Regan ate in the nursery with the children.
The windows were open, and yet the stifling heat of the day did not abate. The meal was light, some cold chicken, a salad of cucumbers and grapes, and for dessert a few miniature lemon tarts served chilled.
The food was delicious, but Regan only picked at her plate. Her children ate with ravenous appetites, as only children could after a long day of playing in the sun and preparing to grow like weeds for the remainder of the summer. After dinner, they washed and dressed for bed, and she read to them until the sun dipped below the horizon and darkness spread like ink across the lawns.
Maria fell asleep in her lap, while Jack snored from his bed, the covers already kicked away and his toes twitching where they dangled over the edge of the mattress. Setting aside her book, Regan carried Maria to her own bed, tucked her in, and kissed her sweaty curls. She covered Jack with his discarded blanket, pulled the windows partially closed, and slipped out of the room on the balls of her feet.
Such mundane, everyday activities, but they were enough to keep her thoughts from spiralling beyond her control. Thomas was still here, somewhere in the house. She had told him to spend the night, and though she had feared he would rebel and leave as soon as he had a solid meal inside of him, he seemed amenable to remaining long enough to achieve at least one night of rest.
Miss Kennett and her son had kept to their room for most of the day, venturing out long enough to explore a small portion of the garden, where Peter showed a penchant for running faster than his small, chubby legs would have led anyone to believe. Regan had not considered for how long Miss Kennett would be staying. A few days? Several weeks? It was not the burden of having more people in the house that gave Regan pause, but rather the fact that her staying here - hiding here, to be more accurate - was not a permanent solution. Regan feared a reckoning of some sort, though she could not imagine how or when it would come about.
The house had grown relatively quiet with the onset of evening. The younger children were asleep. Katharine, she knew, was in the library poring over books and maps having to do with the Ottoman Empire. The servants would soon be turning in for the night, if indeed Mrs. Dale and her husband had not already. And Thomas...
Oh, of course her mind would save him for last.
She paused at the bottom of the stairs. She could return to the study, to the work of seating and the totting up of figures for her steward that still awaited her. Bed was out of the question. She wondered if there would even be any restful sleep for her tonight.
Her hands fluttered for a moment before she pressed them flat against her abdomen, willing herself to breathe more slowly. She would have to speak with Thomas about Miss Kennett. And what else would they discuss? Would she even mention the time they had spent together at Brandon Hall? Had she so quickly shuttered that part of their history away?
The night air called to her. Slipping into the study long enough to pick up her household keys and a shawl she remembered leaving in there that morning, she headed for the little-used terrace behind the house, the one that opened up from the ballroom.
It was not a part of the house she frequented. There had not been a ball held here since... Goodness, years before Edmund died. And so the daunting, gilded space remained closed up, dust cloths hanging over chandeliers, transforming them into ghosts inhabiting the periphery of her vision.
The room was stifling, so shut up it had been. She unlocked one of the tall doors, braced herself for the squeal of abandoned hinges, but there was little sound to mark her exit from the house. There was nothing out there at the back of the house, the barrenness matching the room she had just moved through. No furniture or lanterns or even potted trees or topiaries to soften the lines of stone that made up the walls and balustrade.
But she had always liked this side of the house. Preferred it, really, even though the gardens were not as well landscaped here, a flat bit of lawn meandering down to woods that were actually woods, rather than a carefully sculpted piece of forest kept clear of underbrush and with neatly tended paths. The wildness of it appealed to her, and too often she caught the children creeping beneath its boughs, creating tree houses out of criss-crossing branches and making forts from hollowed-out stumps and overhanging rocks.
She leaned against the balustrade, the hard stone cutting into her abdomen. Oh, things had been so much simpler before she had gone to Brandon Hall, before she had met Thomas Cranmer, before she had ventured out and attempted to live a life beyond the quiet trappings of grieving wife and mother. Everything had been so very safe, and then she had gone and tried to have an adventure. Ah, what a fool she had been.
