“Elias—”
“No, hear me out.” He crossed the space between them and leaned forward until her cocoa-scented breath whirled across his face. “I don’t want you. I love you, and that love surpasses all want in such a way I could never have you and still feel at peace. I could throw rice at your wedding, hold your firstborn, watch you live without me . . . and I’d handle it all perfectly well because love—this tether binding me to you—would endure.”
Josephine looked up, her eyes glistening with tears.
“But I’d rather not do those things,” Elias whispered. He cupped her cheeks, anchoring his forefingers behind her ears. “Don’t marry Sebastian.”
The words coursed with ease as if they’d been inside him all along. He should’ve spoken them months ago, before that moment in the hallway, before each attempt to distance himself.
“How dare you burden me with this,” Josephine wheezed. She grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the shadows, away from the ballroom. “Do you expect me to break my promise to Sebastian and his family? I gave my word—”
“You’re a pawn to them,” Elias said. “They don’t care about you.”
A sob grated in the back of her throat. She tensed, her lips pursing. “Do not pretend you’re any different. If someone else had kissed you at that party, you—”
“What? You think me so easily won by a kiss?”
Josephine crossed her arms. She gazed at the sprawl of hills and gardens, her eyelids drooping from exhaustion. Was she enraged by his confession or that he’d waited until now to give it? Did she feel the same about him?
“You must know,” he whispered. “What I feel for you isn’t founded on a kiss. I’m certain, because I spent weeks thinking about what might’ve happened if it hadn’t been us that night. I debated and contemplated, but then I looked at you and all logic melted away. It wasn’t the kiss that changed me. It was you, Josephine, when you became my friend.”
Elias sagged against the manor’s stone exterior. He shivered. A new cold with teeth seemed to infuse the air. It chewed through his tailcoat, stung his nostrils, and nipped at his skin. It filled his mouth with a bitter taste.
The landscape appeared menacing from where he stood. Winter smudged the estate into a chalky smear. Gentlefolk prowled the maze of mirrors, their merriment echoing like parish bells. But where the torchlight ended, a savage darkness began, coating the moors with a gloom blacker than tar. If someone ventured beyond the fire’s glow, they might not find their way back.
Josephine sighed when a dull melody vibrated from the house. She turned to face Elias, her expression begging him not to quarrel with her anymore.
“I’m sorry for waiting until now,” he said.
“You’re sorry?”
“Please, Josephine—”
“No. No, you can’t say all this and expect me to . . . I don’t even know what you want from me. We spent weeks together. You could’ve told me about your feelings a long time ago, but you didn’t. You let me go on pretending that I didn’t loathe Sebastian, that I’d happily become Mrs. Darling, when all I wanted—and despised myself for wanting—was you. But you were my friend. I understood you couldn’t marry me. I accepted our situation—”
“Josephine.” Elias launched off the wall. He grabbed her shoulders and drew her close, his arms shaking. “I’m sorry. I am.”
She opened her mouth to speak but stopped when guests emerged from the ballroom, all laughing at high volume. Elias motioned for her to follow him beneath a pergola of ivy and icicles. They hurried into thicker shadows, where ribbons of torchlight sliced through foliage.
Josephine leaned against a lattice and watched Elias pace. “Do you mean it?” she whispered, her bottom lip quivering. “You love me, then?”
He nodded. “I love you, then.”
“And you want to marry me?”
“Yes.” Elias walked forward until their shoes touched. He propped his forearm on the lattice, curving over Josephine, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. “When I look back at my life, all the good moments . . . you’re in every one of them. And I’d rather face a thousand bad moments with you than experience one good with anyone else.”
“What about your father? He won’t accept me—”
“I think he might.”
Josephine sniffled and reached for Elias’s hand. She laced their fingers, her grip tight as though she feared he’d leave. “Time doesn’t work in our favour, does it?”
“No, time understood what it was doing,” Elias said. The hoping, the longing, every twinge of heartbreak had changed him for the better. It had brought him and Josephine to this moment despite the odds. That’s how he knew . . .
They would be together at the end.
“You haven’t asked me.” Josephine drew a breath and held it captive. She tilted back her head, the pergola’s shadows like a mask on her face.
“Should I ask you?”
“What would happen if you did?”
He smiled, his heart racing out of control. “If I asked and you said yes, I’d talk to Sebastian and beg for his blessing. I would explain our situation to my aunt and uncle. Then, regardless of what followed, I would marry you.”
A weight lifted from Elias’s chest. Until now he had focused on practicality, whether his decisions would lead to wealth and acceptance. He needed Lord Welby’s approval but not if it cost him a life with Josephine. Yes, he would marry her, for any other fate seemed cursed. Regardless, he would stand by her side.
“I’m not accustomed to this,” Josephine said with a gasp.
“To what?”
“Feeling happy.” She wiped the sides of her eyes, her smile growing. “Go on. Ask me.”
