*
Peter wrote toCelia by return post and spent the rest of the daylight hours walking—to the docklands and the immigrant quarters and the swept sidewalks of St James. He paused when the smells reminded him he was hungry and bought food from the carts on the pavement; he turned in at a cobbler when one of his soles started to flop.
He would come to tea on Wednesday morning, he had told Celia. He left on Thursday. He had this afternoon and tomorrow to decide what he was going to say.
No.
He had this afternoon and tomorrow to decide whether he could ask her to marry him. He must put her safety above any other consideration. He had heard that Hargreaves was out of the picture, but then he heard a dozen things more about Hargreaves, each more peculiar than the last. Celia had not mentioned Hargreaves in her note, although she had implied that Cade was no longer calling.
Odd, that Celia would think he cared about Cade.
Odd, that he cared so much about what Cade was doing with Celia, that tall gracious elegant eloquent bastard.
Peter braced his hands on his hips, coat flapping in the harbor breeze. Ships, big bellies rocking in the stinking gray water, sails crumpled on deck like broken wings. When he was a boy, his father had taken him out in the early mornings to shoot the herons on their fish pond. The graceful birds felt more meaningful to boy-Peter than gentlemen’s sport-fishing; their corpses a useless tumble of feathers and legs on the shorn emerald grass. He killed them still, four or five a summer, but now he was a grown man.
Now he could make his own decisions, but someone would still end up hurt.
He knew the name of his assigned ship. He would go to the shipping manager’s office right now, except he was due to leave from Bristol and not London.
“There’s a mistake,” he’d say. “I have a single berth, but I’m a married man. Switch my cabin.”
He’d slide some coins across the desk, more if the man was scrupulous.
The clerk would nod. “Yes sir. To be sure, sir.”
Peter kept walking.
It was the only solution: take Celia with him. He didn’t know what was wrong, but Celia had carried herself proud and self-contained all spring. She wouldn’t have written to him unless she was desperate.
He could go to the Thompsons, explain everything, absolutely everything down to the bare bones. He’d promise her the world, or at least his little corner of it. He’d hold her until she melted against him, and it might not take long. He could give Celia everything she needed, his name and his money and his house, and he could take her to Florence. Far away from Edmund Hargreaves, far beyond the reach of that fool brother.
It wasn’t done, a man in his position having a wife, but they would be gone before anyone up the chain of command had achance to protest. He’d manage il Granducato, finish his report, quit the intelligence office, and meanwhile Leavenworth would purchase a house and hire footmen—and send those letters that they were beginning to prepare. A little pressure of their own on the sweet Jackdaw. Francis might even help; he was good at playing the strong man. If Francis was a friend.
Peter walked and walked. He imagined framing Celia’s face with his hands, her eyes meeting his and never needing to turn away. He imagined the texture of her cheeks under his thumbs, the sound of her breathing. How being close to her would feel if he never had to leave her again.
Peter walked and walked. Talking to Celia-who-wasn’t there, he told his whole story, under his breath, lost in the whinnies and shouts of the dinner-hour traffic. He told her how scared he’d been at Christmas holiday the year he was fourteen, his mother staring out the window and ignoring her baby, who lay silent and not-quite-right in the cradle. He told her about Elinor’s first word and the way she reached out her chubby hands to him. He told her about Avonleagh, watching it come back to life after he hired Saunders at an agricultural show, making plans to live there, but even by himself he couldn’t find words to explain why he’d left it all behind. His throat closed and his heart froze and he felt all over again like a little boy facing the one man, the one battle, that he never could win.
“If you were with me, I could go back.” He stopped, staring at the church spires in the glowing sunset. It was selfish to think of what Celia could do for him, but it was only in his own head and he couldn’t stop. “For eleven years, I’ve made plans and killed men and saved men, but I haven’t been man enough to go back. Maybe with you…maybe together…”
With Celia at his side, Peter would be stand up to his father. He’d practiced the words into his pillow, under his breath while marching in formation, written them in letters he was not braveenough to send. With Celia at his side, a respectable paragon of female virtue, he would demand that his father cede Elinor’s guardianship to him. They would do all those things that Mrs. Pipperly (poor woman) suggested, find the right tutors and go to the right salons, until Elinor was joyful and confident in herself. Just like Marianne, who could also live with them. In that townhouse, whenever they found it, and Peter would find a job that wasn’t going to kill him, nor send him to Italy either.
Peter turned and walked all the way back to his rented rooms. Step after step after step. Eventually, the tears rolled down his cheeks, and he didn’t stop them. His father had told him that men don’t cry, but it was Peter who had gone to Spain. He had killed and bled, saved some men and lost too many. He had earned the right to cry.
Because it wasn’t enough. He could do the two things: marry Celia and protect Elinor.
But if he took Celia to Italy, they would leave behind Rose and Henrietta and Marianne. Celia thought they had weeks, but Peter could see that Thompson was on his last days. Edmund Hargreaves’s gossip campaign had called the hounds of suspicion to sniff at Thompson’s heels; any minute now, the men in the clubs would call in their debts—a foxhunt with Mr. Thompson on the run and his daughters abandoned.
Celia wouldn’t leave them. And Peter couldn’t live with himself if he asked her to.
Part Three
Act 3: Climax
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Fateful Ball
Henrietta emerged forLady Latham’s ball, head high, refusing to look at her parents.
