Page 49

HOW COULD I even begin to explain to Arthur what had taken place?

As I headed for the library, I knew that I would tell him the truth, but would that be enough to convince him?

I had to prepare myself to be turned away, rebuffed, returned to London with my friendship with Charles restored but Arthur lost to me forever.

Even with the threat of that hanging over my head, closure would be better than being stuck in a limbo where I simply could not move on.

I reached the library and dithered outside the door for a few moments, regaining my nerve before I knocked briskly and waited for a response.

“Come in,” he called, and hearing his voice after this length of time made my heart race uncontrollably.

I entered the room, closed the door behind me, and found that he was sitting at his desk, looking down at something in front of him.

“Charles, I’ve told you a dozen times you don’t need to knock. This is as much your house—”

He had looked up mid-sentence and frozen, the color draining from his face as soon as he saw me. When he next spoke, his voice was trembling. “Thomas?”

“Arthur,” I said, drinking in the sight of him. He was as handsome as ever, unchanged aside from a slight bit more maturity in his face. I briefly wondered how different I must look to him before shrugging off that thought, recognizing that he undoubtedly was unhappy to see me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, placing his hands on the desk and pushing to his feet with such force that he nearly knocked his chair over. I had been expecting anger, but to be proven right stung me deeply regardless. “Is this where Felix has been?”

“Yes,” I said, not intending to hide anything no matter how poorly I came off for it.

Before he could throw me out or tell me off, I launched into an explanation, running through everything Charles and Felix had told me and what I had filled in on my end.

To Arthur’s credit, he allowed me to speak, although he did not take his eyes off me and stayed by his desk as though having it between us would somehow protect him from my words.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked as soon as I finished, and it was the last thing I was expecting him to say. I stared at him, momentarily rendered mute, and he continued. “You say Charles was being blackmailed, but that night…. That night, you didn’t know any of that.”

“I didn’t,” I agreed, beginning to recognize where he was going with this line of questioning. “But even if I didn’t know, I still—”

“You still said to me the worst thing you could have said,” Arthur shot back.

“You knew I was afraid of being blackmailed, and yet you said you were doing just that. I begged you to tell me the truth, and instead you lied to my face and told me that you cared nothing for me, that my trust in you had been misplaced, and I had once again entered a relationship that would end only in my absolute misery. You had no reason to put me through that!”

“I thought… I thought that if I didn’t do something, you would lose Charles too,” I said, although now that I was facing Arthur, his cheeks pink with clear distress, the excuse felt weak.

“What he said to me that night was a nightmare, and I thought if I had repeated it to you, you would have lost Charles that night as well. Everything he said applied to you as well, and I couldn’t put that back on you. ”

“So instead you have allowed me to spend the last three years in absolute certainty that I was a damned fool for trusting you. And you spared me what fate? I may not have ‘lost’ Charles, but our relationship has not been the same. I resented him for bringing you here. I’m sure he resented me for opening him up to blackmail to begin with.

I can count on one hand the number of conversations we’ve had since you left, Thomas. ”

Hope was slowly being squeezed out of me, my fears that I had permanently closed myself off to regaining Arthur’s trust coming true in front of my eyes.

I had no argument that would convince him, nothing that I could say to him that would undo the harm I had done.

In my haste to leave and my attempts to shield the brothers from the reality of the situation, I had undone my own chances.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and he folded his arms over his chest; I was disturbed to see that his fists were clenched.

“I’ve told you what happened, and all I can say now is that I’m sorry , Arthur.

I acted rashly, and I’ve had three years to think about the mistakes I made that night.

I had been so stricken by Charles’s words that I could think only of leaving and preventing more damage from being done. ”

“I need you to leave now,” he said, looking at me, and something must have flashed across my face because he quickly spoke again. “Not the estate. The library. I’m sorry, but I desperately need to be alone.”

I didn’t argue, didn’t attempt to overstay my welcome.

