“No,” he said roughly. “It doesn’t hurt now.”
Hope filtered into his mother’s face. “I’m glad. It was—well, honestly, we thought about leaving as well,” she said. “But Leo couldn’t stand the idea of letting Cheetham sit with the damage until it went bad. He stayed for five years. Barely left the grounds at all. And then I told him I could take it in hand from there.”
Jack felt nearly sick with the humbling enormity of what his parents had done in his absence. They’d taken on the huge, hurting estate as if it were a wounded wolf, ignored the clawing and biting that would have resulted from their blood-oath, and stayed until the edges of the wound knitted.
They’d have done the same for you, a voice of plain and remorseless sense whispered in Jack. If you’d bothered to let them.
And it should have been you to do the mending. What kind of heir can you call yourself now?
And still his mother walked the estate every day, granting recognition to even the place where Elsie had died, no matter how much it hurt. Moving herself above the earth in patient patterns. Carving channels through repetition, just as Edwin believed that the point of ley lines was for magic to flow and renew itself. Magic. Bonds. Intuition.
For a moment Jack had the uneasy impression of a large idea that he might be able to touch, to make solid and understandable, if only he could reach in the right direction.
But his mother started walking again, down the slope to where the bees danced in the summer breeze, and Jack followed her, and the impression slipped away.
20
The summer abruptly produced one cold day, a promise of the autumn just around the corner, and of course it found Alan shivering in annoyance on the train platform with his fingers locked around the handle of his single battered case.
The train coming in to his platform screeched and yelled as it came to a halt, filling the air with brass noise. Alan didn’t realise that one of the high whistles was coming from a human mouth until a man touched his arm and said, “Think that dark lassie is trying to catch your eye.”
Alan looked down the platform to where the man indicated. Adelaide was hanging out the window of one of the second-class carriages, waving both arms at him. Her travelling-suit was a sober navy blue with white piping and her hat was plain good straw, but she looked younger and more undignified than he’d ever seen her before. Alan lifted a hand in response and went to join her.
“I’m so glad the timetables worked out,” Adelaide said. “Gloucester had to be on the other side of England to Cheetham, of course, but at least this way we’ll have company if we end up helplessly lost in the country lanes of Essex.”
Alan didn’t believe that Adelaide Morrissey had ever been lost. Surely she’d just give the geography a reproachful stare and it wouldn’t dare inconvenience her further.
She’d managed a small six-seater compartment almost to herself. A tattered person of indeterminate sex, wearing at least three anoraks, was wedged snoring in a corner near the window with a bulging canvas bag clutched in their lap. Alan lightened his steps so as not to wake them. He wasn’t one to judge the places people found to snatch a safe sleep. He wondered if they’d snuck on without paying at a smaller station, and if he could try to forge a ticket for them for when the conductor made his rounds.
The luggage racks were at the very limit of Alan’s reach. It took one foot on the seat and a shove of grunting effort to get his bag settled next to Adelaide’s pair of smart matching leather suitcases and an enormous hatbox.
“I won’t be much use in the country,” Alan said, sitting opposite Adelaide. Steam was rising from pistons and people on the platform were dashing to the train doors with a hand on their hat or waving merry farewell. Their companion continued to snore like a handful of marbles bouncing over cobbles, so Alan didn’t bother to whisper. “I’ve not seen any of it.”
“Really?” said Adelaide. “I thought you were a seasoned traveller.”
“Ha,” said Alan, dry. “The only train I’ve been on was the one to Southampton. Then right onto the Majestic for five days, and only a handful of hours in New York before I climbed aboard the Lyric to come home.” He’d stuck strictly to advertising and gossip on the first leg of the voyage, daring to venture into the illegal arms of the business only on the way back. And when he’d sent his family off to the seaside, afterwards, he’d stayed in town to work.
All of his stories set in grand country manor houses were based on other people’s books about grand country manor houses, and hefty nicking of details from the sort of society article that really needed you to know how many miles of ornamental hedges a place had, and where all the marble for the floors had come from.
“You might decide you haven’t been missing much. Robin prefers the city,” said Adelaide. “And I’ve never set foot on an ocean liner, myself. Never left England.”
Comparing this poised, moneyed woman—the future Lady Blyth—to his own family was absurd. But for a wistful second there was something about Adelaide that reminded Alan so strongly of Caro he found himself feeling brotherly. It was the only excuse he had for why he said, “Were you all right, staying in Gloucester on your own?”
“How kind of you. I’ve never run into any trouble—I’m not a young girl anymore, and I find the trick is to look as unspeakably dull and respectable as one can. This helps,” she added, her smile growing to a small grin as she lifted her hand to display the ring that she was forever tapping on things.
The once-was jewel thief in Alan sharpened at the sight. Dull, it was not. A plain gold band nearly groaned under the weight of an enormous oval-cut ruby ringed with seed pearls.
“You could certainly take someone’s eye out with it, if they bothered you.”
“Family heirloom. Lady Blyth’s own wedding band. Maud was delighted to palm it off on someone else and not have to inherit it herself, or so she says.”
Alan hesitated, then said it anyway. They’d all heard his weaknesses, his worst parts, laid bare. And even though Adelaide had been cool-mannered with Alan at Spinet House after the Barrel disaster, she’d clearly made up her mind about him in the interim, and was behaving with all of her old friendly ease.
“Could I ask you a question?” he said. “Something personal?”
Adelaide’s interest brightened. She folded her hands, obscene ring and all. “By all means.”
“Do you—are you and Sir Robert—” His nerve failed. Some interviewer he was.
“Do I love him?”
Close enough. Blood filled Alan’s cheeks as he nodded.
“Yes. In the way Edwin loves him, and the way he loves Edwin? No. But they trust me to see what they have without wanting to interfere with it, and respect me enough to believe I know what I want. And don’t tell him I said this, but Robin’s a traditionalist at heart. I believe he rather fancies the idea of offering me the protection of his name, along with sliding me sideways into Walter Courcey’s blood-oath.”
“Protection?” Alan couldn’t help smiling. “You don’t seem in need of that.”
“I see it as a way to get the things I want, without the things I don’t want,” she said calmly. “And I’m not like Violet. I don’t mind marrying to make my family happy, and to stop them worrying about me.” Her manner softened into seriousness. “And that’s still a choice made from love. Would I prefer a world where nobody expects me to marry at all, or believes a man’s name will give my life legitimacy? Of course. But that’s not the world I’m living in.”