Her head found its way into her hands, her elbows scraping across the stone. "Oh, heavens. What next?" The words rang out absurdly loud to her own ears, and she paused, waiting for an answering echo. But there was no reply, unless she considered the hum of a thousand crickets the commencement of a serious dialogue.
Would Lord Hays discover Miss Kennett's presence under her roof? And what would occur if he did? To demand the return of his ward could ignite the flames of a scandal he may not want sparked to life at all. Perhaps he would leave matters be. Perhaps...
There were too many 'perhaps,' too many ways the future could diverge. Again, she recalled the imaginings she had for her own life, before Thomas had come into it. To see her children grown and sent off into their own lives, to settle into another home when Jack came of age and maybe took a wife of his own, to...
Well, there had not really been more than that, to tell the truth.
She tilted her head back until she could see the stars above, pinpricks of light without the glow of the moon to diminish them. She could sleep beneath that sky, pretend it was near enough for her to reach up and swirl her hands through its heights.
And then a sigh slipped out of her. She wanted Thomas. She wanted him desperately. Not merely in her bed, but in her life. Somehow, she could not imagine how, but she wanted him here, with her. When she had walked downstairs and found him standing by the door, it had looked so right to see him in her home. She wanted him to stay. Whether as her husband or her lover, she wanted him to be a part of her life, this new life she had somehow forged for herself without at all intending to.
A sound behind her caught her attention. Not a cough, not even the full clearing of a throat, but a noise she recognized as belonging to a person, to someone who must be watching her.
She knew without turning around that it would be him. She closed her eyes and stood upright, brushing a few pieces of grit from her elbows. Had she willed him into finding her with the strength of her thoughts? But then she looked back and saw not only the door to the terrace sitting open but the ballroom door open beyond that. She remembered that she had not bothered to close them, unwittingly leaving a trail through the house as to her whereabouts for anyone willing to put forth a small amount of effort to find her.
"It seems you discovered my hiding place," she said, spreading her hands out in front of her.
Thomas stood in the doorway, hesitant, as if he could not make the final decision to either join her outside or to retreat inside again. Hadn't he displayed more boldness when they had first met, when they had been at Brandon Hall and his interest in her had shown very little in the way of hesitation? But she did not think it was reticence that made him put distance between them now.
"Are you hiding?" He cocked his head back towards the house. "Because if you would rather I leave you to your solitude..."
"No, you can stay. Please," she added, so it would not sound like she was only giving him permission to remain with her out of politeness. "I need to speak with you, actually. But I think I have been avoiding that particular task for most of the evening."
"Good news, then?" He smiled weakly and joined her by the balustrade, yet kept a significant amount of space between them. He took on her previous posture of leaning out to look over the darkened lawn towards the trees, his weight on his elbows and his hands clasped before him.
Apparently they had abandoned all pretense of standing on ceremony with one another, and Regan's shoulders sagged as she pressed back against the rail, her own attention turned towards the house.
"It is peaceful here," he said, giving her more time before she could no longer ignore the subject of Miss Kennett and her child. "I can see why you prefer to be here over any other place."
"I prefer to be here because I am a bit of a coward." She tilted her head back and looked up towards the roof, or rather where the crenellated edge of it blotted out the sky. "I always assumed I was a creature of habit. I wanted routine, every day to show little variation from all the days that came before. Unfortunately, it seems I neglected to remember that children grow up, husbands..." No, she would not say that word. Not now. "Those we love too often leave us," she said instead. "But if I stayed here, if I was determined to live my life as if I would face no alteration, then my misguided mind could believe I could prevent anything else from changing."
He said nothing to that. What was he thinking? When they had first met, she had thought him to be little more than a typical young gentleman, revelling in the irresponsibility gifted to him as the second son, enjoying the advantages of youth and charm and beauty. But instead, he had shown the complexities of his own existence, the dearth of love in his own childhood, and the risks he had taken in sheltering his friend, Miss Kennett, from Lord Hays.
And so her thoughts circled back to the most pressing matter at hand, and she knew she could not avoid it any longer. "Miss Kennett," she began, giving the sudden change of subject a moment to sink in. "When I spoke with her earlier, there was something she told me which, at the time, I found rather shocking. Though the more I think on it, the more surprised I am that I did not suspect it from the start." She looked at Thomas, framed by the darkness, as he was. "The father of her son is Lord Hays."
