Page 44 of Rescuing Lord Inglewood

“It will take time for some of us, I dare say,” Jacob murmured, watching the fiery Miss Everly. “It is difficult to accept loss and the pain it brings to us. There is hope, though, for a brighter tomorrow. Loss is like walking through the dark, hoping for the sunrise. There are times you doubt it will ever come, but eventually the sun must rise. For now, we must count ourselves blessed we do not walk alone. We have each other.”

The words did not quite touch at the pain in Esther’s heart, but she put them aside for future study.

“Doing this alone would be impossible,” Silas said, reaching up to run his hands through his hair. “I would go insane here in this house. I cannot do anything except think of Isaac when I should much rather keep myself busy. I keep trying to find things to do, to occupy my mind with tasks. I wish there was less time in the day, yet I dread going to bed at night.”

Although Esther understood what her husband meant, to a point, her heart twisted within her breast. Had her presence made this loss even more difficult for Silas, forcing him to leave London to come to her side? He could have mourned quite well there, draping the house in black and going about his business. But she could not travel, could not go out, and could not keep her hands busy enough. Not the way a man could.

“I rather hoped to dream about Isaac,” Grace said quietly, her sad smile not reaching her eyes. “Just to say goodbye. But it did not happen.”

“Mother always wished you would develop an affection for him,” Hope said, angling to face her sister more, her back to Esther. “I told her it could never be. He was like a brother to both of us.”

Esther forced back the desire to sob or to shout that Isaac had, in fact, been her brother. They could not understand, not at all, what it had been like to lose a brother. Her hero, her example, her friend.

Grace nodded in easy agreement. “We would not have suited, but I was often curious as to who he might one day choose. If it would be a girl in the neighborhood.” She turned to face Silas. “Our mother was forever matchmaking, at least in conversation. Mother was so certain you would marry Hope.”

An expression of wide-eyed horror momentarily overtook the sorrow in Silas’s face, and had Esther been in a better humor she might have laughed. As it was, she sank a little deeper into her chair.

Silas made his answer quite determinedly. “I mean no offense, Hope, but I would never even consider it. We would not suit.”

“That is exactly what I told Mama.” Hope’s body went limp as she leaned back against the cushions, appropriate posture apparently forgotten. “We have all known each other too long.”

Flicking her gaze to Jacob, Esther saw the barest flinch from him before he nodded in agreement. For such old friends, the four of them did not always seem to understand one another.

The door opened, admitting servants with refreshments. At last, here was something Esther could contribute to the gathering. She stood and directed the footman and the maid, keeping her voice low and authoritative, then she poured refreshment for her guests and prepared small plates of food for them. Everyone accepted the things she handed them with quiet thanks, and she retook her seat feeling—somewhat foolishly—accomplished.

She even hazarded a comment of her own. “I was hoping, while you were all here, you might share something with me about Isaac. Perhaps a favorite memory of him. There were no people in the world he loved so much as those in this room.”

“Oh, I could not,” Hope said, shaking her head almost violently. “Not so soon.”

Jacob leaned forward in his seat, almost as if he wished to go to her. “It could help, Hope. Perhaps bring about some healing.”

Grace wrapped an arm around her twin, who had begun to cry in earnest. Silas stared at the twins, almost as though he did not see them, and then turned slightly away. “Do you remember the box we buried, when we formed our club? I found it today. All of our things still inside.” He stood, not making eye contact with anyone in the room. “I will go and fetch it.”

He disappeared, leaving Esther to stare at his empty chair. Jacob gave up his seat and crossed the rug to kneel before the twins, offering more words of Christian comfort. Words Esther wished someone would give to her. Grace held her sister, who continued to cry and shake her head in denial of all Jacob said.

Esther looked down into her tea, the swirls of steam drifting away from the dirty brown liquid. After a few moments, she put the cup aside and silently left the room. She did not make any excuses, nor did she have any. In the few minutes she had been there, surrounded by people who knew and loved Isaac as well as she did, Esther realized she did not belong. Hope with her angry grief, Jacob with his platitudes, and Grace with her quiet expression of pain, did not want to comfort Esther nor allow her into their grieving.

The situation could be summed up quite simply. They neither needed nor wanted Esther, as they barely knew her. They wanted each other, the familiar faces who had shared Isaac, not his sister.

She took the back stairs to avoid Silas, tucking her hurt further into her heart, and made for her upstairs sitting room. Her drawings, her art, would give her a place to release her emotions. Painting had been her only respite of late. There was never anyone to talk to, to commiserate with. She had held Silas’s attention, his compassion, for a day. Somehow, those few hours had made her think she held more than that. A wish that she might mean more to him had dared to appear, like the faintest lines of a sketch.

Esther pulled an apron over her clothes and flung the curtains open, then the windows, trying to let in light. She dragged a chair beneath the window and found charcoal. Hastily she began to scribble, broad swaths of black appearing on her paper. She wasn’t even sure what she drew, but the act of slashing across the paper in wide arcs was somewhat freeing.

She covered the whole paper in black, her hand and sleeve streaked with the charcoal too, but created nothing. She wadded the paper up and tossed it directly out the window. A breeze caught the loose ball and banged it against the wall before letting it drop to the ground below.

Standing, Esther looked out the window and downward, where the paper rested in a heap on the ground. Something about seeing that paper, free and alone, where it should not be, pulled at her heart. Again she tried to draw, this time purposefully, thinking of her brother’s face.

But it wasn’t right. She’d drawn the eyes she knew from his boyhood, and that was not what she wanted. She threw that paper out the window, too. Tried again. Failed. Threw the paper out.

A sob tore from her throat. Why did everything have to be so difficult? Why didn’t anyone see how much she hurt?

Esther wrapped her arms around herself, heedless of how dirty she was from her drawing attempts. She glared at her paintings, seeing them for what they were—wastes of time. What good did a watercolor painting do anyone? What was the point of them?

She took one which depicted the stormy sky and sea, walked to the window and compared it to the reality before her. Rain clouds were moving in, sweeping across the water. Her painting was nothing like what she saw. She dropped the painting out the window.

The weight on her heart lightened. She took up another painting of the fountain in the garden. Who cared about fountains and gardens when one had but to step outside to see the real thing?

That painting fell from the window and into the bushes, too.