“And when I do?”
His breath sucked in. He’d leaned down and kissed her again. This kiss had been more: more sweetness, more tenderness. More passion, because he knew what she wanted, and she knew it as well. She’d opened her mouth to his. His hands had slipped down her back, down her spine, pulling her up into him.
Just a few months, he had told himself. A few months until he saw her again, and then the entirety of the Season to wait. Back then, it had seemed an impossibly long time.
“And then,” he had said, “after all that, I will offer you the right to drive me mad legally, all the time, in perpetuity, for as long as we both shall live.”
She had never had that Season. They had never had the chance. And when he’d asked that question…
Afterward, when he was feeling selfish and lonely and lustful late at night, he’d sometimes wished that he had broken his promise to greater effect. That he’d done something truly irrevocable that night. That he had coaxed her to his bed—it would hardly have taken any effort; she’d been as curious and delighted as he was—and presented their immediate marriage to her brother as a necessity.
If he had actually been married to Judith Worth, they’d never have asked him to assist in her father’s trial.
God, he wished he had been selfish.
He didn’t know why Anthony had stopped him. He must have known then what he’d done. Hadn’t he wanted his sister protected?
Maybe he hadn’t expected to be caught. Maybe he’d been protecting Christian from entangling himself with the family before he knew all the facts. Maybe, whispered that guilty portion of his conscience, maybe he didn’t…
“Why do you want Anthony’s journals?” Judith said, effectively interrupting his reverie.
It took him a moment to collect his thoughts: the journals. She was asking about the journals.
“I told you already.”
She exhaled. “Spare me that claptrap about your friendship. If it had meant anything at all, you’d have asked years ago. You sent me a note making that request five months back. The truth, Christian.”
He shut his eyes. “How well did you follow your father’s trial?”
“I was there for Anthony’s. All of it.” Her words were tightly controlled. He looked down and detected fists at her side.
“Then you know that Anthony—that your father—had a plan. Britain needed China to legalize the opium trade. Your father had his own ideas. Diplomacy was failing on the question; war was inevitable. And your father did not think that—”
She held up a hand. “Skip my father, please. I have granted you that…there may have been some justice on that score. That doesn’t mean I want to hear about his treachery in detail. Tell me what this has to do with Anthony.”
“The fact that your brother was guilty of treason is—”
She looked away. “You can’t really believe that. Deep in your heart, Christian, you knew him. You can’t believe he would be so evil.”
He had never believed Anthony evil; that was the trouble. “Do you think I’d have released the information if I didn’t know it was true?” He wasn’t going to shout at her on the docks about this. “I believe your brother committed treason—in fact, I believe your brother’s sentence was unrelentingly kind, under the circumstances.”
She glared up at him. “You spent summers in our house.”
“Your father sent the Chinese information about the targets Britain planned to shell,” Christian retorted. “Anthony knew of it and did nothing. What do you want from me? I spent summers in your house. I didn’t realize that required me to be party to betraying my country. The evidence—”
“Damn the evidence.” Judith’s voice shook. “There’s more to evidence than papers in a trial. You had the evidence of years of friendship. You had the evidence of his character.”
Christian held her eyes as she spoke.
“You knew Anthony. That’s what I can never forgive—that you put your stupid evidence in logs and missives and bank transactions above your friendship. You knew Anthony. He was the one who would always tell the truth when something went awry. When he ran in the house and broke the china vase, he confessed. When he got angry and threw me in the river that one time, he apologized and told my father. He accepted his punishment. He was the most annoyingly proper brother in the entire world. How can you look me in the eyes and tell me that you think he could have committed treason?”
“It’s simple,” Christian bit off. “Sweetheart, I knew him better than you did.”
She gasped. “How dare you!”
“Not only do I think your brother was capable of committing treason,” Christian said, “I know why he did it. You are perfectly right; your brother would never do anything he thought was wrong, and if he found himself in the wrong, he would do everything he could to correct it.”
“Precisely!” she crowed. “So—”
“So what would your brother do if he thought that England was committing a grievous harm?” Christian said. “Really, Judith. What would he do?”
She swallowed. “He would… He would…” She shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t. He would try something else. He would ask my father to…petition the House of Lords, or he would write a piece for a newspaper or he would…” Her hands made fists again. “He would do anything other than commit treason. He would.”
That was what woke Christian in the middle of the night. Not the fear that Anthony was innocent; the suspicion that Christian—and all the rest of Britain with him—was guilty. If Anthony was right, if there was no solution but what he had taken on.
Everything Christian owned, everything he had, every sheet on his bed, every silk gown his mother owned? They were all stolen. There was nothing to do but either suffocate in that knowledge or…
He couldn’t believe Anthony was right. He couldn’t.
“That’s why I need the journals,” Christian said in a low voice. “Something happened to Anthony in his years in China. He saw something. He observed people doing things they shouldn’t. He thought treason was the only solution.” Christian looked away. “I have to believe there were other options. That justice is not impossible, even after all these years.”