“You’ll have to end your betrothal to my cousin.”
“Gracious. What a dilemma.” She laughed hard—Elias’s favourite laugh. Her eyes squinted. Her nose scrunched above the grandest smile. “Mum will throw a fit.”
Elias pressed his forehead against hers, his vision hot and blurring. “Josephine De Clare, I promise my arms will always welcome you. My soul will never grow cold toward you. My safe place—my home—is yours also, and regardless of where you go, who you love, I will adore you endlessly. I was yours before I even knew your name.” He lowered to one knee and gazed up at her. “Please do me the great honour of accepting my hand.”
Josephine laughed and cried and nodded. “Yes.”
His mouth crashed into hers like a wave greeting the shore. He kissed her over and over, and she kissed him. Her fingers combed across his scalp, resting at the base of his hairline. They were no longer two kids dancing around a bonfire, swapping books, or building forts in his study. They were more, everything, a culmination of all time spent waiting.
Her kiss tasted like . . . finally.
SEVENTEEN
JOSIE
* * *
From: Josie De Clare
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 1:28 PM
To: Faith Moretti
Subject: Being Honest with You
Faith, no amount of chocolate and Earl Grey can fix me. I know because I ate a whole bag of mini candy bars and guzzled enough tea to worry an alcoholic. Whenever I look at Elias’s letters, his unfinished manuscript, I think about how I’m here and he’s there.
I’m lonely for him. I’m lonely because I know who I’m missing.
Try to understand—you look for the right person in coffee shops, at parties. You start thinking no one could understand you, and you should just settle for second best to avoid being alone. Then you find someone who changes everything, someone who fits you like a puzzle piece, and you want that person more than you ever believed possible. But you can’t have that person. No, that person moves on like a ship passing in the night, and you’re on the shoreline, out of reach. You must watch that person live without you, and all you can do is wave as they cruise toward a better horizon. Can’t you relate with that? Sure, you d
on’t love a guy who lived two hundred years ago, but you know how it feels to love and lose.
Yes, I admit it. I’m falling for Elias.
Cadwallader Manor breathes his name with every creak and groan. I eat breakfast alone, and he’s at the table with me. I dance to music in the gallery, and my heart flutters because, for a moment, as I spin, I get the sense he’s holding me.
I must reach him. He seems close, like he’s standing just out of view. I wander the house as if I expect to find him, as if each draft that whispers down the halls could lead me into his arms. I visit his alcove and lie among the gorse. I sleep with his letters on my nightstand.
Time appears to lead us apart, but what if it’s a stitch pulling us together? I understand my theory goes against science and reason. I tell my heart not to grow too fond of someone who doesn’t exist. And yet I’m attached.
Elias wanted me to visit Cadwallader and find his manuscript. He knew this would happen somehow, and I have a gut feeling that if I figure out what happened to him, something will click like gears in a vault, and we’ll reach each other.
Our stories must collide in the end. That’s what he said.
Faith, you wish to find your place in this world, but I just want to grip hold of it. My future seems a dark abyss. But here, in this house, I feel my heart knitting itself back together. I have something good for the first time in a long time, and I need to keep it. I want to be Elias’s Josephine because she makes sense to me. His story makes sense. Maybe I’m pathetic for needing to be the girl he loved. Maybe I am detached and all that stuff you said.
This is me being honest with you.
No one else knows about my love for Elias. Oliver and I discuss the book and letters, but he thinks it’s all a fun mystery, not some fated encounter. I behave as though my life doesn’t hinge on whether a dead author wrote about me. I act normal on the outside—go to work and knitting club, de-wallpaper the servants’ quarters on the weekends—but I’m messed up inside.
Mum decided to spend the Christmas holiday in France without me. She doesn’t care whether I return to London, so maybe I’ll stay in Atteberry. Of course I want to attend uni and become a schoolteacher, but I’m tired of feeling dark.
Here books always leave a light on.
Please read the chapters I sent you. You don’t have to support my theories, but maybe you’ll understand why I feel this way. Oliver and I are still waiting to hear back from his friend. We requested information about Elias from the University of Edinburgh.
Josie
P.S. I visited the knitting club again. Stuart and Margery spent the whole hour debating how to best cook turnips. Lucille quizzed me about my love life. Really, I’m surprised I managed to knit twelve rows of my scarf. Everyone seemed to prefer chatting over crafting.
* * *
* * *
From: Josie De Clare
Sent: Monday, August 21, 8:57 AM
To: Faith Moretti
Subject: Re: Being Honest with You
Faith, what changed your mind? You said I’ll understand once I finish Elias’s book. I’m afraid to finish it, though. There’s an emptiness within me. My heart knows what it wants and my mind knows I can’t have it, but I keep looking for it anyway.
I’ll forever be without a piece of myself.
