Page 43 of It Takes Two to Tumble
“Oh, Benedict. For what it’s worth, I would have gone to bed with the Archbishop of Canterbury if it might have gotten you a better living than this.”
“Hartley!” Ben wasn’t sure whether to laugh or remonstrate.
“No, it’s true. I have no morals. Or, if I do, bedding elderly gentlemen for gain isn’t against them.”
“You were a child.”
“Sixteen. But I see your point,” Hartley said thoughtfully. “I do indeed.” He steepled his fingers and furrowed his brow. “Although I suppose it’s just as well to resign. It must be unpleasant to affiliate yourself with an institution that holds your particular vice in such low regard.”
“Don’t call it a vice,” Ben said fiercely. “Bother it all, Hartley. I hadn’t really thought of it that way.” He knew that his brother was invoking this line of argument to make him feel better about resigning, but that made it no less persuasive.
“If I were secretly a portrait artist, I wouldn’t join up with one of those groups that believes graven images to be abominations. Perhaps because I wouldn’t want other artists to think I despised them. Perhaps because I’d worry that after too long in their company I’d begin to despise myself.”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut. He had tried so hard not to come to that conclusion. “There’s good work to be done in the church.”
“I daresay there is,” Hartley said mildly. “There’s good work to be done in a lot of places. Don’t go live in a slum in Liverpool, Benedict. If you do resign, come stay with me in London. I have that whole blasted house that Sir Humphrey left me. And I’m quite alone.”
If Ben hadn’t been quite so wrapped up in his own misery, he might have remarked on the sadness in his brother’s voice. But as it was, all he could think was that all his hopes were getting crushed, one by one.
Phillip had that nausea that comes with an ill-advised wager, a sense of having slid too many coins to the middle of a card table with too bad a hand to justify the gamble. What ought to have been a friendly game of cards had turned into something with far higher stakes, and it had happened right under his nose. He hadn’t only wagered his heart, although that was bad enough. No, what was at stake was Phillip’s entire sense of his place in the world. That morning, for one terrifying moment lying beside Ben, he had thought that perhaps he didn’t need to return to his ship. Perhaps he could stay. Perhaps everything could be different. Perhaps he was different from who he had always thought he was.
It was madness.
“You haven’t shaved,” Walsh remarked. They were lingering at the breakfast table, Walsh reading the morning papers and Phillip staring out the window.
Phillip automatically touched his jaw. Walsh was right; he hadn’t shaved in days.
“Never known you to go more than a day without shaving,” Walsh said, not lifting his eyes from the paper.
That was also correct. Phillip had always maintained that shipboard discipline began with the captain, particularly with small things like polished buttons and neatly shaved jaws. He glanced down at his own wrinkled, soft, country clothes. It would be strange to put on his uniform again.
“I do apologize for my unfashionable ways,” Phillip said facetiously.
Walsh made a dismissive sound. “It’s just that there are times one forgets to shave because one is happily distracted and there’s nobody about to impress, and there are times one forgets to shave because one is too down in the doldrums to give a damn.”
Was Walsh concerned about him? “It’s not the latter.”
They sat in silence a few moments.
“I’m hearing about men selling their commissions,” Walsh remarked conversationally, turning the page of his newspaper. “Peacetime, and all that.”
“Is that what you’re considering?” He couldn’t imagine life aboard thePatrocluswithout Walsh.
Walsh made a noncommittal sound and went back to his paper for a few moments before murmuring an excuse and leaving the room.
Phillip returned his gaze to the land he’d soon be leaving. During his weeks here, the trees had grown heavier and heavier with leaves, everything had become greener and riper and more emphatically lush. Even the air seemed thick with the sweet scent of summer blossoms and juicy fruit. This was not his first summer at Barton Hall. He was certain that over the years he had spent part of every month here at his house, on his land. But his experiences were fragmented: a week in February, then a month in summer, followed two years later by a few weeks in midwinter. He had never, not since his earliest childhood, spent an entire year here. Never had he watched a summer ripen and then tip gently into autumn.
He ought to know better than to want such a thing. But he did. He wanted to watch the trees lose their leaves. He wanted to watch his children and the changes each day wrought in them. He wanted to belong here, to belong to his children and to Ben.
He ought to know better, but he didn’t, and that was alarming.
He pushed his plate away and went outside, where he found Jamie and Peggy in the garden, gathering a haphazard selection of flowers that would either be used to adorn the dining table, or perhaps to festoon the dog, themselves, or possibly a sheep, if the children’s previous antics were any indication. “Your mother loved those dahlias,” he said, and both children looked up at him in mild astonishment. “She had the gardener order them specially.” Unbidden, a memory flashed in his mind. “She used to put dried tea leaves at the roots. The cook and housemaids didn’t know what to think.”
The children were looking at him expectantly, waiting to hear more about their mother. He had hardly spoken a word to them of Caroline since his return, assuming that their memories were more plentiful and recent than his own. But maybe that wasn’t so, and maybe it didn’t matter anyway. “When I met her, she lived in the city.” She had lived in Bristol, where her father had been an importer and warehouser. “And she had never had a garden that was more than a patch of green behind her house.” It had been a very grand house, and her mother had sufficient money to bring in hothouse flowers all twelve months of the year. “The first thing she did when moving here was to get to know the gardener.”
“We ought to take some dahlias to her grave,” said a wobbly voice, and Phillip turned to see that it was Ned, looking serious and sounding much older than his thirteen years.
“We’ve brought wildflowers,” Peggy said.
