“I thought…” Benedict swallowed. “I thought, maybe, if I never told you there was money… Maybe you’d come up with a new plan, and I wouldn’t have to go back.”
“Oh, Benny.” Judith put her arm around him. Sometimes she forgot. He had old eyes and an old smile. But that didn’t make him old. He was still a little boy.
“I won’t go back,” he said passionately. “I still won’t. I hated everything about it. The people. Learning. Sitting still and memorizing Latin when nobody even speaks it anymore. I would have hated it even if I wasn’t being pummeled. I know everyone is depending on me. Even Anthony said so. But I can’t do it.”
“Sweetheart.” She held him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I put all that on your shoulders. It’s too much. But you should have…”
Told her, she had been going to say. But he had told her. He’d said he wasn’t going back over and over. She just hadn’t believed him.
“You should have told me Anthony was alive,” Judith said. “And that you knew about it.”
“But he said…” He trailed off. “No, you’re right. He’s not here. You are. I should have told you.” He looked up at her. “Are you angry?”
“Shaking with rage,” Judith said. “But I still love you.”
“Please tell me,” Theresa said, “that he’s getting punishment bread for this.”
She looked at her brother. He looked up at her with big, brown eyes. The same eyes she’d looked into when he was a baby. The same eyes, old eyes, that he’d had when he was five and he’d said that they just needed to add salt and it would be a proper turnip sandwich.
She looked at Theresa. “He is going to be making so much bread.”
Mr. Ennis crossed the room and opened a file. He removed a small, folded square and held it out to Judith. “Here,” he said. “Your elder brother asked me to give you this, if ever you found out.”
Judith took the note and shoved it in her pocket.
“Don’t worry,” Theresa was saying to Benedict. “I’ll explain how to make Theresa’s Kindly Elf Bread. It’s not that bad.”
“Benedict?” Judith shook her head at Theresa. “I wasn’t talking about Benedict. I meant Anthony. If I ever see him again, he will make bread for the rest of his life. Which will be unnaturally short.”
“It’s not fair.” Theresa stomped her foot. “Benedict never gets in trouble for anything!”
“Benedict can’t make bread,” Judith said. “You’re still on bread for another month and a half. Benedict is going to be washing bedsheets.”
“Sheets!” Benedict looked at her. He gave her his best puppy-dog eyes. “Washing? But…”
“Ha!” Theresa smiled. “Punishment laundering! It’s the only thing worse than bread.”
“And,” Judith said, “he’s going to spend the rest of his time figuring out what he’ll be doing. Now that he’s not going back to Eton, he’ll need another plan.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The river was dark and gray, a slow-moving mass of clouded water. Judith held on to the railing and watched little oil patterns swirl by.
She had brought her brother and sister home and, after assigning bread and laundry, had left. She’d needed to think. But wandering around the city couldn’t calm her soul.
Anthony was alive. She’d let herself dream of it for too long when they’d first found themselves set adrift. She’d imagined her brother found living too many times. She’d created a fantasy in which he was discovered on some palm-shrouded isle in the Indian Ocean, where he’d been washed ashore. He would have come home. They would have sorted out all the unpleasantness surrounding his conviction. His name would be cleared.
And he would have saved her.
But Anthony was alive and he was a traitor. He’d betrayed her not just once, eight years ago, when he’d acted without concern for her wellbeing, not twice, when he’d stayed away, but a third time when he’d put her twelve-year-old brother in charge.
He’d left all the weight on her shoulders and given her none of the ability to make choices. She hated him so much for that.
She ducked into a church, found a coin, and lit a candle. Light flared, pushing back darkness.
“Why?” she asked. “Why, Anthony? Why?”
The candle flickered with her breath.
She took the hard lump of folded paper from her pocket.
“I hate you,” she said. And then, because she missed him, she kissed it. “I love you.”
She unfolded the letter.
Dear Judith, he had written. I am sorry. I am so desperately, damnably sorry for everything I have done. The truth is, I don’t expect that I will survive very long here.
“Where is here?” she demanded. The candle didn’t answer.
I know. You want to kill me a second time. You’re shouting at me now—why Benedict?
It’s simple: Benedict was four when I left.
You were at my trial. You heard the evidence. You were old enough to understand. I was convicted because the evidence showed I knew what our father was doing, and I allowed it to happen. From experience, I can tell you that the less you know, the better.
Benedict was the safest choice. Someone in the family had to know I was alive, and he was the least likely to understand the political implications and be punished for it.
Oh, that he had a reasonable response. She still wanted to punch him in the kidneys.
I grapple with it every day. I know I’ve wronged you. I know I’ve wronged Camilla and Theresa and Benedict. But we’ve wronged a great many others a great deal worse. I know you. You’ve no doubt found a way to undo half the harm I caused. I could not have put my family in more capable hands. You hold things together.
I won’t explain what I’m doing. I won’t justify myself. That, too, would be dangerous. The less you know, the safer you are.
