Emily and Jem fell silent, and Emily looked more worried than Henry had ever seen her. “Yes,” she confirmed. “But if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going to clout you with a poker.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Henry said. “Excuse me, I have to go. Emily, if you need to clout someone, Jem will have to stay behind and serve the purpose.”
He took the note with him, and he left.
Twenty-Two
“Henry, thank God you’re here.”
Caro rushed forward across her morning room to meet Henry. Her eyes were wide, her full lips parted, eager as Venus riding to shore on a shell. A lamp made a halo of her Indian yellow hair, ruddy gold in the dim room.
Indian yellow. Henry remembered now, the pigment was made from the urine of starving cattle. It was precious, but it was foul. One could not trust in the true nature of anything that appeared to be beautiful.
The room was close and poorly lit, not meant to be used at this late hour. The walls that looked so sunny in morning were now a drab, dirty mustard. Frances’s dark gown and hair blended into the nubby forest-green upholstery of the sofa on which she sat.
How many secrets had been told in the privacy of this morning room, he could not say. He had told all of his own. But someone else had not.
He drew back his shoulders. “Lady Stratton. This is yours, I believe.” He thrust forward the note he’d taken from Emily.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Her voice was hesitant. “Yes. This is the note I sent to your sister a little while ago. Did you read it?”
“I didn’t have to read it,” he said. “I only had to look at the form of the handwriting. So it is from you. It’s written in your hand.”
Henry looked up at Caro, ignoring Frances. Her presence prickled at his skin, though, like the itch of a wool coat on a hot day. He did not want to be aware that she was but three feet away. That her citrus perfume had been rubbed off by his body that morning. That she had gasped when he handed the note to Caro.
That he was right, then, about the letter. All the letters. Damn it. He had hoped even against hope that he was wrong, and that everything was just as it had seemed for the past several weeks.
“Ah. So you know at last,” Caro said. “What a relief.”
“Not precisely the word I would use, my lady,” Henry said in his sunniest voice, his own smile a dead thing. “Would you be so good as to allow me a few moments alone with your companion?”
He could not keep his fist from tapping a jittery tattoo against his thigh as the countess’s smile slipped. She nodded, laid a quick encouraging hand on Frances’s shoulder, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Now they were alone.
Frances spoke first. “I’m sorry you found out this way, Henry. But I’m glad you’ve figured everything out.”
She tried a smile, probably hoping it would help, but there was no help for it. He stalked away from her to the far side of the room and found himself staring at the framed hunting scene, as he had only the day before.
The poor fox was just going about his business. He had no idea what awaited him.
“I don’t think,” Henry finally said in a clipped voice, “that I have figured everything out at all. I have not figured out why these letters were sent to me, or why I was led to believe they were from Lady Stratton. The only thing I have figured out, Mrs. Whittier, is that you and your lovely employer have been lying to me since almost the first moment we met.”
He whirled, facing her. Wondering if she dared face him.
She dared. She straightened her back and stared him straight in the eyes. “I didn’t lie to you, Henry.” She stopped when he snorted, a sharp exhale of disbelief. “Fine, I did lie. But only by omission, and only because you wanted it.”
“I—” This was too much. He could only sputter.
She was all shadows and darks, her eyes fathomless pools as she picked up the thread of his sentence. “Did anyone sign the first letter you received, Henry? No—it was sent from a friend. I didn’t think it proper to sign my name on a letter to a bachelor, but I assumed my identity would be clear to you, considering we’d teased one another about forming an alliance. And considering,” she finished in an acid tone, “that you scarcely exchanged a dozen words with Caroline when you called.”
Henry’s head felt as though it were full of black powder; his thoughts shifting and incendiary, ready to explode with just a spark. So this whole tangle had begun as his mistake?
“Impossible,” he said in a cracked voice.
“It’s not impossible,” Frances said. The rustle of her gown told him she was fidgeting, though she sounded fiercely calm. “I recall the situation perfectly. You summoned me to Tallant House through your sister; I assumed it was because you wished to tell me what you thought of my letter, for good or ill. But no, in your infatuation with Caroline”—she spoke louder to cover Henry’s bark of protest—“you saw what you wished for. A letter from a woman who could give you everything you wanted. I tried to correct you, but you wouldn’t hear it, so I let it pass. Can you blame me for wishing to spare us both the humiliation?”
This, he could seize upon. “Yes. I do blame you. If you lacked the will to end the deception then, you could have signed your own name to the next letter. Instead, you chose to continue lying to me.”
He started to pace. The beat of his feet fell into the perfect regularity of ordinary march time: seventy-five paces to the minute. Fast as a heartbeat.
Too fast. His steps ate the length of the room in a few seconds. He forced himself to slow down, turn back to her. “It would have been a small matter, surely, for you to tell me one truth of your own amidst so many of my revelations. ‘I wrote Caro’s letters.’ There, it took me only four words.”
“For me to tell, yes. But how long for you to accept after hearing the truth?”
Henry’s mouth pinched into a tight line, and his gaze dropped to the floor. He watched his feet tread on the carpet, elaborately patterned with squares and vines. The movement was dizzying and he stopped. Stood still. He had to think.
“I don’t know if I can accept it. But it is always better to know the truth than let a lie fester.”
“Yes.” She sighed, an exhalation as long and sad as an echo. “I’ve known that for a long time.”
Henry froze. Whether he had received a blow or had been given the chance to deliver one, he did not know. “Explain yourself.”
Her hands fluttered through the air. “I lied to Charles so he’d marry me. He found out. He went to war. He died. It’s a simple story.” She lowered her eyes. “I suppose ours is too. Two people who meant well. A friendly misunderstanding. An act of love that makes it all unbearable. The end.”
She laced her fingers in her lap so tightly they looked bloodless.
It was a magnificent speech. Every word perfect. The quaver in her voice when she’d said “love” gave just the right ring of authenticity.
His whole self had been naked before her inside and out, in this very room. She had seen his every weakness. He had suspected it was too much for one person to bear, yet he told her all the same, hoping to tie her to himself. But now he was the one who could not bear it, and the ties between them felt like bindings against which he struggled.
“I trusted you.” It was an accusation, as much toward himself as her. Stupid, to trust so much and so soon.
“And I was grateful for that trust. I always have been.”
“But you did not repay it.”