Page 51 of A Delicate Deception
“You know what I mean.”
“Almost everybody alive prefers to be worried with a friend by their side. So, here I am.”
“Of course I’m worried,” he said. “This should never have happened.”
“I’ve fallen off a horse,” Amelia said. “More than once. I’m not given to feats of athleticism, you see. One of my sisters broke her arm on a swing. The other twisted an ankle learning to waltz. Georgiana has a scar on her temple from crashing into a windowsill during a game of blindman’s buff. Children get hurt. Sometimes it’s because of a failure of supervision, but Leontine had a groom and Keating with her, not to mention Georgiana, who could ride almost as soon as she walked. Keating taught my niece and nephew to ride when they were four and I was there to watch him do it. I’d trust him with my life.”
“There’s no need for a child of six years to be on a horse.”
“Indeed there isn’t. There’s no need for a lot of things, like books and dancing, or bridges and railways. You could keep her in a tower and she’d be perfectly safe and perfectly miserable. She’s a spirited child and frankly I’m amazed she hasn’t broken her leg before. While walking here I realized that she must have held onto the pony’s neck for nearly a mile. Can you imagine? She’ll be a fearless rider one day.”
He opened his mouth to protest then snapped it shut again. Then he tipped his head back and banged it against the wall, his eyes squeezed shut. “There has to be a way to keep the people you love safe. If you follow all the rules and take all the proper precautions, it ought to be guaranteed.”
She reached out and took his hand. “You’ll get no argument from me.”
They sat silently for a while. “I’m trying to be better. More broad-minded. But every time something goes wrong, my mind reverts to rules. If a bridge collapses, there’s a reason. Somebody miscalculated or misjudged. I know that with people it’s different, but myminddoesn’t know that.”
She squeezed his hand. “Well, you happen to be talking to the regional expert in minds that don’t know what they’re doing.”
He sighed. “I keep thinking that there’s a way for us to arrange things in a way that isn’t quite so hidebound, but I’m afraid of what will happen if things go wrong. What if I were in Manchester and you were here, and you fell ill? What if I couldn’t get to you in time?”
Amelia wanted to reassure him that this wouldn’t happen, but that would be a lie, and not the sort of lie she could countenance. “It wouldn’t be either of our faults,” she said. “Leontine fell because her pony bolted, not because you weren’t at hand.”
For a few moments they sat in silence, hands clasped, Sydney’s thumb tracing idle circles over the inside of Amelia’s wrist. “Did you really climb over hill and dale in the dark of night only to tell me all these wise things?” he asked. “Did you—Amelia,” he said, turning to her abruptly, his eyes wide, “you walked into a house in the middle of a ball. Thank you.”
“I hope never to do so again, but it seemed the most reasonable course of action at the time. And you’re welcome.” She felt anxious but sane, sitting in this strange house far away from any place she wanted to be. It was good to know that she could test the boundaries of her world and see exactly where her limits were.
“I’d never have asked you to come,” he said, bringing their joined hands to his mouth to kiss her knuckles. “Never in a million years.”
“I know. I think it’s the same as when Nan bit you—maybe worry over other people shakes my own worry out of my head temporarily. What do you mean, you’re trying to arrange things in a way that’s less hidebound?”
“Well, I love you and I want to have you in my life,” he said as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “And if you’re at Crossbrook Cottage and I’m knee deep in muck halfway between Liverpool and Manchester, that won’t make me love you less. If the best we can do is sporadic visits, would that be acceptable to you?”
“Yes, it would be acceptable to me,” she said, trying not to laugh. “But is it acceptable to you? It seems you’re the one being done out of a proper wife and hostess and all those things people seem to want.”
“Are those things terribly important to you?”
“No,” Amelia said. “Not in the least.”
“Then to hell with all of it.” He drew her close and kissed the top of her head.
It was still dark out when Sydney woke, stiff and bleary-eyed in the hard-backed chair. Amelia slept, her head in his lap. He brushed a few strands of hair off her temple. Leontine’s eyes were shut, but he could see the steady rise and fall of her chest.
If anything ever happened to either of them, he didn’t know how he’d pick himself up and carry on. He also had the distinct impression that at some point this past summer, coincident with the moments Amelia and Leontine entered his life, his entire world had been tipped onto its side. Everything he thought he knew and believed seemed a lot hazier than it had two months ago, but in exchange he had something vaster and more sprawling. The fact that he was pleased by this was frankly terrifying.
Amelia stirred and turned her head up to face him.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said sleepily. “I very much enjoyed your mother’s book.”
“Good morning to you, too,” he said, smoothing her hair back. She was going to have a devil of a job trying to get the brambles out later.
“I especially enjoyed the story of Hannah and Mary, who share a house. It put me in mind of friends who have found their own happiness in unconventional domestic arrangements. If I were a man, or you were a woman, we wouldn’t count ourselves unlucky if we didn’t share a house, would we?”
“No,” he acknowledged, while marveling that he was going to have a lifetime with a woman who spoke in complete paragraphs at unconscionable hours in the morning.
“I don’t know how persuasive this will be, but my parents weren’t married and only lived together sometimes. It was still a family. You know, Georgiana and Hereford are getting married, and that’ll be a family too. The rules as we know them might work wonderfully for most people, but they’re absolute rubbish for anyone who’s a little different. We don’t need to twist ourselves around to fit the conventions of marriage and love, conventions that maybe weren’t meant to suit us anyway. And then there’s the other matter. We’ve somehow surrounded ourselves with other people who share our, shall we say, capacity for those unconventional arrangements. It’s safer for us all, but also it’s good to know that one can be oneself.”
He remained silent for the space of two breaths. “Yes. That is something I’ve found as well,” he said. His eyes were stinging and he thought he might cry from relief, but he didn’t know why. Amelia knew him, knew who he really was, and that was something he hadn’t even known he needed.
