But all he could see was Eleanor, then. Her face, so lovely and so fierce, as she’d stood up for Geraldine. It’s not her fault, she’d told him.
And Hugo knew that. He’d gone out of his way to make sure he never brought his feelings about Isobel into any interaction he had with Geraldine. But it hadn’t occurred to him until today—until Eleanor—that he hadn’t let his feelings enter into anything in a very long time.
Because the fact of the matter was, he rather liked this little girl. He liked how unafraid she was. He liked the fact that she was seven years old and yet had no apparent second thoughts about walking straight into her guardian’s library and confronting him. And the more he stared at her, the less she seemed to care. Her little chin tilted up. She even sniffed, as if impatient.
She was a fighter. How could he not adore her for it?
Especially when he’d stopped fighting so long ago.
“If I did fire her, that would be my decision as your guardian and would not require a consultation, Geraldine,” Hugo said reprovingly. But when her face looked stormy, he relented. “But I didn’t let her go.”
He crooked his finger and then pointed to the leather chair across from him. Geraldine made a huffing sound that did not bode well for her teen years, but she obeyed him. With perhaps a little too much stomping, and more attitude than he would have thought possible from a sweet little child, she moved from the fireplace to climb up into the big leather chair. The big piece of furniture seemed to swallow her whole, but that didn’t bother Geraldine. She slid back, stuck her feet out straight in front of her, and crossed her arms over her chest.
Mutinously.
“Where is she if you didn’t get rid of her?” Geraldine asked as if she’d caught Hugo out in a dirty lie.
“I feel certain Miss Andrews told you that she was taking a few days’ break. She does get one, you know. We can’t lock her away in a cage and force her to stay here all the time.”
Though the idea held some appeal.
The little girl’s chin jutted out. “Why not?”
“Excellent question.”
“We should go get her back, then,” Geraldine said, with a wide gesture of one hand, as if Hugo really was an idiot and she was leading him to the right answer because he was taking too long to get there himself.
And the damnedest thing was, Hugo admired that, too.
Geraldine was not yet ten and yet she was showing more fight than he had in the past fifteen years.
Why had he allowed Isobel to paint him the way she had? Of course there was no fighting a slanted story or a nasty rumor, but he hadn’t tried and he hadn’t done anything else, either. He hadn’t pointedly lived a life completely opposed to the one Isobel claimed he did. He’d never even defended himself. He’d told himself it was because he was too proud to dignify her claims with a response, but was that truly it? Or was it the same sort of martyrdom he’d always abhorred when Isobel faked it?
Had he been waiting all this time for someone to look at him and see him and believe that he wasn’t the things that had been said about him?
Maybe there was some virtue in that. Or there could have been—had his father not died believing the very worst of him.
The fact of the matter was, Hugo had never seen the point of fighting battles he’d decided in advance that he couldn’t win. He’d never righted a single wrong. He’d simply sat here and taken it. And to what end?
Whether the public loved him or hated him, he was the only parental influence in this child’s life. And despite that handicap, Geraldine appeared to be thriving. She was flushed with indignation, and if he wasn’t mistaken, love.
Love.
It thudded into him. Then again. Like another fight he was destined to lose. But this time, he didn’t intend to go down alone.
Was it virtue to act as if he was a punching bag for all these years or was it an especially noxious version of self-pity?
Hugo didn’t know. But he did know this. He was a creature of temper and mood, unable to control himself at any time, the tabloids said.
So he saw no reason to start now.
“Yes,” he said slowly, smiling at Geraldine. Until she smiled back, as if they were together in this. Because they were. “We really should get her back. What an excellent idea.”
RETURNING TO LONDON was like being slapped in the face with the pitiless palm of a little too much reality. But there was nothing to do but grin and bear it.
Eleanor gritted her teeth, figuratively and literally, and set about cleaning up Vivi’s mess.
Not the big mess, of course. Not the mess that haunted her, making her feel sick and small and ashamed. Or shaky every time she saw the Daily Mail in a newsstand. Not the mess that rolled around inside of her, making her feel as oily and greasy and horrid as what Vivi had done, every time she drew breath—
No, there was no fixing that. Vivi had sold Eleanor’s story as her own and asserted, repeatedly and proudly, that she would do it again. She claimed it was for both of their own good, though that prickly, ugly thing inside of Eleanor thought different and left marks every time it did. But it made no difference. It was done.
And Eleanor was just one more scar Hugo would add to his collection. One more lie to add to the rest.
Eleanor concentrated on the things she could fix.
She placated their landlord, pleading their case as sweetly as she could. She did not take Vivi’s advice to simply tell the suspicious old woman where she could stuff it, because all that money that Vivi had been promised had yet to come through. She cleaned. Everything. From what passed for baseboards in their tiny tip of a flat to the windows and back. She cleaned every cup and saucer, plate and utensil. She even cleaned out the terrifying old tea mugs, coated in tannins as evidence of their long years of use.
She cleaned as if she was on a mission.
As if it was penance.
And none of that seemed to do a single thing to make her feel better.
Eleanor suspected that there would be no feeling better. That there would be no recovering from this. It didn’t matter how she’d come to betray Hugo, surely. It only mattered that she had. Not only had she betrayed him, she hadn’t even had the decency to look him in the face and let him know she’d done it.
She hadn’t even said goodbye.
Instead, she’d snuck off into the gathering fall evening with her case and her sister, like some kind of thief in reverse.
That was the part she didn’t think she could live with. That was the part that scraped to her belly like some ravenous beast with sharp claws. Over and over again.
“You’re being a bit dramatic, no?” Vivi asked one evening.
The way she had back in that other life, when Eleanor had never met Hugo Grovesmoor and hadn’t had the faintest idea how he would upend her life. The way she did with a little too much frequency, to Eleanor’s mind, given her penchant for making an opera out of all and sundry.
Eleanor eyed her sister over the pile of mending that she’d been ruthlessly going through for days now that the flat fairly sparkled. Vivi’s trousers. Vivi’s poncey skirts. Vivi’s lovely and expensive clothes that Vivi herself didn’t bother to treat with anything resembling reverence. Or even the bare minimum of care, it appeared.
“While tending to your sewing?” Eleanor asked mildly, which was getting