AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Another silence. This one grew too, expanding between them and pushing them apart. Even while he sat there, he was getting further and further away.
“Are you…are you coming to bed?” she asked.
He stood. “You should sleep.”
Yet again, he was running from her. Yet again, she did not know why or how to stop him. A week of weaving their secret world of two and it needed only an hour to crumble.
Holding them together would prove futile too.
“There’s something else,” she said. “You are not yourself tonight.”
“I’m tired.”
He was never tired. She searched for something to say.
“Did you see Martin? You said you would see him today.”
“He’s dead.”
His flat tone sent a chill rippling to her bones. A bright life gone, the little boy who careened into the office, appalled that they might be kissing. And Joshua on the dock, laughing with that boy, giving him his time and insisting he did not care. Oh, the darling fool.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “What happened?”
“Sickness. It doesn’t matter. London is full of children. What do six more or less matter?”
“It’s all right to say you loved him.”
“There you go again,” he snapped, catching the door with one hand. “I’m going to bed.”
She fought with her clothing to clamber to her knees. “You have so much love to give. You ought not deny it. Love always comes with the risk of loss, but we must love all the same.”
“For mercy’s sake, Cassandra. You speak of yourself, not me.”
“If we have…”
The words withered in her throat, but he heard them anyway.
“If we have a child, it is your child, not mine,” he said, hard, distant, chilling. “I want nothing to do with any of it. That part of my life is finished.”
And this time he truly was walking away.
Again.
“You will not leave,” she ordered, scrambling out of the bed. He ignored her. “Do not leave again, Joshua. Not again, not this time.”
The door slammed in her face. The grind of the key, the click of the lock.
Curse him.
She ran out into the hallway, to his other door—only to hear him turn the key in that one too. She hammered on the wood, yelled his name, not caring if she woke the family or the servants or all the demons in hell. Then—the sound of the connecting door opening. She dashed back into her room in time to see Mr. Twit come hurtling through the slit before the door was closed and locked again.
“Curse you, Joshua,” she called through the door. “You cannot keep walking away.”
Silence.
Mr. Twit shook off the indignity of his eviction, plonked himself on the rug, and started cleaning a leg.
“It’s back to you and me, Mr. Twit,” she said.