She did not know what sort of reaction she expected. A gasp. A curse. A fist shaken towards the heavens. What she had not anticipated was his slow nod accompanied by a quirk of one eyebrow.
"You knew," she said.
"I had an inkling."
"An inkling?"
He sighed and pressed his clasped hands against his forehead. "That she would not tell me the name of the father was nearly as much proof against Lord Hays than if she had blurted out his identity from the beginning."
"Do you believe she was trying to protect him?"
"I believe she was afraid of him." A wave of his hand, as if he could anticipate the direction of her thoughts. "Not that he would cause her physical harm, but he wanted to control her. He wanted to force her into marriage, though I'm not sure if producing a child with her was an intentional act towards that goal."
"And all for a bit of money." She lowered her head, felt the hint of a breeze stir the hairs on the back of her neck. The first true movement of air she had felt all day.
"Desperation does not suit some of us," Thomas said.
"And you?" Regan asked. "Have you ever been so desperate?"
"To ruin an innocent young lady for monetary gain? May God strike me down if I should ever devolve into such a scoundrel." The overlying tone of the words was light, but a thread of anger ran beneath his voice. She wanted to ask how he had dealt with seeing Lord Hays as a guest of his cousin's, suspecting of him what he did. But that, she supposed, would be a question for another time.
"What now?" She turned to him, though his own posture did not change. "Miss Kennett is welcome to stay here for as long as she needs, whether it be a few days or... as long as she needs," she repeated.
"I will help, you know." Thomas still would not look at her, as if he were holding a conversation with one of the trees beyond the railing. "You do not have to bear the burden of paying for her keep."
"You have already gone above and beyond what was needed of you," Regan told him, and watched as a small, muttered curse slipped out from between his lips. She swallowed, cleared her throat, and went on. "I will accept nothing from either you or Miss Kennett. She and her son are my guests, as are you," she added quietly.
She could ask him to stay. The offer hovered over her tongue, but she could not bring herself to say it.
"Well, I will only be your guest for one night," he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. "I have risked enough scandal for you by bringing Miss Kennett across your threshold. Should the village gossips discover that I am here as well, I can only imagine what-"
"I do not care about that."
He turned his head to look at her. The first he had looked at her, truly looked at her, since joining her on the terrace.
Tell him, she thought. Tell him you want him to stay. For you, and no one else.
"You are Miss Kennett's friend," she said instead. Coward, her thoughts continued, but she brushed it away. "And she is here, in a new place, caring for a child she fears may be taken from her should her whereabouts be discovered by the wrong person. I would like..." She licked her lips. Why could she not say what was in her heart? "Perhaps you should consider staying, at least for a little while. Until she is fully settled."
He stood up then, and despite the fact her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light out here, the edges of him still seemed to blend into the shadows. Even as he took a step towards her.
"For Miss Kennett," he said. "I will stay. For a little while."
It was enough. She had won a partial victory, but she felt as if she had accomplished it without fully knowing what her goal was to be.
Oh, and what could possibly happen should the mills of gossip indeed take his presence here and use it as gristle? She was a widow, one who had been married for years without a hint of rumor or scandal to mar her relationship with her husband. She also had a house full of servants, her children - one of them fully grown and betrothed - and Miss Kennett with her child. It was not as if she was here with only Thomas for company.
Her mind stuttered at that. Only Thomas.
"I am tired," she said, and winced when she realized it had been spoken aloud. "I am sure you are, too. I think we will all feel more like ourselves once we've had a proper night of rest." She moved away from the balustrade, away from him. "Until tomorrow, Mr. Cranmer."
She did not wait for him to return the farewell. She turned and she escaped, her hands clenched into fists at her sides while she fought to not break into a run.
Coward, her mind said again.
And she knew her mind was right.
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Only a few more chapters to go!
Which means we won't be wrapping it up this week, unfortunately. But next week will be a definite. :)
Quenby