I can imagine what you must think of me, and I’m sure I deserve your worst insults. But I dream every night of standing before my Maker and hearing him ask, “Did you do all you could?”
I hope that when that time comes, my answer will be yes.
Don’t look for me. Don’t write to me. Don’t acknowledge me. When I’m dead, I’ll make certain you are all informed. When she’s old enough to understand, tell Tee-spoon that I send her all my love, and that Pri is well.
God. He’d always encouraged Theresa too much as it was. Judith had almost forgotten about Theresa’s imaginary sister. It was just like Anthony to remember after all these years. Judith wiped tears from her face. “She’s not a baby any longer, Anthony.”
But then, Anthony had never taken the easy way. When they could have escaped all punishment by claiming a cat broke the vase, he’d always chosen to do what he believed was right, no matter whom it hurt.
He’d given up wealth, respect, and comfort. And he didn’t need to tell her why; Christian already had.
She didn’t wish she had a different brother; she wanted this one. He would never again stand near enough to hold, to yell at. She held a hand over the candle, close enough that the heat of the flame tickled her palm.
It had been a painful thing to admit that her brother was a traitor. It was even more painful to let herself believe that he’d betrayed his country for a good reason. A necessary one, even. And it was most painful of all to understand that he’d chosen his principles yet again—and that she could choose to either hold her anger close…or let it go altogether.
Slowly, painfully, she let go of the last of her resentment. “I’m proud of you,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t want a brother who put rules ahead of human misery.”
She had a missing sister, an absent brother hell-bent on his own death, a younger brother who needed a new life, and a sister who would never be normal, no matter how much bread Judith made her bake. There were no knights, no castles, no magic. But there was laughter and there was love, and while Judith still had breath in her body, she would make sure they had enough.
Her life was already
its own once-upon-a-time. There was enough joy in the story, enough sorrow mixed in. It might not be the sort of tale that mothers told their children, but it was still a good one. Not everything hurt. It would all turn out.
Benedict had given Mr. Ennis permission to share information about her sisters’ trusts; the money was intact. He was going to decide what to do instead of returning to Eton. And Judith had been working on an idea for a bit of clockwork—something simple for a change. She had everything she wanted.
Almost everything.
There was one last thing she had to think about. She stared into the flame. Christian had ruined her brother once, and he’d said he would do it again. The point had seemed rather moot.
It wasn’t moot any longer. If she were married to Christian, he would find out about Anthony. He would do what he always did—he would ask questions. He’d ask why Benedict was not declared the earl. He would ask what she’d heard from her solicitor. He would figure it out, and once he knew that Anthony was alive?
Her brother didn’t stand a chance. Whatever he was doing, he obviously didn’t want Judith to know. Christian would be a thousand times worse. The only way to keep Christian from asking questions was…
Judith stood in front of the candle and watched it flicker. The only way to keep Christian from asking questions was to not be around for him to ask. She ached, thinking of it. She trusted Christian with her soul.
But she couldn’t trust him with her brother.
She knew this feeling, this crushing, squeezing pain inside. She’d felt it before, when her father had passed away. When Anthony had boarded the ship at Plymouth. She’d thought then that Christian was breaking her heart. The truth was, she was breaking it herself.
Nothing was resolved. She had no answers. She didn’t know if she was ever going to get answers, but she had to move forward. She inhaled and bit her lip. She’d survived everything else life had thrown at her. She would survive this.
“Very well,” she said to the candle. “You do everything you have to do, Anthony. I’ll be here, holding things together.”
She could do it. She could do it all.
She just couldn’t do it all and have a husband.
“You said you wanted to show me something.”
Christian had expected the attic of Judith’s house to be like any other attic—filled with cobwebs, old clothing, and unwanted furniture.
Instead, it was clean and bright, tables laid out before them. A sheet of brass sat before him, with little toothed gears stamped from it. Three kittens lay in the sunlight streaming in from the single dormer window, a puddle of black and brown fur.
“I have something for you,” Judith said.
“Yes?”
She plucked a little blob of white off the table. He couldn’t quite see what it was; just a flash of gray in the palm of her hand. He heard the telltale sound of a clockwork mechanism winding. Then she set a key on the table, leaned down, and placed whatever she was holding on the floor.
It was a mouse—a little clockwork mouse of canvas and cotton batting, with wire whiskers. It immediately zipped away in a curving pattern across the floor.
Three predatory heads lifted from a nap. Six eyes widened in feline delight. And then twelve paws thundered after the mouse.
“Yes,” Judith told him. “I know there are already a plethora of clockwork mice to be purchased. But they’re so cheaply made that one good pounce will break the mechanism. These mice have been battle-tested.”
“I approve.” It seemed instantly appealing.
She brushed kittens aside and picked up the mouse. “Here. Let me show you again.”
She wound it once more and let it go. The kitten battalion raced after it a second time, doing its best to rend and destroy. He had to admit, it made for an amusing tableau.
“Benedict tells me that he intends to go into trade,” Judith said. “Please don’t wince.”