Cadwallader Manor proves time isn’t divided into past and present, rather here and there. I’m here. Elias is there. We’re separated by years and paper, a barrier thin like spider web. I try to break through that barrier by dreaming about him. I go to bed early, drink apple juice, and read his letters before I turn off the lights. I repeat his name in my head until I fall asleep.
He hasn’t returned.
This house seems otherworldly when I’m alone. I like its shadows more and more, maybe because they’re not just around me. They’re inside me.
Sometimes I sit in the upstairs hallway late at night. I close my eyes and listen to wind hiss down chimneys, the moan of aged wood. Perhaps I do it so Elias may find me. His presence fills these rooms like air. I can’t see him, but I know he’s here.
I look for him in places he could never be.
My thoughts have split, divided between Elias’s world and mine. It’s as though someone draped the manor’s furniture with bedsheets, locked the front door, but trapped me inside. That’s how I feel, like a frantic bird stuck within an empty home.
Elias felt that way too. I want him. He’s the part of me I always sensed but never understood. Is it possible to love someone before you know them?
Scratch that. Is it possible to love someone after they know you?
Don’t worry. I treat our emails like a journal, so I sound crazier than I am. It’s just . . . When you know what you want, nothing else seems good enough.
I should launch a biweekly newsletter to keep you informed on all matters Atteberry, Elias, and Cadwallader Manor. You’ll get busier once your fall semester begins. I don’t want to bug you with emails, and my life doesn’t change a lot in fourteen days.
An update every two weeks should suffice, right?
The latest news: I’m an official member of the knitting club. (Lucille gave me a certificate that reads: Josephine De Clare, fellow of the Atteberry Knitting Society.) Aren’t you proud? My scarf is near done. I hope to start on a hat soon.
Last week’s meeting was quite the event. Stuart and Margery sparked a debate about hair dye, which lasted over an hour. Clare fell asleep, and Dorrit—oh, that sweet, baffling woman—mumbled Scottish nonsense until Lucille ended our session by yelling, “Get out, you nitwits!”
I like them. Our gatherings remind me of family reunions. Stuart is the weird uncle. Margery is the fun aunt. Clare is the beloved grandmother. Dorrit is the distant relative, maybe a cousin. And Lucille—she’s the great-aunt who runs family affairs like a business.
At present I sit at Elias’s desk with my laptop and breakfast. (I made your favourite—sausage, eggs, beans, and roasted tomatoes.) Nan prowls the manor as if to make sure it’s safe. I’ll let her outside in a few minutes. Norman and Oliver need her to herd their sheep.
Well, I better sign off. My boss wants me to open the bakery soon.
Please email me!!
Josie
* * *
* * *
From: Josie De Clare
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 9:40 PM
To: Faith Moretti
Subject: Oliver McLaughlin, aka Firewood Boy
Yes, Oliver and I hang out a lot. Don’t get excited, though. We’re just friends. He’s a ridiculous person. He dances in shopping aisles, and he can’t hold a tune. If my life depended on his ability to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” I would certainly die.
Oliver gets emotional about corgis. Really, his voice rises an octave whenever he sees one of those dogs. He sounds like a flute or choir boy addicted to helium. And he loves podcasts, but not the self-help or political kind. He listens to podcasts about espionage and true crime, anything that involves conspiracy theories. (You can’t stalk him online. He doesn’t have social media, probably because the podcasts freaked him out.)
Unlike me, he’s tidy and responsible, a communication expert. I’m not sure how we’re friends. He’s the most reliable person I’ve ever met. Ridiculously reliable. Just ridiculous.
He’s obnoxious too. He walks around with a half smirk on his face as if the entire world is amusing. And he teases me ALL THE TIME. Ugh, I wouldn’t care for him if he didn’t balance the teasing with ridiculousness . . . and kindness. He’s kind. He keeps my house stocked with firewood, and he brings me lattes when I’m at work.
You’d like him. He’s your type—smart, cultured, witty. I would play matchmaker if you weren’t dating Noah. At least you have a backup plan. Kidding!
Oliver is brilliant at baking. Just yesterday he made puff pastry filled with cream. He’s also close with his family,
which makes sense because they’re not screwed up like mine. His dad and brother serve in the navy, hence his anchor tattoo. He phones his mum every day. He calls Norman and Martha his best friends.
I enjoy spending time with him, except when he forces me to watch classic movies. He’s pretentious about films. I thought Dad was posh about cinema, but his reviews pale in comparison to Oliver’s analyses. (Spoiler alert: I don’t care about Citizen Kane.)
Hope you enjoyed this comprehensive overview of Oliver McLaughlin.
Josie
* * *
* * *
From: Faith Moretti
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 11:09 PM
To: Josie De Clare
Subject: Re: Being Honest with You
Josie, I finished the chapters. They left me in tears, like, ugly crying. I reread them word for word the next day. That’s when I felt it—whatever you’ve been feeling.
Dearest Josephine Page 19
