“The drama of life is more vivid than any play,” Randolph said later that night. The two brothers sat on either side of the library fire, glasses of brandy in hand. Plato lay at their feet with his dark head resting on crossed paws. Most of the household had gone to bed, and the place was very quiet.
It occurred to Robert that Randolph had seen a great variety of life by this time, in his profession. Parishioners no doubt came to him for guidance, and he was undoubtedly good at giving it.
Robert remembered an incident from the summer when he was eight and Randolph ten. They’d joined a mob of estate children playing king of the hill, a scrum of boys shouting and jostling and exulting in the July heat. Some of them began mocking the son of the local miller, who had a stutter and declared himself k-k-k-king. Robert was chagrined to realize that he’d forgotten the lad’s name.
He and Randolph had both objected to the teasing, and it had stopped. And that had been that for Robert. He learned later that Randolph visited the boy during subsequent school vacations and helped him overcome the stutter, without telling anyone that he was doing it. Robert had thought ever since that Randolph was the kindest of his brothers.
Still, he hesitated. Robert Gresham wasn’t accustomed to asking for advice. He wasn’t accustomed to needing it. He glanced down and noticed that Plato was staring at him, almost as if urging him on. “I wonder…” he said.
Randolph’s head came up as if he’d heard some unusual sound. He turned and met Robert’s eyes. There was no sign of the amusement that so often danced in his blue gaze.
Robert considered a moment longer, then plunged ahead. “I suppose, as a clergyman, you hear about all sorts of problems.”
“People sometimes bring their concerns to me,” Randolph agreed.
“Have any of them been plagued by bad memories? So strongly that they can’t shake them off? That they…intrude against the person’s will?”
Robert endured a long silent assessment. Finally, seeming satisfied, Randolph said, “A man or a woman?”
“Does it matter?”
His brother shrugged. “The approach might be different. If you’re speaking of a man, the cause is often battle. If it’s a woman, usually a more personal attack.”
“Nothing like that,” Robert said. And then he wondered. Flora had been overpowered and imprisoned. “A woman,” he said.
“Miss Jennings?”
“Why would you say so?” Robert was wary of revealing confidences.
“First, because there is something…dimmed about her, at bottom,” replied his brother. “And second because of the way you care for her.”
“There are times when I find our family entirely too talkative,” Robert complained.
“Gossip was hardly necessary,” Randolph said. “It’s obvious, seeing the two of you together. Quite lovely, in fact. I envy you. And it must be very strong, for you to go so far as asking for help.”
“I ask for help when necessary.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Nonsense.”
“What about that time at Eton, when you rowed across the Thames alone to retrieve those cricket bats?”
“That was fifteen years ago, Randolph!”
“I’d have gone with you. I was playing, too. But you had to be seen as the nonpareil.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Randolph nodded. “Yes, that trick of raising one eyebrow and looking down your nose is marvelously effective. How old were you when you learned to do that? Fourteen? I always wondered if you practiced in the mirror.”
In fact, he had, Robert thought, when he was a callow youth. But there was really no need to discuss that now.
“There’s no harm in it,” added Randolph cordially. “We all set out to distinguish ourselves in our own ways.”
“Perhaps we could return to my question?”
Randolph’s eyes twinkled. “Certainly. I can tell you what I’ve observed, and gathered from colleagues. In such cases, the reaction often eases with time. Like grief. Or despair.”
Robert found these uncomfortable comparisons.
“It does no good to push a person so…afflicted to ‘get over it.’ Most are already ashamed that they cannot. Far more helpful to tell them they’re not wrong to feel as they do. And to believe it.”
“Of course they’re not wrong. Why would anyone think so?”
“I’ve noticed that many people judge themselves far more harshly than they do others.”
Robert remembered what Flora had said about weakness. When, in fact, she was one of the strongest people he’d ever encountered.
“And society expects people to make light of their difficulties,” Randolph added.
Robert nodded. He waited. His brother said nothing more. “None of that seems like doing anything,” he finally said.
“Ah.” Randolph looked sympathetic. “When all one can offer is compassion, it’s a hard lesson.”
“There must be something more.”
His brother considered. “Some people find ways to…correct the experience that haunts them.”
“Correct?”
“That’s not the right word,” Randolph said. “It gives the wrong impression. Say rather that life sometimes shows these individuals that they can cope with what haunts them.”
“How would that be arranged?” Robert asked.
“I’m afraid it’s more serendipity than planning,” his brother replied.
This was frustrating. Robert wanted to make all right for Flora. For his own sake, yes, but even more for hers. He hated to see her bowed by this unfair burden. He longed to take decisive action, and he’d hoped his brother would know how that might be done. Still, Randolph had offered his best. “Thank you.”
“My dear Robert, of course.” Randolph smiled at him.
