He sat for a moment. He took two long, deep, somewhat unsteady breaths, as something soft and golden filtered through the fissures in his being made by grief and exhaustion, knitting them, healing them. It was a peace unlike any he’d known before.
He closed his eyes to be alone, for the first time, with the certainty that he loved and was loved.
Was it enough?
Was it selfish to do what his heart now compelled him to do?
Perhaps.
He just knew that he had to do it anyway.
Seconds later it seemed—but the warmth and direction of the sun told him it was more like an hour—he jerked awake.
He apparently hadn’t opened his eyes after he closed them. He’d dozed. He stirred, and stretched, and then turned his body.
And then froze.
Sitting on the opposite settee, staring at him, was a woman with flaxen hair spiraling from her ribbons.
Holy Mother of God.
“Amelia?” he whispered.
It had been just before dawn when their family’s townhouse came into view, and the street wasquiet and empty. Her parents would have been awake all night, and, as Hugh said, were likely worried sick. She was trying to decide whether attempting to go in through the servants’ entrance or the front door was more advisable. There was really no way to avoid facing them.
She’d spent her time in the hack rearranging her hair as best she could without a mirror. That, and sobbing.
And then she saw a man slinking toward the servants’ entrance of the townhouse, keeping to the shadows. He was carrying a hat and overcoat and walking stick. She thumped the roof of the hack hard, and it stopped.
There was no mistaking who it was.
She leaped out of the hack. “St. John!” she half hissed, half whispered.
St. John froze almost comically midstep. Then whirled.
And stared, agog, at the apparition that was his sister emerging from a hack just before dawn. Slightly disheveled, definitely probably still rosy in the cheeks and lips, eyes probably a little swollen. She’d done her weeping in the hack and that was the last place, she told herself, she’d do it. Although she wouldn’t hold herself to that.
He clearly wasn’t drunk, or if he was, not very. St. John’s face reflected a dozen emotions and suspicions, but no doubt he’d come to some of the right conclusions. He wasn’t a fool.
“Listen,” she whispered, slowly, and said carefully, “I leaped out of our carriage when we were stopped on the bridge, because I suddenly needed to use the bourdaloue, so I ran back to The GrandPalace on the Thames, where I encountered you, because you’d stopped in to say goodbye to Mr. Delacorte and arrange for more chess lessons. We waited until morning and then took a hack home together, because it was safer to travel in the morning and the roads were clearer.”
St. John’s face was quite the kaleidoscope for a fleeting moment. Alarm, concern, hilarity, curiosity scudded by as she watched. It concluded on sympathy.
That was the one that hurt.
He looked as though he wanted to say a lot of things.
Instead, he just reached out and straightened her bonnet.
“Got it,” he said gently.
He looped his arm through hers, and they went up the front stairs together.
“How did you know I went to say goodbye to Mr. Delacorte?” he whispered just as he was about to turn the key.
She almost laughed.
“Good morning, Hugh.” Amelia Woodley offered a little smile.