He watched me go, his brow furrowed and a nearly panicked gleam in his eyes, and for the first time since coming here, I thought that my attempts to reconcile might have caused more harm than they did good.

After closing the library door behind me, I once again stood there in thought, although now I was not considering how much I wanted to see him.

Instead, I was contemplating my own role in all of this.

Arthur’s accusations had been fair and true.

I hadn’t known that Charles was being blackmailed, and everything I had said had been based on my own faulty understanding of the situation.

Worse, I had purposefully chosen to say things I knew would hurt Arthur to force him to return to the estate and let me leave.

Any hope I had regarding our reunion had been thoroughly dashed by that first meeting.

I left the library hallway slowly, ruminating on the sight of him as soon as he had seen me.

He had seemed like he’d laid eyes on a ghost, like there was no part of him that was happy to see me there, and that alone was disheartening.

I was not a man who gave up easily, however, and even before I had reached the stairs, I had made up my mind that I would give Arthur the time he needed to process my reappearance, but I would not pretend I was no longer interested in him.

Everyone in the house I cared about knew now: the Nelsons, Charles, Felix.

The four of them would be invaluable allies going forward, and I would work just as hard to help Charles regain Ida’s trust as I knew he would work for me to reclaim Arthur’s.

I had known the moment I’d stepped into the library and seen him that I was still in love with him, still sick for his affection, and I would not allow it to be torn away from me because of a series of terrible events.

If it took fifty years, I would show him he could trust me again.

I spent the rest of the day in something of a fog, focusing on getting back to the routine of being at Ashford Hall.

Felix had my old room ready for me, and he said with some seriousness that the suite had been untouched since my departure.

I found that this was the absolute truth, some of my less important papers still on the desk, and I set about ensuring that everything was back to my liking, organizing the space.

I composed a telegraph to Mr. Hughes to inform him I would be working from the country for a time, although I doubted he would kick up much of a fuss.

Even this simple missive to my boss made me wonder why Arthur hadn’t gone to him the night of my departure and asked him not to provide me with the opportunity to work.

He could have easily undone the introduction and yet he hadn’t, a fact that pointed to some lingering softness despite how horribly I had erred.

With the administrative tasks over, I headed for the garden, intent on whiling away the time before dinner, although even the logistics of that were making me nervous.

Could I sit at the same table as Arthur? Could he sit at the same table with me?

I walked until I reached the lake that lay on the far side of the garden, where I’d first realized how much I was attracted to Arthur, and was surprised to find that I had inadvertently come across Ida.

She was standing in the shallows, her dress hiked up around her thighs as she skipped stones, and I watched her for a moment before approaching.

“Ida,” I said, and she looked over her shoulder at me briefly before going back to her pastime. “Do you mind the company?”

“I’d rather you here than Charles or my brother,” she said. “Unless you’ve come to try and change my mind as well?”

“No,” I said, too tired from what had transpired between myself and Arthur to even think of trying to convince her of anything. “Are you hiding from them?”

“I suppose,” she said, leaning over to pick a rock up from the water and skipping it. I watched it ripple across the still water before slipping my shoes off and walking into the lake behind her, glad for the cool water. “Have you truly forgiven Charles?”

I considered that briefly, coming up alongside her. “Yes,” I decided. “But I’ve had an extra day to think things over already. It’s fine if you don’t forgive him right away.”

“I’m furious with him,” she said, looking up at me. “Genuinely furious. It’s been three damned years of sorrow for everyone because he was too afraid of that fool James to tell anyone he needed help. And what he said to you that night, Tom…. My god.”

“I know,” I said, because the anguish that had been caused by that fight in the garden had been a raw spot, nightmares of being called disgusting plaguing me for months afterwards. “But I took what he’d said to me and turned it onto Arthur. Neither me nor Charles were blameless that evening.”

“Arthur,” Ida said, sighing softly. “You’ve talked with him, then?”