She turned and walked out of the study.
“Mary.”
Evander’s footsteps followed hers up the staircase.
Mary kept walking. The corridor stretched ahead, dim and quiet, and her room waited at the end of it, and she wanted to reach itbefore the composure she was holding together by force of will finally collapsed.
“Mary. Stop.”
She stopped. Not because he asked. Because her legs would not carry her any further. She stood in the corridor outside her bedroom door and pressed her hand flat against the wall and breathed.
Evander came up behind her. Close, but not touching. She could feel the warmth of him, the solid, steady presence that had become the axis around which this household turned, and the anger that had sustained her through Richard’s confession buckled beneath something heavier.
“I don’t believe him,” she said. Her voice came out more ragged than before. “Charlotte would not hide this from me. She would not carry another man’s child in secret and beg a stranger to help her disappear. She would have come to me, Evander. She would have told me.”
“People do not always act the way we expect them to.”
“That is not an answer,” She snapped.
“No. It is not.” Evander was quiet for a moment. “I met the Italian woman Richard has been seeing. Lucrezia Fierro. She is a singer, and she told me the same story Richard told us tonight.Charlotte came to Richard. She was pregnant by someone else, and Richard helped her hide.”
“And you believe her!” Mary scoffed. “A woman you have met once! A woman your brother is in love with. Of course she would tell you whatever story Richard gave her!”
“She might have. That is possible.”
“Then why are you standing here defending him?” she cried out, her anger spilling over her words.
Evander held her gaze. The corridor was dark, the candles in the sconces burned low, and his face was half in shadow, but his eyes were steady.
“Because I know my brother. I have known him for twenty-eight years. I have watched him lie, and I have watched him tell the truth, and I know the difference. He was not lying tonight, Mary. The guilt was real. The remorse was real. And the way he spoke about Charlotte, the care he took to protect her story, to let her tell it in her own words…” He paused. “Richard is many things. Reckless. Careless with consequences. But he is not cruel, and the story he told tonight was not the story of a cruel man.”
Mary’s chin trembled. She pressed her teeth together and held them. “Of course you’ve taken his side.”
“I have not taken anyone’s side. I am telling you what I saw,” Evander responded, his tone still even, still soft, which made her all the more angry.
“What you saw is your brother, home and safe, and you want to believe the best of him because that is easier than considering that he ruined my sister’s life!”
“That is not fair.”
“None of this is fair!” She retorted. “None of this has been fair since the morning I stood in a church in a wedding dress and watched my life fall apart. I married a stranger. I am raising a child who is not mine. I managed this household while you searched alleys and boxing rings, and I did it because I believed that Tommy was Charlotte’s son and Richard’s son. And now, your brother sits in your study and tells me the baby I have loved for weeks is not his, and I am supposed to stand here and consider the possibility that my sister lied to me.” Her voice broke. “I cannot do that tonight, Evander. Icannot.”
Evander said nothing. He let the silence hold. Mary pressed her back against the wall and felt the tears she had been fighting all night press against her eyes, hot and insistent.
“I was terrified,” she whispered. “While you were gone. All those hours. No word. No message. I sat in that parlor and watched the street, and I thought about every alley and that damned knife cut in your arm, and I could not breathe.”
Evander’s expression softened. Tenderness, raw and undefended, the same look he had worn in the nursery when Tommy grabbed his finger.
“I am here,” he said. “I came back.”
“You always come back.” Mary’s voice was barely audible. “But you never stay.”
Then, Evander stepped closer. His hand came up and touched the side of her face, his thumb tracing the wet line of a tear she had not realized had fallen. Mary closed her eyes. His palm was warm, rough, and steady against her cheek, and the tenderness of it, after hours of fear and weeks of distance and the impossible revelations of this night, dissolved whatever remained of her defenses.
She pulled him by the coat.
And she kissed him.
Mary pressed her mouth to his and felt the tension in his body release, and his other hand came to her waist and drew her against him.