It was that undefinable energy that she had. It made him feel calmer, better. It made him feel as though Timmy would be safer just by having her around.
“Your wife was sick, Philip,” she said softly, her gaze steady on his. “It wasn’t your fault. Sometimes people’s demons are too strong. Sometimes, the burden of living is too heavy for those who are unwell in the way she was. But that doesn’t mean that they’re ready to fully leave. When a spirit doesn’t feel at peace, doesn’t feel as though they can leave their loved ones behind, they get trapped. Stuck. I don’t believe she means to scare him, but she has no other way to reach out to him. Or to you.”
Her words had tears springing to his eyes, and he blinked them away in embarrassment.
“You must find a way to forgive yourself. You need to concentrate on Timothy. And to do that, you need to forgive yourself. I’m sure you did all you could. I’m sure you would have saved her if you could.”
“I would have,” he answered swiftly, albeit brokenly. “I would have done anything to help her. To spare my son this life.”
She didn’t speak for an age. Simply stared. And Philip was left to wonder what she was looking for in his eyes.
Finally, she stood, a smile playing around her face.
“I’m going to help,” she said firmly. “I’m going to help you all.”
“But how?” He could hear the desperation in his own voice. “What can be done?”
“She needs to move on. And we’re going to help her do that.”
Chapter 8
“You’re making a mistake. A foolish mistake.”
Selina grimaced as Agnes’s harsh tone sounded behind her.
She’d gotten back to the cottage later than she’d intended last night.
After the incident in Timmy’s room, her head had been pounding and her stomach churning. Yet she’d stayed and tried to help the tormented earl understand something that most people simply couldn’t.
He’d seemed open to what she had to say, if a little sceptical. And that had been as much as she could have hoped for.
She remembered the fear in his voice as he’d admitted to seeing Charlotte’s face. Remembered the guilt and grief in his tone as he’d spoken of her.
They’d talked long into the night. About Timothy mostly. How he’d been waking, what he’d been scared of.
At one point, Philip had smiled slightly, saying that this was the first night in eighteen long months that Timothy had remained sleeping.
And Selina had been shocked at the tender pride that had lit her from within.
It was just the draught she’d given the boy, and she explained as much to Philip. Yet he’d continued to gaze at her in awe and, foolish – even dangerous – as it was, she’d lapped up the praise. Revelled in it.
Agnes was right. She was unwise. And on very dangerous ground.
Her interest in the man was more than it should be. And wasn’t that the very epitome of idiocy? Lusting after the man as he cried over his dead wife.
Selina’s stomach flipped uneasily as she continued to wash the gowns she’d brought to the river behind the cottage.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered now, as she continued to scrub the dimity gown in her hands. The scent of lilac from the soap she and Agnes made filled her nostrils. Yet it didn’t calm her as it usually did.
She plunged the dress into the cold water of the stream, wincing at the sting against her hands.
Winter wouldn’t be long coming.
“You came home with the lark, Selina. And then you tell me that you want to go back there? To stay there?”
Selina refused to turn around and see the censure in Agnes’s faded hazel eyes.
“I know you care not what people think of you, child. But even you must see the danger in such an arrangement.”
“There is no danger,” she answered swiftly. “Philip is an honourable man. And if I’m to help him, help his boy, then I need to be close by.
“You don’t need to be living in the house with an unmarried man, Selina,” Agnes shot back. “You know what happens in situations such as these. He’s a blackguard for even asking it of you.”
Selina took her growing frustration out on the gown, squeezing it viscously to wring out the water before throwing it into her basket on top of the others.