Page 80 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his glass balanced in one hand. “I don’t believe in luck, Pearl. Or fate. We make our choices, and then we live with them.”
She felt the truth of it, like a blade pressed lightly to her skin. She tried desperately to redirect the conversation. “Do you remember the summer at Gravesend, when we all picnicked by the lake?”
He grinned. “You nearly drowned, as I recall.”
“I did not.” She laughed, caught off-guard by the memory. “You pushed me in, and then pretended to rescue me.”
His eyes danced. “You were so angry.”
“I was furious. I refused to speak to you for days.”
“But you did,” he said, and something softened in his voice. “You always forgave me.”
Pearl felt the warmth of the brandy, the fire, his gaze. It was overwhelming, almost suffocating. She tried to focus on the familiar objects in the room, the heavy velvet of the drapes, the inlaid chessboard on the side table. But everything seemed to blur at the edges, as if the boundaries of her world were dissolving.
She watched as Victor shifted in his chair, his movements slow, deliberate. He poured himself a second measure, then set the decanter down with a finality that made her heart pound.
She saw, for the first time, the full shape of his body, the breadth of his chest beneath the silk waistcoat, the way the fabric pulled at his shoulders. She wondered ridiculously, impossibly, what it would feel like to be held in those arms.
The thought shocked her. She looked away, her pulse skittering. She had been a widow for less than a year. Such things were not meant for her. Not yet. Maybe never.
But still.
The silence grew, coiled, and thickened, until it became a thing with its own gravity. Victor must have felt it too, for he stood and crossed to the hearth, setting his glass on the mantel.
“Pearl,” he said, “I have always regretted—”
She shook her head fiercely. “No. Please. Don’t.”
He turned, and for a moment she thought he might protest, might insist on laying bare whatever ancient wound he still carried. But he only nodded, the gesture oddly gentle, and said, “As you wish.”
She stood as well, her knees trembling. She set her glass on the table with care, then smoothed her skirts with trembling hands.
“I should check on the girls,” she said. “Alice will be plotting an escape from the nursery, I’m sure.”
Victor smiled, the sadness in it almost beautiful. “Goodnight, Pearl.”
“Goodnight, Victor.”
She turned and walked to the door. With her hand on the knob, she glanced back over her shoulder. His profile was half-lit, half-shadowed, like a coin balanced on its edge. For a heartbeat, the urge to cross the room and throw herself into his arms was so strong she had to grip the doorknob to keep from acting on it.
Instead, she slipped from the room, her composure shattering the moment the door closed behind her.
Upstairs, the corridor was quiet. Pearl walked to her bedchamber, her heart racing, her thoughts a riot. She pressed a hand to her breast, felt the wild flutter there, and wondered if she would ever again be able to look at Victor without feeling this impossible longing.
She doubted it. But she told herself, as she undressed in the dark, that she would try.
She owed it to Percy. She owed it to herself.
But as she lay in bed with the taste of brandy still on her tongue, she knew that tomorrow, she would see him at breakfast, and the game would begin again. And this time, perhaps, she would not let herself lose.
Chapter Five
Pearl sat alone in the drawing room, hands folded in the lap of her dull violet day gown, each finger perfectly aligned with its pair as if mutual restraint could stave off all disorder. The hour was just past three, that unanchored window in the country day when time lost its shape and only the growl of the wind or the slow chime of the clock insisted on progress. Sunlight pooled on the carpet in rigid slabs, fractured by the frosted leading of the windows. Against the blaze of that light, every detail in the room resolved itself with painful clarity, the gilded arms of the settees, the iron-bright glitter of the fire screen.
A less disciplined woman might have dozed, or permitted herself a tear or two for the sake of drama. Pearl did neither. The stillness of the house was a comfort, or at least a familiar adversary. Upstairs, her daughters were deep in the silence of embroidery lessons, a discipline imposed by the dowager herself, whose talents in domestic governance were rivaled only by her capacity for charitable works.
Pearl hadn’t intended to sit so long, but once installed she found herself loath to move, as if each hour that passed in dignified inactivity was another inch reclaimed from the encroaching wilderness of uncertainty that had devoured her life these last twelve months. She watched the fire burn low and then revive, the red-gold embers shifting with each faint draft that snaked beneath the great carved doors.
