She walked on, Charlotte's hand in hers, her spine very straight. He was certain she hadn’t seen him.
He stood behind the wall for a long time after the churchyard emptied. A light rain began, and it soaked through his coat and made the burns ache.
He thought about the trembling fingers and the shadows under her eyes. The way she'd touched her father's arm and held the whole family together.
Who is taking care of this girl?
The answer, of course, was no one.
Andrew was dead. The viscount was shattered. The mother was gone. There was no one standing between Estella Hale and whatever the world decided to do with her.
Except, perhaps, the man who owed her brother everything.
Sebastian pushed off the wall. The movement sent pain spiking down his left side, and he set his jaw and breathed through it as he began the slow walk back to his carriage.
By the time he reached the lane, he'd composed the letter to his solicitor in his head. Inquiries into the Langley estate's finances. A discreet assessment of their debts.
For Andrew. That was what he told himself as the carriage jolted forward and the little church disappeared behind the hedgerows.
For Andrew.
The image of delicate features, clear blue eyes, and a trembling hand pressing a mourning veil back into place stayed with him all the way to London. It stayed with him through the long weeks of healing and through the nights when the fire replayed itself behind his eyelids.
Truthfully, the image stayed with him for considerably longer than any debt to a dead friend could explain.
But Sebastian was not, at the present moment, interested in being truthful.
Because Sebastian had work to do.
1
There were only so many minutes a person could spend admiring a wall sconce before it became conspicuous.
Estella Hale was rapidly approaching that limit.
She'd already catalogued the sconce's every feature. Brass, shaped like a lion's head, one ear slightly crooked. She’d moved on to composing an imagined history of its life in this ballroom.
It had probably witnessed decades of glittering events. Proposals. Scandals. And scores of hopeful young women with better connections than hers.
None of whom, she suspected, had ever studied it this closely.
She kept her expression pleasant. That was the key. Maintain the appearance of a woman who was perfectly content, simply taking in the magnificent décor of Lord and Lady Tidewaters’ ballroom, and not at all a woman who'd been standing alone for the better part of twenty minutes while the entire ton swirled around her like a river parting around a particularly unremarkable stone.
But she was fine. Indeed, she was perfectly content. She'd smile at the next person who glanced her way, and they'd smile back, and a conversation would begin, and she'd say something reasonably clever, and the evening would proceed exactly as planned.
Any moment now.
Against her better judgment, her eyes darted over to the clock near the entrance. Watching the minutes pass by was hardly helpful. All it told her was she still had many hours ahead of her and that shockingly little time had passed since she’d arrived.
This clock was also how she knew that her father had vanished into the card room precisely twelve minutes after their arrival. A new record, even for Papa. Usually he managed at least a quarter hour of social pleasantries before the lure of the tables proved too strong.
She'd watched him go with weary resignation. He wasn't a bad man, merely a broken one. And she could not fix him any more than she could fix the leaking roof on the east wing, or the dwindling accounts, or any of the other things that kept her awake at night.
What she could do was find a husband. The thought sat in her stomach like a lump of cold porridge, and she fought the urge to slump against the wall. Maybe bang her head against this ridiculous, crooked-eared wall sconce.
Instead, she straightened her spine and drew in a deep breath. This is all for Charlotte.
The reminder helped to fortify her, as it always did. Because Charlotte deserved a Season of her own someday. Not to mention a future that didn't consist of leaky roofs and good intentions.
