scream. We are right. Together, here or Birmingham or anywhere, I’m stronger and happier for knowing you, you’re calmer and happier for knowing me.
And then she recalled his words in London, when he said he wanted her to be honest, not dutiful and polite. Honest was hard, because if he didn’t like her honesty, she had nowhere to hide.
Besides, she was nursing a much bigger lie than this.
She waited, hoping that he would burst out with something like “No, this is how I want it” or “Yes, that’ll work,” and Birmingham would be gone.
Instead, he said nothing. He picked up the pages and leaned back against the table, staring at them, although she did not know what he saw.
“I want you here,” she said unsteadily, to his profile. “I know your life is in Birmingham, and I’ll go there with you happily if you want. But this is your home too.”
Every inch of him was as taut as a rope about to snap. She had no breath and she had no skin and she still had to tell him the rest.
But then he shuffled to the third page. The one she hadn’t been brave enough to reveal: the upper floors, with the nursery and schoolroom. And the little sketches of animals and flowers drawn by her friend and neighbor Juno Bell, as ideas for painting the walls.
He lowered the plans and stared across the room, at nothing, perhaps, or at the window through which he had leaped. He understood; of course he did.
She waited, her hands clammy, her mouth dry.
His brows drew into a frown, and she realized his gaze had sharpened on something: her workbasket, with its jumble of fabric. His eyes hardened. Whatever he was feeling, it was not joy.
It is your child, not mine, he had said. I want nothing to do with it.
Her heart fell and shattered.
He had seen, he had understood, and now he would leave.
Chapter 30
Joshua had been staring unseeingly ahead for what seemed like hours until he realized what he was staring at. The shadows in the folds of the white fabric in Cassandra’s workbasket began to form themselves into shapes. Shapes that danced before his eyes, like the little animals she meant to have painted on the nursery walls.
But how like him, these days, to look at something and not see it. How adept he had become at not noticing everything beneath his nose.
He put aside the pages, the plans she had made to bring him into her house. Perhaps she wanted a father for her child. Perhaps she was merely doing what she believed was right. It was so appealing, but it wasn’t real. His real life was in Birmingham.
The floor was as unsteady as a ship in a storm as he crossed to that workbasket, with its taunting pieces of fabric. He pulled out the first piece and almost laughed at himself. It was merely her nightcap, and the jokes they had enjoyed, oh, how he would tease her and—
It was a nightcap, but it was not hers. He made a fist with one hand and settled the little bonnet on it. Pins and needles poked out here and there, for she had not finished making it. It would not take her long; the bonnet was very small.
“It’s too small for you,” he said, and wondered when he had become so stupid. All that country air and domestic bliss had addled his brain. There was comfort in being obtuse, freedom from making decisions.
She didn’t respond, though he could feel her hovering somewhere behind him. Her every move stirred the air, it was so still and thick and warm.
He laid the little bonnet on the window seat and tied its little yellow ribbons in a bow. Samuel had had one just like it, covering the dark fuzz on his pink head. The ruffles used to wobble furiously when he screwed up his face and cried.
Joshua reached into the workbasket again. Another piece of fabric. Also unfinished. A little white dress or petticoat or whatever it was called. Samuel had worn these too, his chubby baby legs kicking around in them. Until the day when he was four, and Rachel had taken him out of skirts and put him in breeches for the first time. How proud of himself he had been, running and stomping and jumping, as if discovering his legs anew.
This, too, Joshua laid out on the seat, below the bonnet. This, too, was not finished: She was embroidering it