Judith’s hands curled into fists at her side. “You want my brother’s journals so you can prove Anthony not only a traitor, but a stupid, misguided, ineffective traitor at that?”
“No.” It sounded worse when she put it that way.
“I’ve read his journals. There’s nothing in them, nothing like that at all.”
“No, there wouldn’t be. Not that you’d notice. But—”
“It’s not enough for you to take Anthony’s family, his father, or his life. You have to destroy his memory as well?”
“It’s not like that, Judith. I want to do something. I want to know that I didn’t make a mistake. I can hardly sleep. I’m—”
“That’s what you want from me?” She looked him over. “I promised you my brother’s journals because I need your help. But I will never tell you that you made the right choice. Maybe, if you can’t live with yourself, there’s a reason for it.”
“Judith.” He reached out and took her hand. For a moment, he remembered that walk in the orchard. He remembered what trust looked like in her eyes.
It didn’t look like this. She yanked her hand away. “Earn the damned journals,” she hissed. “We’re not friends. We may not hate each other. But when I think of what you did to my brother… Well, you shouldn’t be able to sleep.”
In the days that followed their meeting, Judith wanted nothing to do with Christian. She didn’t want to think about him or his accusation that she didn’t know Anthony. The notion was utterly ridiculous.
How could she not know her own brother?
The Monday after he’d leveled that piece of poppycock at her, as she was reconciling the account books, she only let herself dwell on his words for a few seconds. A few seconds while she tapped her pencil against the sums.
Christian thought he knew Anthony better than she did? Ha. She’d known him since he was three. He’d been telling on her—and on himself—since she could walk. Her brother had been kind, loving, honest, trustworthy… and possessed of the most rigidly annoying morality that she’d ever encountered in her life.
Christian didn’t know a thing about him, and she would simply have to put his wild accusations out of her mind. They were nothing more than an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
She had, after all, books to reconcile and a scant hundred and fifty pounds remaining to her name—not enough to see Benedict through his schooling, and certainly not enough to start him on the road to the rest of his life. Christian wasn’t worth a shilling on her accounts.
She refused to think about Christian’s claim on Tuesday, but she let herself imagine his face when she punched the bread dough down.
On Wednesday, she wasn’t thinking of him when she received a letter in the mail. She refused to think of their trip to the country, refused to think of him stopping the carriage and letting her sit in the field. If she admitted that he understood her well enough to know she’d needed to enjoy herself, perhaps her brother, who he…
No. She wouldn’t go down that road. She refused to do it.
She opened the letter instead. It was from the Rollins family in the Peak District.
Miss Worth, Mr. Rollins wrote. Not Lady Judith; that was already a slap in her face. I believe you have been misled. Your sister did indeed stay with us, but on a temporary basis only. She left after two weeks, and that was quite a number of years ago.
I hesitate to speak ill of anyone, but Camilla was in need of a stricter hand, someone who would teach her the truth about her new place in life.
“What new place in life?” Judith asked the letter aloud.
It didn’t answer. Instead, it went on in a similarly offensive fashion.
For her own good, we sent her to my aunt Charlene in Redding, whose unbending nature would fashion your sister into a young woman who behaved as one of her station ought. Her direction is enclosed.
Judith crumpled the paper, her whole body aching. Two weeks? Camilla had not even had the security of two weeks with them? “Lies,” she said. “Why is everyone lying about my siblings?”
She wrote a letter, trying not to feel bitter, to this Charlene.
The next day, though, brought good news in the post. Somewhat good news. It was from the man she worked with in Edinburgh, the one who sold her designs
Lady Judith, the letter read. The Wittfield factory in Bristol wishes to use your design of circus cats for a production of five hundred units; they offer a payment of twenty pounds.
She looked over the offered terms; they weren’t what she once might have received, but then, her designs no longer earned what they had. Clockwork figurines were no longer quite the rage. The novelty was wearing off. She’d need something different, something that would appeal to more people if she were ever to make as much as she had. Still, any income at all was better than nothing.
She sent back an acceptance.
Friday, the post brought an answer from Aunt Charlene—or, as she was called, Charlene Heilford.
Miss Worth,
I do recall your sister Camilla, and rather fondly, if with some exasperation. She stayed with me for two years. By the end, she was an excellent companion. So excellent, in fact, that I passed her on to my friend, Miss Abigail Troworth, in Bath. I have asked my secretary to enclose her direction below.
Passed her on? As if she were a package or a horse? And companion? Camilla was a young lady, not a companion. Judith tried not to scream. At least Camilla had stayed with the woman for two years.
At least.
At least she’d had time to grow fond of the woman before she was handed over.
