the ship to my bedchamber, and the letter slipped out. He’d tucked it into the mainsail.”

“King Georgie.” Elf surprised them by kissing their cheek. A moment later, she was snuggling into their side. “You cried under the willow tree because your mother was dead. Did you cry when you discovered she wasn’t?”

“No,” they said, too sharply. “I regret the circumstances. I regret the method. But I respect her choice.”

Elf made a small sighing sound of acknowledgment, if not affirmation.

When they spoke again, their voice was thin as smoke. “I don’t wish that she stayed. I only wish that she’d trusted me. Or that my father had trusted me. I’d imagined they understood that I understood, about them. And that they understood what that understanding signified, about me.”

“Maybe they did trust you.” Elf’s speech was slow and almost too soft to hear. “Maybe he was waiting for the right time to tell you. Maybe she still is.”

Before they could respond, she was asleep.

They lay awake, listening to Elf as she breathed. The tenderness ballooning in their heart made its wall too thin and fragile. They half hoped the feeling would vanish at dawn like fairy orbs and field dew. They half hoped it was a spell. That the spell would break before their heart did.

22

Dawn came and went. When Georgie woke, the room was gray with dingy light, less to do with residual cloudiness than with the grime on the windowpanes.

They were alone. Elf had set a pair of house slippers by the door—her father’s, or grandfather’s, perhaps. This thoughtfulness did nothing to shrink or toughen their too large, too tender heart.

They stepped into the slippers, big and worn to holes at the heels, and shuffled to the staircase. The number of steps seemed to have trebled overnight. All their joints felt like rusty hinges, and they descended haltingly, legs moving, not automatically, but by argument.

They couldn’t remember the way to the kitchen and hobbled along a series of unpromising corridors. Tapestries puffed dust. Strands of spider silk trailed from the webbed ceiling. The air was stubbornly cold. It would take a great retinue of servants working around the clock to reverse Marsden Hall’s long-unchecked natural tendency toward disintegration. Mr. Marsden didn’t seem to worry that his daughters risked constant sneezing fits, fevers, chilblains, flea infestations, and spider bites, but there’d come a point at which this neglect jeopardized his collections. Would he act then? Maybe not, given that the books were already getting chewed up by rats.

They turned a corner into the kitchen.

“Ha,” they said. “What do you know.”

“There you are!” Agnes greeted them excitedly. “Will you join me for breakfast?” She was sitting at the end of the table, a large strawberry positioned at the center of her otherwise empty plate. As Georgie stared, she picked up her knife and fork and began to slice it like a sirloin. She forked a red sliver daintily into her mouth. It was no larger than her pinkie nail, but she chewed and chewed, lips sealed in a half smile.

She seemed to be savoring her self-conscious refinement as much as the strawberry, so they pressed their lips together as well, mirroring her smile, lest they laugh.

Finally, she swallowed. “Beatrice breakfasts each day at noon, on a single strawberry. She says it is a graceful repast.”

“It’s not a repast at all.” They couldn’t restrain themself. “It’s a strawberry. Is there any bacon? My God, is it noon?”