The tightness that had held Jonathan rigid from the moment he crossed the threshold gave way by degrees, first in his shoulders, then in his hands, then somewhere deep beneath his ribs where the worst of his dread had lodged itself for far too long. His fingers loosened in his lap, and the breath he drew reached places inside him that had atrophied of late.
The kindness of it struck so differently from the judgment Jonathan had braced himself to receive that, for a moment, he could only stare at his father as the words settled over him withunexpected brightness, as though the day were dawning after a long, fitful night.
“And though I wish you had come to me far sooner, I cannot blame you for it,” he added with a heavy sigh. “You have your father’s stubborn disposition. Even with your mother’s tender influence, I fear I am still too apt to soldier on in silence.”
Rising from his seat, Father came around to Jonathan’s side of the desk and sat at his son’s side.
“Do you give me your word that you will not hide from me again? Andwhentroubles arise, will you come to me before they grow dire?” he asked, those bright eyes boring into Jonathan’s.
And though Jonathan felt as though he ought to say something of substance, he found he could only nod in response, for his heart was too full for anything else.
“Good.” Then settling his reading glasses into place, Father readied a pencil and paper as he studied his son, “We will find a way through this.”
***
No. 27 Berkeley Square had known quiet before. Quiet mornings after late nights. Quiet afternoons when Mama was out, Papa at his office, Lionel occupied elsewhere, and the younger ones at school or lessons. But those silences always contained hints of life: the muted clink of china from belowstairs, the distant sweep of a broom, the soft tread of maids moving carefully about their duties.
This silence had weight. A presence. It moved through the house like a specter risen from the grave, settling in corridors where servants ought to be working and gatheringupon staircases where voices usually drifted from one floor to the next. Perhaps somewhere the servants still performed their chores, but if they did, it was like mourners in a churchyard, moving quietly so as not to disturb the dead.
A few hours earlier, the house had been all motion and noise. Now the tumult had retreated behind closed doors, leaving only the terrible stillness of hollow hearts and broken spirits. And Nora paced the house, though there was no purpose to it. No destination. Only the need to move.
Afternoon light lay thinly across the stair runner as she moved upward, one hand caressing the banister without feeling the polished wood beneath her palm. At the upper landing, the corridor stretched before her, familiar and altered all at once. A shawl lay abandoned upon a side table, and she stared at it for several seconds before the sight lost meaning entirely.
Then her feet carried her onward again.
Noises came from Lionel’s bedchamber. Not voices. Nothing so clear as that. Merely the dull scrape of something being shifted, followed by a thud too muted to be violent and too deliberate to be accidental. The door to Lionel’s bedchamber stood open several inches, letting out a weak shaft of lamplight that was doing its best to fight back the gray afternoon.
Through the gap, she spied Lionel crossing from one side to the other, and objects lay about haphazardly: a coat draped across the armchair, drawers opened, piles of underthings upon the bed. Her mind registered each detail separately and failed to make sense of them.
“What do you want, Nora?” he asked, his voice low and hard.
“Nothing,” she whispered as her hand rested against the doorframe.
Lionel gave a short, humorless breath and turned back toward the room as though even looking at her required more patience than he possessed. “That makes a pleasant change.”
Nora remained at the threshold whilst he moved about the room with sharp, purposeful motions. A drawer closed too hard. Something struck against the bed. The whole room possessed too many angles, too much movement.
“I wasn’t the one who built our home on lies,” she whispered, though she straightened as she did so.
“No, you are just the one who has broadcast that fact to the entire world, thus destroying any chance my family has to survive.”
“And what would you have me do?” she demanded, though there was little heat in her words. That required more strength than Nora possessed at present. “Would you turn a blind eye?”
Heaving a heavy sigh, Lionel paused and sank onto the bed.
“No.” He paused and considered that, brushing lint from his knee. “Or I hope not.”
Lionel ran a hand through his hair, tugging at it, and with pleading eyes he asked, “But did you not think what this would do to us? Who will give me a position after this? What skills do I have to provide for my family? What will happen to my wife and children? With the business bankrupt, we have nothing.”
“I struggled with it. I promise I did. But what else could I do? Papa is the villain here, so why are you all determined to despise me for his actions?”
Rubbing at his face, Lionel rose to his feet. “There is a reason they warn people not to kill the messenger. The advice wouldn’t be needed if the impulse didn’t exist.”
Shoulders slumping, he gazed out at the disordered room, and his voice came low and rough. “I know this is all his doing, but knowing where the fault truly lies does not make the wreckage easier to bear. At present, I am angry with him. Angry with you. Angry with myself. Angry with this house and every gilded inch of it for looking respectable whilst rotting beneath our feet.”
His mouth twisted, but there was no humor in his smile. “So yes, we ought not to blame the messenger. But when faced with penury, I find I have very little strength to do what I ‘ought.’”
Turning away, Lionel reached for a shirt upon the bed and placed it inside a leather portmanteau with more force than the garment deserved. The motion brought the whole room into focus at last: the open drawers, the garments laid out in uneven piles, the traveling case yawning wide upon the coverlet. Every scattered piece suddenly arranged itself into a meaning Nora’s mind had refused to see.
