The intermission arrived at last. David seized the opportunity to refill their glasses and brought over two more guests—old friends, one of whom had once tried to bankrupt Felix at cards. The small talk was savage and efficient; they traded insults as only people who had paid dearly for each other’s secrets could. Felix played along, but without heart.
It was not until the third act, when the theater went dark and a new, tragic aria began, that Felix finally allowed himself to be alone with his thoughts. The music was slow, almost funereal, and it seemed to synchronize perfectly with the steady deadening of his nerves.
He wondered what Rose was doing. He pictured her in the nursery, singing Lizzie to sleep, or in her own room, writing a letter she would never send. He imagined her hair unbound, the way it fell in a pale river down her back, and the delicate arch of her throat when she tilted her head to think. He imagined her voice, full of steel and yearning, and the sound of it filled him with such longing that for a moment he almost stood to leave.
Instead, he finished his drink, then another, and by the time the play ended, he was glassy-eyed and almost unable to speak. David half-carried him out of the box, grinning like a demon.
“Victory,” David said. “You have survived the evening. Now, shall we go get properly drunk?”
Felix nodded. Anything to keep from going home.
At White’s, the night was far from over. The familiar stench of tobacco and spilled gin, the low hum of wagers, and the thud of shoes on the billiards floor, all combined to create a sense of homecoming. Felix even found himself smiling, for a moment, when the doorman greeted him by name.
David immediately gathered a small party of miscreants: the same two from earlier, a younger cousin with more titles than brains, and a second son recently returned from India. The conversation ranged from the obscene to the ridiculous, and Felix contributed only enough to avoid being labeled a corpse.
“Is it true that you were almost eaten by a tiger while you were away?” the younger cousin asked the second son.
“No, although I was chased by one. Had to hide up a banyan tree for half an hour before it got bored and I made good my escape.”
The night wore on, and Felix found that even brandy could not blur the sharpness of his pain. He wanted, more than anything, to go home and burn every room of that damned house to the ground, just to be free of the memories.
Instead, he waited until David was distracted, then slipped out into the street. The air was cold, sharp enough to clear his head, and he walked the length of St. James’s twice before returning,finding a small green patch—a would-be park, if someone had tended to it.
He sat there until the sky began to pale, until the sounds of the city crept in through the glass.
He did not sleep. He did not want to.
His return to the house was inevitable. Felix arrived at dusk, mud-caked and shivering, his only company the fog that clung to the hedges and crept up the drive like an unwelcome memory.
The staff took one look at him and melted away. The butler, unflappable as ever, met him at the door, but Felix brushed past without a word, shucking his boots and coat in the vestibule. He ascended the staircase two steps at a time, not caring what he left in his wake.
In the master suite, he stripped and washed himself with water so cold it burned. He did not bother with supper. When the cold had made his hands steady again, he summoned the butler.
“Tell Cook I’ll take my meals in the study.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And—” Felix stopped. The urge to rescind every order, to march down the corridor and beg for forgiveness, threatenedto unman him entirely. He gritted his teeth. “No visitors. No correspondence unless I say so. That includes Lord Aldworth.”
A flicker of something passed over Winters’ face—relief? pity? Felix could not tell. “Of course, Your Grace.”
Left alone, he poured a glass of whiskey and stared out the window into the dark. The parkland was shrouded in mist, the lawn littered with the bones of winter’s storms. Somewhere out there, he knew, were Rose and Lizzie, asleep or reading in the nursery.
He tried to picture them: Rose’s hair unbound; Lizzie’s tiny fingers tangled in it. The thought was a blow to his stomach. He drank.
The next day, Felix set about the business of isolation. He canceled all standing appointments—fencing with David, even the annual inspection of the tenant farms. He drafted terse notes to each party and left them unsigned. He was not interested in explanations.
He had his meals alone, at odd hours, and never in the main dining room. If he passed Rose in the hallway, he gave her the briefest of nods and kept moving. Once, he caught the sound of her laughter from the nursery and nearly turned back, but stopped himself. He waited until the house was silent before venturing out to the stables or along the boundary wall.
Carden House became a fortress. The staff learned to step softly, to announce themselves with a cough or a tap before entering any room Felix might be in. The only exception was the old housekeeper, Mrs. Finch, who bustled about with the imperviousness of a veteran, and who, Felix suspected, pitied him even as she served him.
He did not sleep. When exhaustion forced him to his bed, he lay awake and traced the cracks in the ceiling, counting the hours until dawn.
On the third day, Felix caught sight of Rose in the garden.
She was walking the gravel path that circled the south lawn, Lizzie held tight against her hip, her face bright with the effort of distraction. They stopped now, and then so the child could examine a frost-burned rose or the glimmering web of a spider between two branches. Rose spoke to Lizzie in a low, soothing cadence, her words indistinct but gentle.
Felix watched from the upper window, hidden by the drape. The sight of them—so close, so impossibly far—tore at him. He longed to run down to scoop Lizzie into his arms, to brush the hair from Rose’s face, and tell her he was sorry. That he would try. That he would never let them slip away.
