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“No,” Smite said softly. “Not an orphanage. I’m taking you to my brother. He’ll enjoy having you. He might not want you to leave.”
“Likely, I’ll have to fight him to give you up,” Miranda added.
Robbie lowered his head.
“Can you consent to that?” Smite asked.
There was a long pause. And then, Robbie gave a bit of a shrug. “I guess,” he said.
Smite took this equivocation in stride. He simply nodded. “We’ll leave in the morning.” He glanced at the curtained windows. “I’ll be here all night, to make sure you’re safe.”
“You’re…you’re staying the night?” Miranda asked.
He glanced at her, perhaps understanding what she was intimating. He gave her a slow shake of his head. “Not as you might think. I won’t be sleeping.”
THE FIRST FEW HOURS were not so awful. Smite called for pen and paper and sent off a series of instructions—a long one to his solicitor, a shorter note to his clerk, and a brief query to the shipwright to whom Robbie was apprenticed. But he hesitated a good long while before he started the last communication.
Ash—
I will be unable to attend you tomorrow evening. I have been called out of town on urgent business.
He found himself drawing in the margins and staring at the still mostly blank sheet of paper, not knowing how to go on without making things worse between them.
Undoubtedly, you will hear that my urgent business is with Mark. I can only imagine how that will seem to you—my abandoning our time together, in favor of visiting him. I beg you not to enlarge upon it.
I will return the day after tomorrow, and if it is convenient, I will wait upon you at noon.
He paused once more. In years past, he’d received letters from his brother. They had all been written entirely in his secretary’s hand, save for the complimentary closing. That alone had been scrawled in Ash’s scarcely intelligible script. When he’d been younger, he’d thought it had been negligence on his brother’s part—that he’d been too busy to even compose his own letters. He’d only learned what those additions had meant to his brother years later. Writing did not come easily to Ash.
Sometimes, he felt that the gulf between him and Ash was unbridgeable. But if it could be spanned by anything, maybe it was those few words Ash had always offered in closing.
And so now, he finished as carefully as possible.
All my love,
Smite.
He blotted the ink dry and then passed this, too, to the maid to seal and deliver.
Responses started to return to his inquiries. Some were long; others were quite short. It was hours before Ash’s reply arrived.
Be well.
—Ash
He’d written it out entirely by himself. He wouldn’t have taken that trouble if he were irreparably angry. Smite drew a deep sigh of relief.
He imagined that Miranda must have gone to bed by now. But when he wandered down the hall to her room, he found her oil lamp burning at the dimmest setting. She sat on the edge of the lace coverlet and stared at the wall.
“Miranda Darling,” he said, as sternly as he could manage. “You ought to be asleep.”
He ought to be watching her.
She turned to him and gave him a wan smile. “Do you suppose I’ll see Robbie again?”
“I’m sure of it.” He sat next to her on the bed and pulled her into his embrace.
He didn’t think she had followed what he had said to its logical conclusion. If Robbie had to be sent away from Bristol, so did Miranda. And if Miranda went…
This had been inevitable, since the day he’d kissed her.
He could recall that moment now. The luminous look of her eyes. The quiver in her voice. Kiss me, he’d said, and make it worse.
He’d not realized then how bad it was going to be. When Miranda left, he would be alone. He had known this was coming. He hadn’t expected it to be so soon.
“He needs to know that I’m not leaving him,” Miranda said. “He’s been left so many times. I’ve never been a parent to him, but I’m all that he has.”
“He’ll know,” Smite said. “He’ll know because you’ll tell him. And then you’ll write to him, and when it’s safe, you’ll come and get him.”
Smite felt a tug of wistful envy. She’d come back to Bristol to see Robbie; of course she would. Maybe he could get Robbie to tell him how she fared over the years. Years. Robbie would meet her husband. Her children.
His fist clenched around the coverlet.
“Will you take me to visit him?” Miranda asked. “While he’s there.”
It took Smite a moment to realize that she was still talking about Robbie. His fist clenched even further and he looked away. “No.”
Her breath rushed in.
“I don’t go to Shepton Mallet,” he finally offered.
“You’re going tomorrow, are you not?”
He shut his eyes. He hadn’t been back to Shepton Mallet since he and Mark had escaped, all those years ago. It had been decades, now, and still he felt that cold chill creep over him.
“Tomorrow,” he said more to himself than to her, “it can’t be helped. What can’t be helped must be tolerated.”
He didn’t know whether seeing Miranda in his childhood home would make the place bearable, or if it would taint his memories of her forever.
“That hardly sounds auspicious,” she said. “And you’re doing it for me. I might almost think that you tolerated me, too.” She was looking directly in his eyes as she spoke.
“Would you know,” he finally said, “I’ve hit the end of my sentimentality quota for the day.”
“How can that be? That’s the first remotely sentimental thing I’ve said tonight.”
“Yes, but…” But he’d been wallowing in sentiment all evening. “I’ve spent the last minutes memorizing you,” he finally said. He didn’t think that memory could capture the bright color of her hair, though, or the intelligent light in her eyes. Memory would never quite capture the luminous look she’d given him on the carriage ride home after the opera. Even a memory as clear as his couldn’t call back the precise feel of her seated next to him, or the texture of her fingers against his. And he never could recall scents once they’d gone.
He folded his arms and set aside the inevitability of the future. There was only the present. In the present, Miranda was here. Solid. Touchable. He held her close, breathing her in. She smelled like mint tea—sweet and cool. Calming.
He wouldn’t be able to hold the feel of her in his memory after she’d gone. Still, he could try.
SMITE HADN’T THOUGHT THROUGH what would happen when he arrived on his brother’s doorstep after a lengthy journey. His brother must have seen him arrive from the up
stairs window, because instead of waiting for him to be announced like a rational human being, Mark crashed through the door, his face utterly white. He grabbed hold of Smite’s arms before he’d had a chance to properly step down from the phaeton.
“Oh, God,” Mark said in urgent tones. “It’s Ash, isn’t it?”
“What about Ash?”
Mark shook him. “What’s wrong with Ash? Why are you here?”
Smite stared at his brother in confusion. His brother’s fingers gripped his arms all the more tightly. His blond hair seemed wild on the top of his head. His bare hands were stained in ink.
In fact, he’d smeared ink on Smite’s cuff.
It was easier to concentrate on his younger brother than to pay attention to his surroundings. Behind him, he could see the entryway of his childhood home. The door was clean and new, painted a bright blue in color. Mark had replaced the older front windows with clear, smooth glass, so that the entry shone with sunlight. It wasn’t the same house, he told himself.
But beneath the fading scent of the lavender that had been planted by the front entry, the house smelled the same. There was something about that peculiar combination of wood and stone that brought to mind old memories—as if the unquiet ghost of his mother still lingered.
“What the devil are you talking about?” he finally asked. “Nothing’s wrong with Ash. He was the picture of health, last I saw him.”
Mark let out a deep breath. He let go of Smite, but only long enough to punch his shoulder. “What were you thinking, scaring me like that? You never come here. Why else would you come, except to bear—oh.”
His gaze shifted behind Smite, landing on Robbie, who had climbed out of the hired phaeton.
“Oh,” he repeated, more stupidly this time. “I’d best get Jessica.”
Smite reached out and grabbed Mark’s cuff. “Wait.”
Miranda followed Robbie out of the conveyance. She adjusted the dark brown fabric of her traveling gown, and then glanced at Mark.
“You’ll never understand this,” Smite said his voice low, pitched for Mark’s ears only. “And you’ll never see the two of us together again. I want to introduce you.”