Judith should have done more than send letters to her uncle all these years. She’d imagined that her sister had cut off all ties with the embarrassing side of her family. Judith hadn’t realized her sister hadn’t received those letters. Judith should have done more. She should have…
But she hadn’t. Judith’s friends, most of her family, had denounced her entirely and stopped answering her letters. She had assumed that Camilla had joined them.
By now, Judith practically had her letter of inquiry memorized.
Dear Miss Abigail Troworth, she wrote. Your friend, Mrs. Charlene Heilford of Leeds, told me that we had a mutual acquaintance—my younger sister, Camilla Worth, who you so graciously hosted sometime starting in the years 1860 or 1861. I am hopeful that she may still be with you at this time. If she is, might you be so kind as to inform me of the fact, and to let her know that her elder sister is desirous of speaking with her? If not, I would be most obliged if you could pass on whatever you know of her current direction.
She sealed this letter, stamped it, and—before she handed it over to the postmistress—kissed it for good luck.
This time, she’d get a real response.
This time, she would find her sister.
Chapter Fourteen
The dreams had worsened. Christian had woken at two that morning, bathed in cold sweat. Tossing for two hours hadn’t helped. Counting beads hadn’t helped. Even making a list of all the ways he might try to get the journals from Judith—somehow, anyhow—hadn’t helped. Finally, he’d found a robe and wandered the halls of his home, searching for a plan in the darkened rooms.
“One.” He said the number aloud as if it were a flag he could plant in shifting sands, one that would hold them in place. As if this list would fix everything when months of lists had accomplished nothing. The number one was a beginning, and beginnings begat endings. One: He couldn’t count on receiving Anthony’s journals. He’d pinned his hopes on that eventuality, but it might be months—or not at all—before he received them.
He was fairly certain that he couldn’t manage many more months scarcely sleeping.
“Two.” He stopped in front of a window looking out over a side street. The cobblestones were indistinct dark blobs in the evening. “I will have to come to terms with the fact that Anthony is dead, and I am at fault.”
Oh, God. His heart beat faster, shallow and thready, just hearing those words spoken aloud. But that was the crux of the matter, was it not?
Even if his plan was successful, it wouldn’t change anything. Anthony had saved Christian’s life, and in return, Christian had ruined his.
“Three,” he said.
“Christian?”
He jumped, mid-plan, to see his mother behind him. She was watching him with a worried expression. She’d worn that worried expression much over the past months.
“Mother,” he breathed. “Why are you awake?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she shook her head. “This can’t go on.”
No, it couldn’t. He had thought he would sleep eventually, when the exhaustion finally set in. Now, he was almost too exhausted to sleep.
“You have to let me help.” She came to stand by him.
“Not the way you want.” He put his arm around her. “Sometimes, you can’t help in the way you would like. I’m begging you, Mother. I know you and Lillian mean well, but your physician’s suggestions are not the solution. You have to stop asking me about them.”
He was beginning to get desperate.
“But…” She bit her lip. “But you never used to mind, back then. If you would just recall…”
He recalled all too well, more than a decade later. That familiar taste on his tongue. The slow slide into a welcome stupor.
He grappled for an acceptable answer. “Laudanum doesn’t stop dreams, Mama,” he said. “It makes them more vivid. I don’t dare.” His hands shook. “Please. I haven’t the energy to fight you, too. Please. I need you to stop.”
She inhaled. “Christian.”
“Think on it. I love you, but if you can’t stop, I can’t be around you. I’ll take rooms elsewhere.”
“Christian.”
He s
et his hand on her shoulder. “Neither of us wants that. Please let me solve this my way.”
She sniffed. No, she sniffled. He’d made her cry. It was the last thing he’d wanted. He put his arm around her and pulled her close, letting her weep because there was nothing she could do.
Nothing he could do.
Three. There was nothing he could do. He couldn’t change anything in the past. He couldn’t bring Anthony back to life, not with plans, not with lists, not with journals. This was his future: his friend was gone. Death was forever.
Four. He had to find another way.
“I have to find another way,” he said aloud.
He’d let guilt tangle him up for too long. He’d tried to cut directly through it all, to turn guilt into not guilt. He’d focused only on his own feelings.
But maybe there was another way. A better way. A way to take all that guilt and use it. He’d wanted Anthony’s journals because he’d believed that with them, he could reform the past.
But the past was the past. If he got the chance to look those journals over, he’d take it, but even that wouldn’t change what had transpired. Nothing could.
He could only change the future.
Five.
No, not five. “E,” he said aloud. His skin twitched at the sound.
“Your pardon?” His mother stirred in his arms.
He had the sensation that he was seeing the universe stripped to gears and coils, everything laid out in order. Not from largest to smallest, but as Judith had set the pieces of the clock on the table so long before: in order of use.
“E,” he said to his mother. “It’s the ordinal that follows four this time.”
She shook her head in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a difficult son. I was difficult from the beginning, and I’m terrible now. I can’t change the past. I can’t make this past year easier for you to bear. But I can change the future. I can be better.”