“I’m sorry.” Peter forced himself to sit up, mopped his face with his napkin, folded the napkin properly.
“God,” Francis said again. “I haven’t seen you this much of a mess since James died.”
Not that! His insides shattered and Peter flung himself back from the table, all the way to the far side of the moldy sitting room, flung open the curtains. Glowing windows across the narrow street. Someone who had family, lovers, children who cried in the night. Family who was alive.
Francis followed him.
“Don’t say it!” Peter jerked closed the curtain. “Don’t say his name!”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It was! It is!”
Francis stepped closer. “James was a grown man and made his own choices.”
“But I could have talked him out of it! I could have made him see sense!” Peter struck the mantelpiece. The blow stung his skin, reverberated through his arm into his shoulder and ribcage. He did it again.
“It wasn’t your fault then, and it still isn’t your fault now.”
Peter hit the mantel again, and this time the pain blacked his vision for a second.
Francis stood absolutely still, a shadow against the candles flickering merrily from the other room. “If I don’t blame you, and Brennan doesn’t blame you, nor Leavenworth nor any of the others, then it is possible you do not deserve the blame for what happened that night.”
“It goes further back.” Peter rubbed his hands across his face. His right arm was shaking. “When we were boys.”
“Peter Alcott, our friends from school have boys of their own.” Francis took a step forward. “Can we not see the world as men, and realize that whatever happened to you and James as children was the fault of your father? Not you.”
Peter swirled around, nowhere to pace, back through the room.
“Elinor, too!” Francis raised his voice. “Your mother. Your brother and sister. Can you stop taking the goddamn weight of the whole goddamn world on your shoulders and grow the hell up!”
Peter’s shoulder blundered against Francis. He didn’t mean to hurt him, but didn’t apologize either.
Back to his bedroom. With a table in it, he was a grown man and ate and slept and worked in the same room and didn’t even have a fire going half the time. Nothing to offer Elinor, and especially nothing to offer Celia, whose brother was ruining her last chances.
He whirled on Francis. “A year ago, you told me to marry Celia Westhaven.”
That was the argument that prickled between them, roiling below whatever conversation they were having.
Francis stood in the dark parlor for a long moment.
“I was wrong.” Francis never admitted he was wrong. “The timing was off. I didn’t understand that you were assigned to investigate Thompson, so you weren’t free with his family.”
“Damn right the timing was off!” The understatement caught him like a bayonet beneath the ribs.
All last spring, Peter had to visit the Thompson household several times a week. It was soon obvious that the accusations against Thompson were fatuous, but the girls caught his war-hardened heart. He was intrigued by Marianne first, because she was three days older than Elinor and Peter wanted to imagine what Elinor would be like, but Celia was always with Marianne. Soon, it was the two of them who were talking, hours slipping by while Marianne did her lessons or practiced the pianoforte. Soon, Celia’s graceful hands were in Peter’s dreams. Soon, he was figuring out how to buy her a house in Town, quit his job.With Celia by his side, he could finally go home—face his family, open his own house. He imagined the hearth-fires lit and flowers on the tables at Avonleagh, Celia in the drawing room receiving calls from the vicar’s sycophant wife and cheerful Mrs. Kirton. Last spring when Celia looked up at him, her eyes so clear and bright and startling blue, her smile that was not careful and was not polite, and Peter went hot in all the places he had thought he was frozen.
Two mornings after he had turned in his report. Two. Exonerating Thompson, making sure every detail was correct so no one could ever come after Thompson again. He gave it one day, and was going to call on Thompson once visiting hours began, declare himself—his real self. He had been dreaming of the moment when Thompson called Celia into his office and asked “I’ve managed the logistics, but the choice is yours, dear—do you want this man?” He had been almost confident in her answer, imagining the light in her eyes, her fine-boned hand reaching for his.
Instead, it was early morning—fog still on the city, fire cold in the grate—Francis had come here. To this room. His eyes dark smudges, hands shaking, velvet coat muddy and torn. They had tried, Francis said, but they couldn’t get him out in time.
James was dead.
Less than a month later, Peter was on a ship to Italy.
Peter hadn’t married Celia Westhaven that spring, and now it was too late.
“If I use my real name…” Peter spoke to the ceiling, slow breaths rattling his chest. “It will lead my boss straight to Elinor. If I keep my false name, I have nothing for Celia. If I go to Italy, my boss will forget this ridiculous vendetta. If I go to Italy, Celia…” He might never see Celia again.
