Page 49 of Atone, Adonis

“I’ll be right down,” she said, drying her eyes.

By the time she made it downstairs and poured her tea, it had gone lukewarm. She drank it anyway. Outside, the afternoon sank slowly toward evening. The pale spring light reflected off the last heaps of snow, taking on a silver tinge through the windows. Shadows lengthened across the carpet. She didn’t know how long she sat there, alone, and watched the light turn.

“Jules?”

Fred. She’d know his voice anywhere whether she wanted to or not. She looked up to find him standing on the threshold of the morning room, half in and half out, as if he wasn’t certain he was welcome there.

“What is it?” she asked.

His eyes flicked to the by now very cold tea, then back to her face. “It is nearly seven.”

“Oh.”

“And we are to have supper.” He paused. “Unless you’d rather not.”

She almost said she was not hungry. Which was true. But she’d said it too often of late, and she knew it would be an insult after she’d asked for dinner to be prepared. And she could almost hear Thomas’s teasing voice in her head: Eat, Julie-bug. Eat every hand pie and pudding you can. Take him to the poorhouse with your appetite.

“I’ll be there momentarily.”

Fred nodded once and said, “Take your time.” But he did not move. He just stood there, watching her. And she let him.

When she finally entered the dining room, she found that Gilbert had set the table not in the cavernous formal chamber, but in the smaller room overlooking the side lawn. The fire was lit and lamps glowed softly on the sideboard. The table had been laid for two.

Only two. Julianna stopped short in the doorway. They’d always set the third place, even though Thomas had not dined with them once since they’d arrived at the Manor. He was gone now, so of course they hadn’t set his place. But the lack of it still hit her like an unwelcome shock.

Fred was already there, standing by the fire with one hand braced on the mantel. He turned when she entered, his gaze traveling over her for the briefest of moments before dropping politely away.

She had changed into a plain evening dress of dark blue wool. Nothing about it was notable except that it was clean and dry, and different from what she’d worn to see Thomas off.

“Gilbert thought this room might be less—” He glanced around, searching for the word.

“Bleak?”

He gave a faint huff of laughter, making his dimples show. “Yes. That.”

She took her seat and a footman served the first course in silence: a clear broth with little pearls of barley and soft carrots. It was sensible food. Simple, like she’d requested. Her stomach turned at the sight of it. But she lifted her spoon anyway.

Fred waited for her to begin although she knew he must be starving. He always was. “Eat,” she finally said to him. “No need to wait on me.”

“Are you alright, Jules?”

She looked up at him, found the intensity of his stare to be too much and returned her eyes to her soup. “I don’t know how to answer that.” And then, “Really, Fred. Eat. You look as if you haven’t had a bite all day.”

“That is an unfortunately common expression of mine. Always has been, even though it’s rarely been true.”

Despite herself she found her mouth quirking up into a smile. “I do recall something like that. It was why Mother always invited you to stay for dinner. She was afraid you were starving to death over here, no matter how much Tom or I tried to convince her otherwise.”

“I’m glad you failed, then. I lived for those invitations.”

The smile he showed her was soft and she felt that strange urge again to fit her finger into his dimple. To press in slightly on that small space that seemed just the right size for it.

“You were always welcome there. You were…family.”

They finished that course in silence. Or, Fred did while she fiddled with her spoon. A fish course followed—something delicate with parsley and lemon—but Julianna had little sense of eating it.

She was aware of the fire, though. And of Fred’s hands and his face and the shape of his shoulders in the lamplight. She still wasn’t certain what to feel about her awareness of these things, of all the parts of him.

Or of the fact that no one was coughing upstairs and no nurse would interrupt them. Of how vast the manor house felt around the two of them. She set down her fork. “He’s really gone.”