“It seemed like nothing!” Clarence held out his hands, palms out. “Lord Edmund offered to forgive the entire debt if he could apologize privately. I insisted that he promise not to kiss her nor to hurt her in any way. He agreed.”
“And you believed him?” Bridget demanded.
“Everyonein all ofLondonknows not to believe LordDead-mund!” Marianne screeched.
“I’d trust him with the back of my fist!” JC punched the air.
“I’d trust him with a pie in the eye!” Janie exclaimed, and then everyone had something to add.
It was chaos. Celia was delighted. In her room, by herself, she could get stuck in the should-be’s and ought-to’s, but Celia could not lose herself when she was surrounded by such real-life vigor.
“Celia!” All of a sudden, Clarence threw himself on his knees, clutching her skirt. Celia jumped, burning tea splashing her wrist, and she flung it away.
Her teacup smashed on the flagstones.
“You must forgive me! You don’t understand, none of you! Celia, I am trying!” Clarence buried his face in the folds of her dress, shoulders shaking.
Celia pulled her hands into her chest, staring at the shards of porcelain, the dark spreading stain. Clarence wanted to be a little boy, but he had shattered their trust. Celia couldn’t fix his problems, and the teacup would be added to her husband’s bill.
“What don’t we understand?” Marianne asked.
Clarence sat up on his knees, staring at Celia. “Men like me don’t have power in the world when it comes to men like Lord Edmund. You don’t understand what I’ve been through. I was barely ten when I came to England. It was too gray and the food was wrong and the tutors whipped me because I didn’t know how to stand in line and I had thought I spoke proper English but it was all wrong. The boys hated me, because I am Irish so by their rules I am nothing, but I was a baron’s son so by their rules they must give me precedence. Listen, I am telling you everything! I started to wet my bed again, Celia.” He was crying now. “I was smaller than everyone, and I was hungry all the time, and Mother died and I couldn’t come home again. I could not ever go home.” He lowered his head, gulping back sobs, Celia’s skirt wrinkled in his hands.
“Father offered to bring you home.” She said it for the others, but speaking made it clear in her own mind. “You refused to come.”
“Because he remarried after only five months! I loved our mother, Celia! I loved her!”
Celia had loved her mother. Her father had, too. Peter had loved his brother and could not even mention his name. “Grief does not always look the same, Clarence. And it does not excuse what happens now.”
“But you don’t understand! No one ever sees me as one of them. I have to be agreeable, Celia. I have to do things the English way, even more than the English boys. I can’t just go and make a fuss and stand up for things, Celia.”
“Lord Kilairne.” Leavenworth spoke steadily. “You cannot possibly be telling us—this room full of people—that it is difficult to be an outsider. You cannot possibly thinkwedo not understand the imbalance between power and justice.”
From the floor, Clarence looked around, checking every face again. The same metric: a servant, a child, a Black, a ruffian, an ex-slave.
Peter spoke quietly. “You cannot possibly be telling Celia that she doesn’t understand the difficulty of being an Irish person in England. You were the one who brought her here.”
“It’s easy foryou!” Clarence spun like a compass to his brother-in-law.
Leavenworth snorted. “You have been to his lodgings in town. You cannot possibly think that a man who could afford all this”—he spread his hand, towards the room and the carriage house—“and yet lived in a moldy room, by himself, under a false name, has had everythingeasyin his life.”
For a moment, terror flitted across Peter’s face and he looked like a little boy.
“You have each other,” Clarence protested.
“The difference,” Leavenworth said, “is that we have chosen each other. You have chosen to give what little power you have to one of them.”
“You have chosen to give away Celia’s power,” Marianne muttered, too low for the men to hear.
Celia lifted her chin and poured herself a new cup of tea. A man is judged by his actions, she had told Clarence in the garden, the last time he asked for forgiveness. He was not the only one who was hurt and afraid.
Celia had chosen. She had made the vows in church, and she had held him last night, and she was trusting him right now. Celia looked across the room and met her husband’s eyes. She was safe and she could speak.
“Celia, you must understand—”
“No,” said Celia.
Clarence paused. “No, what?”
