Page 74 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
Pearl nodded. “Yes, but mind you thank Her Grace before you go.”
They chorused their thanks, then vanished after the waiting governess, leaving a sudden, lopsided quiet in the room. The duchess watched after them fondly.
Pearl tried to breathe. Without her children as a buffer, the drawing room felt smaller, the air denser. She noticed the seams of her gloves, the faint tick of the clock, the way Victor’s reflection flickered in the polished brass of the fender.
Victor finally spoke, not to Pearl, but to his mother. “You’ve done well bringing them here.”
The duchess shrugged, the gesture making her look younger, almost girlish. “It is the right thing, Victor. One does what one can for old friends.” Her eyes shifted slyly to Pearl. “And it is the season, after all.”
Pearl looked directly at Victor. For a moment, neither of them looked away. She saw now that the years hadn’t hardened him, but refined him—his face all angles and planes, the brown eyes still capable of sudden, disarming warmth, though now guarded by a battalion of small, hard lines. He didn’t smile, but there was a question there, hanging between them, unasked.
She felt her skin heat, guilt prickling in the wake of it. She had no right to notice such things, no right to feel the old, stupid flutter of nerves at the thought of what might have been. Her mourning wasn’t simply a garment. It was meant to shield her from the very sensation now clawing its way to the surface.
The duchess set her cup down. “Well, I must see to the arrangements for supper. Victor, be a dear and keep Lady Graveley company until I return.”
She swept out, leaving the door ajar. Victor didn’t move to close it.
For a time, they remained in silence—Pearl at the edge of her seat, Victor by the fire, both held fast by the gravity of things unsaid. At last, Pearl spoke, her voice thin but unwavering. “Thank you for receiving us, Victor. It means… more than you know.”
He nodded once. “The house is not the same without company. My mother is right about that.”
She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and tried to remember how to breathe in a room that seemed to have misplaced all its air. The hush that fell wasn’t companionable. It lay between them, thick and expectant.
Victor remained at the mantel for a time, eyes on the flames. Eventually he circled the arrangement of chairs before choosing the one opposite Pearl. It was a small but deliberate gesture, as if he had calculated the precise distance at which civility could be maintained.
“It’s been almost a year,” he said. The words were neutral in pitch, but Pearl felt them as an incursion—an abrupt rendering of her private pain into the shared, public space.
She laced her fingers over the black wool of her skirt, knuckles whitening. “Eleven months on Thursday,” she replied quietly. “Sometimes it feels like less. Sometimes much, much longer.”
More silence, then, in a tone almost gentle, he said, “You’re very brave, coming here.”
Pearl smiled without humor. “Not bravery, I assure you. More like resignation.” Her hands worried the skirt again, a nervous fugue she could not master. “My mother used to say, ‘If you cannot endure the company of ghosts, best not to visit old friends.’ I suppose she was right.”
He watched her, the way a chess player watches a board. “I have never thought of myself as a ghost.”
“No,” she allowed. “You were always—present.”
He let that hang, and in the space it created, her mind returned—helplessly, traitorously—to the summer when she was seventeen. Two men had vied for her hand. Percy, golden, sweet-mannered, all laughter and effortless charm. And Victor, whose intensity had frightened her even as it made her feel uniquely seen. In the end, she had chosen the safe option, the one her mother approved. Percy had been a good husband. He had never made her cry, never raised his voice.
Victor, by contrast, had vanished—almost overnight—once the engagement was set. He hadn’t written. He hadn’t called. On the rare occasions they crossed paths in Town, he greeted her with cool formality. It was the right thing to do, of course. But she had never forgotten the way he once looked at her, as if she were the only person in the world worth troubling with his real thoughts.
She forced herself to look at him now. His face had aged, yes, but beautifully so. The lines around his eyes and mouth were earned, not worn. His hair, still dark, though laced now with silver at the temples, was shorter than she remembered. In his presence, the room felt smaller, as if they shared not only the fire but the air itself.
“I hope you don’t find it awkward,” she said, because she could think of nothing else.
He gave her a small, surprising smile. “We are English, Pearl. Awkwardness is our birthright.”
She laughed and was shocked at how good it felt. “You haven’t changed, have you?”
He looked at her for a long moment. “In some ways, I hope not. In others—well.” He drained the glass and set it down. “Loss changes everyone, I think. Even those who imagine themselves immune.”
She hesitated before asking, “Did you love someone, Victor?”
He blinked, as if caught off guard by the directness. “No one who mattered,” he said, but the words landed with the opposite effect. “I have only ever admired what is not mine.”
She felt the truth of it, some brittle, unspoken thing passing between them. The fire popped, and she startled, a foolish, girlish movement that made her want to apologize.
“You are not obligated to entertain us this whole holiday,” she said, desperate for a change of subject. “The girls are not difficult. I have learned to amuse them myself.”
