Page 46 of Rescuing Lord Inglewood

“We need to go outside.” Silas did not explain further, though he told the Everly sisters they would be back in a moment. He led Jacob through the hall to the music room, where the doors opened to the outside. As only the best of friends would do, Jacob followed without question or comment. They arrived beneath the window of Esther’s sitting room, which Silas had closed before returning downstairs.

“What is all of this?” Jacob asked, looking at the sheets of paper and canvas strewn about on the hedges. He raised his head to look at the windows, then his eyebrows as he stared at Silas. “What happened?”

“Esther.” Shaking his head, feeling like a dolt, Silas started gathering up the artwork. “I am not sure what came over her. I found her flinging her work out the window.”

“Ah.” Jacob did not say anything until he had an armful of Esther’s paintings, the rest in Silas’s hands. “Grief manifests itself in strange ways, I suppose. When my grandmother died, my mother spent hours at the pianoforte. She played from sunrise to sunset, not weeping or speaking to any of us.”

“I expected tears,” Silas said with a shrug, leading the way back inside as the first raindrops began to fall. “Silence, perhaps. But destruction?”

“Did she say anything when you saw her?” Jacob asked.

Perhaps it was disloyal to Esther to speak of what passed between them in private. But Silas was at a loss, and he had sworn to help her, to comfort her. He had thought himself doing a fine job of it until he found her thrusting her paintings out the window. Besides, Jacob was his friend, and practically a clergyman.

They started laying out her art on flat surfaces in the music room. “She called herself baggage,” he said at last. “Told me to stop treating her like a child. Esther seemed to think that I did not want her here.”

"Ah.” Jacob straightened after laying a painting of a bird across a chair. “Did she ever tell you about the day we came to visit, and she realized you had asked it of us?”

What a strange change of topic. “No. She has told me precious little of how she has passed the time since our marriage. She did not even write to me. Not really.” Those single lines on her sketches had not given away much of her feelings or doings. “Why do you ask?”

Jacob released a weary sigh and his jaw tightened for a moment. “It did not please her. I thought, at the time, it wounded her to know we came at your behest and not due to any attraction her company held for us.”

Puzzled, Silas sat in an empty chair. “Why would that upset her? Doubtlessly, many a man asks people to look in on a wife when he is gone. It was the most natural thing in the world—”

“Hope had a thought on the matter, when I escorted them home.” Jacob crossed his arms and lowered his eyes to the floor. “Esther does not feel as though any of us care for her, would not even trouble ourselves with her, were she not related to Isaac.”

“What?” Silas glowered, feeling the bridge of his nose wrinkle. “I am married to the woman. To save her reputation from harm. That has nothing to do with her brother.”

“Doesn’t it?” Jacob asked. “Would you have married her if she were a nobody? Sent her to stay at the Everlys’ after the gossip started in London? There is some truth to the idea.” Then Jacob started for the door. “Come, we have left the girls alone too long.”

“Do me a favor,” Silas said wearily. “Don’t mention the paintings.”

“I will not say a word.” Jacob clapped a hand to his back. “It sounds as though you need to talk to your wife, Silas. And not about Isaac, or mourning, or reputations. Talk about her. Show her that she matters to you for who she is. That she isn’t a piece of baggage, as she said, to be tossed about at your will.” A humorless chuckle escaped him. “And since she’s your wife, I think it is rather important you two get to know one another.”

Silas said nothing, and when they rejoined the ladies, he made excuses for Esther that were skirting the truth. She was overtired and had withdrawn to rest. It was the best he could do. Long after his friends took their leave, Silas continued to mull over Jacob’s advice and determined his friend had a point. Silas barely knew Esther as the woman she had become.

Although he wanted to take his friend’s advice, his wife gave him no opportunity that day. She sent for a dinner tray.

He kept to his study, writing out questions to ask the solicitor of the baronetcy. Isaac’s name in the lists made his death officially accepted, and there would be legalities to see to in order to settle his estate. Silas would assist as he could, to ensure Esther received what was due her and things were handled properly.

It neared midnight when he finally took himself to bed, weary in body and soul. He began tugging at his cravat and undoing buttons before he even made it to his room. All he wanted was to fall into bed and the oblivion of sleep.

His valet came up and helped him finish the job of preparing for bed, and after his man withdrew, Silas climbed between his covers and blew out the light. Though his eyes were heavy, sleep eluded him for a time. He could not stop thinking of Esther, of the pained expression on her face when he caught her throwing things out the window. What had possessed her to turn to destruction? Why not speak to him?

She knew he grieved, too. Jacob had to be on to something. There was more to Esther’s pain than her brother’s loss. Shutting Silas out as she had would not help either of them, though.

When his eyes drifted closed, while he hung between wakefulness and sleep, a muffled sound from the next room brought him back to alertness. It was Esther, of course. And it sounded as though she was crying.

Sitting up, Silas turned on his side to stare through the darkness at the door joining their rooms.

Dare he go to her?

He rose and walked across the room, the sound of her sobs growing louder as he neared the wall between them. His hand made it as far as the handle, resting against it, before he froze.

What if he frightened her by walking into the room? What if she grew angry at him for breaching the doorway without her permission? As her husband, most would think he did not need permission. But trespassing upon her in any way did not seem advisable. Not given that their last words exchanged had been unkind.

He’d called her a child. Going into her bedroom to offer her support as she cried might reinforce in her mind that he thought her no better than one.

The silence around him pulled Silas from his thoughts. His wife no longer wept, at least not so as he could hear. Perhaps she had fallen back to sleep.