Page 8 of Atone, Adonis

“Not as bad as yesterday.”

“In that case,” she said, handing him his cup of tea, “I made toast too. Surely you can get some down if you really are feeling better?”

Her heart lifted at the thought. He had eaten less than a dormouse these past weeks. If she believed he would have even a mouthful, she would go down to the kitchen this very instant and prepare whatever dish he desired. A fine seed-cake. A pigeon pie. She would scour the market for a peacock and strip it of its splendid feathers with her own hands, if that was what it took.

“I would, but…” He looked away from her and she knew his assertion he was feeling better was nothing but that. An assertion but not a fact. “Perhaps I’ll feel up for dinner.”

“Never you mind.” She turned away from the sight of his too-thin body underneath the bed linens. He didn’t need to see the stricken look on her face. “The tea will do you wonders. I’ve a few more errands to take care of and then I’ll be back up to read to you.”

“Forget the errands, Julianna. We do need to have that talk.”

“I know. I’ve thought about what you said, Thomas. I truly have. But I cannot take money from the man who killed our parents. I won’t do it.”

“It was a carriage accident, sister. Not murder. Perhaps we’ve judged him too harshly all these years.”

Thomas’s gaze drifted toward the window as if he could see past the hedgerows, past the frozen fields, past the life they had been left with. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its teasing edge. “Do you think I don’t know what I’m asking? I know what it will cost you but I don’t see a way around it. You cannot live here alone again. You remember what happened last time.”

“Stop, Thomas. I do not wish to speak of him.”

“Nonetheless, we must. If word had gotten out about your affair you would be in an even worse situation than you already are. You’re lucky Rothchild took my back pay to keep his mouth shut.” Thomas closed his eyes for a moment. “I hate that we’ve come to this. But I am asking you to give Fred a chance to improve your circumstances. He is the only one who can.”

“I know you’d like to think so. He was your best friend, after all. And, truly, you can feel about him however you’d like. You may forgive him. You may go to London and eat ices together for all I care. But please don’t ask me to be so forgiving. If it wasn’t for his recklessness, Mother and Father would still be alive. We’d still be a family. And I cannot, I will not, forgive it.”

A loud banging on the door interrupted whatever Thomas might have been about to say next.

Julianna frowned, her forehead creasing. “Are you expecting a visitor?” she asked but Tom had taken the moment to reach for his tea and so only gave a vague shrug.

They rarely had visitors. The closest estates were Sedgewick Manor, which had been abandoned for years, and Hawthorne Hall, to which they were never extended an invitation now. They’d been a few times, when the Earl had commissioned music from their father and the Farrows were in a much more influential social position, but now they’d sunk too far down into genteel poverty for the Hawthornes to suffer their company.

The banging on the door continued.

“Whoever could that be?” she muttered. “That’s quite the racket they’re making.”

“Go and see then,” Tom said. As she turned to leave, he added, “But Julie-bug? Best wipe the soil off your face before you open the door and meet our visitor.”

“I do not have soil on my face.” She reached a hand up to her cheek as if to check.

“You’ve only gone and smeared it now.”

“Well then, I’m going to leave it. It will serve whomever is making that infernal racket right to have to stare at it.”

Downstairs she flung open the front door, expecting a distant neighbor, perhaps. Although she couldn’t imagine one who would announce themselves quite so aggressively. Or one of the stray peddlers who stopped by now and again, seeking jobs she could not afford to give them.

But no, there was a different sort of person entirely standing on her threshold.

Her eyes traveled from the finely dressed man, out to the carriage emblazoned with some kind of family crest behind him, and back to the gentleman’s face. There was no question, given the clothes and the bearing and the carriage, that he was in fact a gentleman. She did wish then she’d taken the time to clean herself off, especially given that he was Renaissance painting handsome, with blue eyes and blond hair and dimples of all things.

“Can I help you, my lord?” She dipped into a curtsey.

“Jules,” the man said. “It’s me. Fred.”

She straightened back up immediately. “Frederick? Sedgewick?”

Her heart began to hammer away at her chest as she took him in again, more closely this time. From the tip of his curly blond head—his hat now removed—down the length of his body, clad in exactingly tailored clothes that clung more tightly to his physique than she cared to admit she’d noticed, and stopping at the excessive shine on his boots.

“It’s me,” he said again, right before she slammed the door shut in his face.

“Julianna?” Thomas called from upstairs. “Who is it?”