“I’m not wincing. I thought you intended to hide that fact.”
Judith shrugged. “We had a discussion, and we decided it together as a family. We’ve hidden too much. It’s time to stop pretending that we are anything other than what we are. We’ve traitors in the family. It’s either cower beneath a bush and hope that some man chooses to look down on one of my sisters all the rest of her life, or defy them all. Benedict thinks we can start to manufacture the mice, and Theresa has agreed to use the money I’d set aside for her as seed money.”
He wondered if this was her way of subtly testing him. To see if he would run shrieking. If so, it wasn’t going to work. “I’m good at defying people,” he said. “I offer my expertise on that score.”
Her eyes dropped. “I spent so long trying to get my family back on the conventional path. Eton, trusts, Seasons, marriages—all without asking if it was the right path. We don’t want the destination. No matter what his birth may have been, Benedict will never be a gentleman lounging in a club smoking cigars. Theresa will never be a giggling debutante. She would get bored and set the ballrooms on fire. Literally.”
He took a step toward her. “What of you?”
Her eyes dropped and she inhaled. She picked up the clockwork key. “I am never going to be a lady.”
He reached out and took her hand. “No? Because the position of Lady Ashford is open, and I’ll be damned if I give it to someone who makes clockwork mice that break after a single pounce. It’s been waiting for you these past eight years.”
She inhaled.
“All that time, there’s been a hole in my life.” He stroked her palm. “It was so oddly shaped that I never quite understood how to fill it. But I know now. The hole is the shape of your younger brother, who won’t go to Eton. It’s shaped like your sister, who I fully expect to lead an armed revolt through the city streets. It’s shaped like approximately eighteen cats and any number of clockwork mice.”
Her fingers clenched on his arm. Her eyes were so wide, looking up at him.
“It’s shaped like you,” he whispered. “Strong, never giving up. Accomplishing miracles.” He reached out and ran his finger down her cheek. “I know you have every reason to dislike me, but I intend to balance those scales out, over and over, until you can’t remember why you ever felt that way. Tell me, Judith. Have I any chance?”
And Judith had thought that saying good-bye to Christian would be simple.
Here. We’re well. We’ve figured everything out. We should avoid one another, lest we do anything irrevocable.
He was looking at her so intently that she yearned for irrevocable. If his attention could have changed worlds, she’d be in his arms now. But her world had shifted since the last time she’d seen him.
She looked down, where their hands joined. Her fingers seemed small in comparison to his. But her hands had put together clockwork. They’d learned baking and sewing and a thousand tasks that she’d never thought herself the equal of. She’d managed. The person she’d become was larger than the girl who’d once dreamed of a once-upon-a-time with this man.
A vision slipped into her mind of her hands running up his chest. She could almost taste him, could almost feel his skin, stubbled with dark hairs, beneath her hands.
She’d traded these hands for the knowledge of how he would feel. And, no, she wouldn’t want it back. But… Still, before it all ended, she wanted to know. She wanted to know what she was missing.
“Christian.”
He looked at her. His eyes were dark and so deep that she could have tumbled into them, if only she would let herself fall.
She wanted to know. If she didn’t discover it now, she never would.
And so Judith did what she had wanted to do from the moment she took his arm in the carriage and yelled at him about swans. No, if she was being honest, she’d wanted it deep in her gut from the moment she’d sat across from him at her humble tea table. From the moment when he’d found her alone and given her a clockwork shepherdess. The moment he’d smiled at her and told her it wasn’t proper, a
nd she’d looked into those dark, deep eyes and told him that she didn’t care.
Ever since then, she’d wanted to fall.
So now she did.
She took her hand from his.
He inhaled, his fingers questing toward her.
Their eyes met.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No.” He took a step toward her.
She set her hand on his chest. “I’m sorry that you had so much to worry about. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to share it with you.”
He didn’t move away, and she stepped so close she could feel the heat of his body.
“Don’t apologize.” His voice was low. “Just say you’ll be with me from here on out.”
She took hold of his other hand, bringing it to press against her heart. His fingers convulsed lightly against her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that we were never what we could have been.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not an apology.” She ran her thumb down his hand, down the coarse hairs that dotted its back, to his cuff. “I only wish things had been different.”
“So do I.” His voice was hoarse. He leaned down to her. “So do I. I’ve wished it every day.”
“Maybe they can be, for now.”
“Forever.” His breath feathered against her lips. His hand turned against her chest, sliding around her waist, pulling her hard against him. She wasn’t sure if he leaned down to her or if she leaned up to him. She only knew that it felt right, the two of them together again, like two brass gears that had been machined for each other, turning in perfect harmony.
It was right when their lips touched, right when their hands tangled, his just enough larger that he could hold her in place. Their tongues met like a heavenly conjunction, spilling light through her. It hurt, the knowledge of how right they were together. She could have had this, this sweetness, this perfection. In some other world, she could have had this every day.
“Judith.” His lips moved against her. “God, Judith.”
She opened up to him and to the future she would never have.