It was odd. The handsomest of his brothers looked less perfect when he smiled. He also looked unutterably charming. “Do you remember the son of the miller at Langford?” Robert said. “The one with the stutter?”
“Edward Farley.”
“That’s the name.”
“Of course,” said Randolph. “He runs the mill now, though his father is still there every day. Putting his oar in, as Edward says. He married the prettiest girl in the village. His words, again. They have four children.”
Of course Randolph would know all this, Robert thought.
“His eldest son won a scholarship to Winchester. Edward’s so proud he could burst.”
“Someone must have given him a sterling reference.”
Randolph looked self-conscious.
Robert raised his glass to him.
* * *
In the aftermath of the play, several of the party’s younger guests declared life to be wretchedly flat and boring. They talked of other events they might plan to match the excitement of preparation and performance, but Flora didn’t think any would actually occur. Lord Carrick had departed, still sulking, and Lady Victoria was wholly occupied with her fiancé and wedding plans.
The latter was a great relief. In the course of a day, Lady Victoria had shifted from a disapproving shadow dogging Flora’s steps into a distant presence who seemed barely aware of Flora’s existence. It was a measure of the younger girl’s focus on herself, Flora thought. Flora no longer had a place in her personal universe. “I’ve regained the freedom of obscurity,” she told Harriet the following afternoon, as they settled in one of Salbridges’ cozy parlors to write letters.
“Not completely,” said her companion. “Your performance as Mrs. Malaprop was much admired. You could build on that notice.”
Flora laughed and quoted. “‘O fy! It would be very inelegant in us. We should only participate things.’”
Harriet smiled. “I couldn’t make out what her speeches meant half the time.”
“Just to cause laughter, I think. And perhaps the satisfaction of feeling clever—to hear precipitate in a similar word, for example.”
“I prefer to work less hard for my jokes,” Harriet replied.
The door opened. At first, it seemed there was no one there. Then a small black-furred creature trotted in from the hallway, stopped, and surveyed the chamber and its occupants with solemn care.
“Hello, Plato,” said Flora.
The dog came closer, sat, and fixed his unnerving gaze upon her. It was so hard to dismiss that piercing regard as mere animal habit.
“How did he reach the latch, I wonder?” said Harriet.
“I helped with that,” answered Robert Gresham, coming in and shutting the door behind him. “He wanted to come in here.”
“Your dog did?” Harriet was clearly amused. “How does he convey his wishes to you?”
“Sometimes I believe he has the power to plant ideas in my mind.” Robert appeared to be only half jesting. “I’ll be thinking of something else entirely, and then suddenly, there it is—take Plato for a walk, or order up a bowl of scraps.”
Harriet laughed. “Would you—and Plato, of course—care to join us?”
“Delighted, thank you.” He walked over to sit on the sofa beside Flora.
He was not so very near her, but all Flora’s senses came alert. He was the picture of masculine beauty in his immaculate blue coat and pale pantaloons.
“I must attend to my letters,” Harriet added. She looked around, then rose. “A writing desk. Just what I want.”
Her expression was simply pleasant, with none of the arch consciousness of a chaperone allowing her charge some leeway. She crossed the spacious room and settled in a straight chair before the small desk. It faced a window, Flora saw, looking out over the autumn gardens. Harriet would be properly present, but with her back to them and unlikely to overhear a quiet conversation. They could talk about anything. Uncharacteristically, Flora’s mind went blank.
“I hope your mother is well,” said Lord Robert.
Flora nodded.
“Is she pleased at the way your visit is going?”
Meeting his sparkling blue eyes, she saw something new there. She couldn’t quite pin it down. His look was at once quieter, deeper, more penetrating, as if he could see right through her. It was almost as if he knew how difficult it had been to write her mother just now. She hadn’t told Mama about her most recent conversation with Lydia Fotheringay, because she couldn’t decide whether Mama would rather know she’d been mistaken about being snubbed, or not.
“The parts you’ve told her about,” Robert added.
A short laugh escaped her. “How did you know I haven’t included every detail?”
He smiled and shrugged. “Family correspondence is a delicate art. How best to share the details of your life without…overdoing? And still be certain to get in your side of the story, in self-defense.”
“What story?”
“Any of them.” He gestured gracefully. “With five brothers, there’s always something.”
“Scrapes? Pranks? Didn’t I hear something about a wolfskin at your eldest brother’s wedding?”
“Exactly what I mean. You jump in first to, er, set the tone of the discussion.”
What had he been like as a small boy, a stripling? Flora wondered. Her memories from her few visits to his home long ago were fragmentary, and mainly concerned her mother’s anxiety at being back among her noble kin. “Your family are all active letter writers?”
“Excessively so. Our correspondence will fill several shelves in the library at Langford, when it’s all collected.”
“Would anyone do that?”
“Tradition.” He gave her a charmingly rueful smile. Flora’s pulse speeded up. “I could show you three volumes of appallingly tedious letters chronicling a great-uncle’s grand tour in 1754. And two slender, leather-bound sheaves from my great-grandmother at the royal court, waxing silly and syrupy about James the Second. How I could have a forebear with such poor taste? Charles the Second, yes. Famously captivating. But his boorish brother?”
“I suppose you make do with the king you have,” said Flora with a laugh.
“In terms of loyalty and obedience.” He shrugged agreement. “But you do not describe a…a sow’s hairy ear as a shiny silk purse. I can’t understand why she didn’t chuck the letters after they threw him out in 1688.”
“Perhaps someone else kept them.”
“There you are,” said Robert with a nod. “I discovered a few years ago that my mother keeps all our letters, along with copies of her own, in some secret drawer somewhere.”
“Secret?”
“Well, I don’t know where it is.” He considered. “Must be a fairly large drawer. Six of us, from the time we were barely literate. You can imagine the pile.”
Flora could imagine some fascinating reading.
“She wanted us to add our letters to each other. And Nathaniel said he just might, the rogue.”
“Shouldn’t he?” Flora liked his manner when talking of his family. It was full of warmth and affection under his careless charm.
“He’s the one who got us—some of us—out of those long-ago scrapes. Mama doesn’t know about half of them. My father, even less.”
“Would they be so shocked?” Flora knew that young noblemen engaged in all sorts of idiotic, even shameful, high jinks.
“Not shocked,” Robert said. “More likely to laugh themselves sick.” He paused as if reviewing a mental list. “Maybe a bit disappointed, here and there. One hates to disappoint Papa.”
His expression had gone neutral, but Flora heard the depth of respect and admiration in it, the determination to be worthy. It was a sentiment she thoroughly understood. She’d felt the same about her father. She’d met the Duke and Duchess of Langford briefly in Oxford. They’d been cordial and sensible and open-minded, not at all the judgmental figures her mother had led her to expect in the leaders of society. But they’d also been…formidable. “I hope your parents are both well,” she said.
“Splendid, as ever. They’re in Scotland.”
“It’s going to be more and more letters from now on,” Robert added pensively. “I’m about to be an uncle twice over. Nathaniel’s wife is expecting, as well as Alan’s. Everyone’s delighted that Violet’s to produce an heir for the line.”
He said the line as if it was a perfectly ordinary notion. Flora felt an echo of her old scorn for the haut ton. “And I suppose they’ll be proportionally unhappy if it’s a daughter?”
“Not at all. Nathaniel will worship at her feet.” Robert made an airy gesture. “And from what I’ve seen, they’ll be only too happy to keep trying.”
Flora flushed and looked away. A wave of heat rolled down her body—face, neck, chest—and pooled in her lower regions as she recalled his hands on her as he carefully detached barbed thorns.
“I’m clearly going to have a coachload of nieces and nephews, all of whom will be expected to produce letters.”
“You’ll make a wonderful uncle. I’m sure they’ll adore you.”
Her penultimate word seemed to hang in the air between them.
There was an odd, guttural noise. At first Flora thought that Robert had cleared his throat. Then she realized that it had come from Plato. She looked down at the dog.
“He doesn’t bark or whine or growl,” Robert said, shaking his head. “Not once since I pulled him from a roadside thicket. He just does that.”
Plato was staring at her, as he also habitually did. “Do you think there’s something wrong with his throat?” Flora asked.
The dog cocked his head without breaking eye contact. Flora would have sworn that he looked reproachful. She nearly begged his pardon.
“He seems healthy, more so every day.” Harriet Runyon shifted in her chair on the other side of the room, and the rustle of her silk gown reminded Robert that they weren’t alone. He’d nearly forgotten the older woman was there. And that he didn’t have unlimited time. How he wanted unlimited time with Flora! For the rest of their lives. But he had a plan for their next meeting. “Thank you for bringing that article,” he said. “The one by Stanfield. On the similarities between Akkadian and Aramaic. I read it with great interest.”
“Oh. Yes.” Their shared scholarship seemed like an echo from a different world.
“Quite an astonishing level of detail.”
“Stanfield has devoted his life to comparative study of the two languages,” said Flora.
“And to looking at every scrap of clay tablet in existence, it seemed to me.”
“He claims as much.” Flora smiled.
“I was impressed,” Robert continued, pleased with the way things were going. “Also rather amused. Stanfield seems unable to resist sniping at Aramaic. He treats it like an invader, or usurper, crowding in and taking the place of the far-more-admirable Akkadian language.”
“I think he saw it exactly that way.”
“That passage in the middle about the Assyrian scribe pressing his stylus into wet clay under a dusty sky orange with sunset—quite poetic, eh? And the later one contrasting our small single lives with the countless ranks of people behind us.” His expression encouraged her to enjoy the phrases with him.
“Father always said that one’s personal feelings had no place in rigorous study, but I wonder if it’s that simple?” The thought was disorienting, as if some inner compass had flipped over, or turned inside out.
Robert cocked his head, waiting.
“Because they’re there, aren’t they?” Flora went on. “We can pretend otherwise, but it doesn’t change the reality.”
“They?”
“The feelings. They don’t go away just because we declare them inappropriate. They…sneak around the edges and push their way in.” Robert had shown her this.
“No escaping them,” he agreed.
Flustered by the warmth in his eyes, Flora rushed on. “For example, Papa despised the Sumerians. He positively…squirmed over their hymns to Inanna. One of their goddesses. He went out of his way to discredit anyone who wrote about them, no matter how meticulous their research. Because he felt that way.” It was as if she’d betrayed a secret and said something perfectly absurd, both at the same time.
“It can be difficult to admit our prejudices,” said Robert.
Flora stared at him. Sometimes it seemed he could actually read her mind. “They look so foolish when we hold them up to the light,” she agreed, dropping her eyes. “We’d… I’d rather pretend they never existed.”
“Like a cat who leaps at some imagined danger, then starts grooming to convince the world that nothing happened.”
Flora laughed. “Unlike a cat, I will own my discovery that the haut ton is not made up of worthless fribbles.” She shook her head as she remembered all the sweeping, intemperate judgments she’d uttered about society. “Or monsters of snobbishness. Or any one thing. They’re…just people, with strengths as well as flaws. Some likable, some not.”
Robert said nothing, but she was hyperaware of his presence at her side.
“Look at those involved in the play,” she went on. “They worked so hard, and some showed real talents, not to mention Mr. Trevellyn’s unsuspected compassion.”
“What about our charm?” said Robert. His voice was light but perhaps just a touch unsteady.
“Trust you to remind me of that,” said Flora. “The thing is, I could live happily among them, sometimes.” She met his eyes, offering up her gaze wholeheartedly. “Just as you found a place in Russell Square.”
It was foolish to imagine that doors could open in a person’s expression, she thought. Yet it felt like that. And she suspected something similar showed on her own face.
An indefinable interval ticked by. They reached a silent understanding, though Flora wouldn’t have been able to voice the details. The process was too nebulous, unlike the facts and proofs she’d been taught to trust. And yet she knew it was just as true.
The sound of a chair scooting over the floorboards jolted them back. Harriet added a small cough of warning as she rose, before she turned from the writing desk. “We must go,” she said. “I promised Anne I would walk with her before luncheon, and I fear I cannot leave you here alone. A cozy parlor is rather different from a garden bench.”
Flora let out a long breath.
“Please don’t do that,” Harriet added. “You will tear the cloth. Stop at once!”
Robert turned and saw that Plato had moved, in the silent way he had. The little dog stood by Mrs. Runyon. He’d taken a bit of her skirt in his teeth and was tugging on it, as if to keep her from leaving. “Plato! Come away from there.”
Mouth full of cloth, his eccentric little pet looked at him. He must give up imagining he saw some urgent message in those brown eyes, Robert thought. “Now,” he said. “Drop it, sir.”
A dog’s shoulders could not slump, Robert told himself. It wasn’t possible. Though he could not have said what else to call Plato’s movement as the dog opened his jaws and let Mrs. Runyon’s skirt drop.
“Come over here like a proper dog,” he said. “And behave yourself.”
Slowly, like a creature trying to demonstrate, with limited resources, the wisdom of his own schemes compared with the debacle before his eyes, Plato complied. He went to sit on the hearthrug.
The two ladies took their leave. Robert gave them a bow and a smiling farewell, very satisfied with his morning’s work. “That lacked finesse,” he said to Plato when they were gone. “Not up to your usual standards.”
Plato grumbled. He rose and trotted over to the door.
“Yes, you want to go for a walk outside.” Robert followed the dog into the corridor. “I beg pardon for delaying you with my petty concerns. About the rest of my life, and so on.”
Plato turned toward the front door.
“We will go upstairs for my coat and hat,” Robert informed him, moving in the opposite direction.
The small animal rumbled a response.
“There’s a sharp wind. You may find yourself chilled even with all that fur.” Robert paused at the foot of the staircase. “And I’ve just spoken as if you complained to me. Really, it’s past time for me to set up my household and have a more…responsive companion to chat with. We’ll get you a couple of cats for company.”
Plato stopped on the landing above him and stared.
“What are cats, you ask?” Robert started up the steps. “I’m surprised you haven’t come across one or two on the property here. Lovely creatures. You have quite a bit in common with the average cat. Enigmatic. Stealthy. A shade tyrannical.” Feeling buoyant, Robert savored the taste of the words. “I’m sure you’ll be enchanted,” he told Plato.