Kissing Comfort (22 page)

Announcing their intention to give her a coming-out party was
significant.
Acceptance to Oberlin was
significant
. Learning that she would have a position of responsibility at Jones Prescott was
significant.
Comfort had often wondered if the rows and rows of heavy leather-bound tomes contributed to the solemnity of the room, because when they were inside it, her uncles spoke as if every word had weight.

Lifting her chin, Comfort braced herself for what she suspected was waiting for her on the other side of the door, that most dreaded combination of punishing lecture and grave pronouncement: the
significant
scold.

“Good,” Tuck said as she stepped into the room. “You're here.”

What he meant, Comfort knew from experience, was “Good. You didn't keep us waiting.” The hint of annoyance in his tone confirmed her suspicions of why they wanted to see her. Tucker was only ever impatient when he was facing a task he found distasteful, and whatever he had to say to her clearly fell into that category.

Her uncles were sitting like bookends on either side of the cold fireplace. Without being told, Comfort took her usual seat in the middle of the dark green velvet sofa facing them. Folding her hands in her lap, she regarded them expectantly and tried to remember she was no longer five, but twenty-five. The need not to disappoint them, though, was still the same.

“We spoke to Beau DeLong today,” Newt said. “I imagine you knew we would.” When Comfort nodded, he went on. “He came to us before we got around to paying a call on him.”

Comfort wasn't successful at concealing her small start.

“Yes, well, we were surprised also. He gave you up, Comfort.”

She swallowed. “Gave me up?”

Newt nodded. “Told us everything.”

Everything? she wondered. What did that
mean
?

“I didn't threaten him,” said Tuck. “In case you're wondering.”

“I wasn't,” she said. “Did he do something that made you think you would have to?”

“Not at all, but I wanted you to know. If there was a bargain struck between you, he went back on his word.”

Comfort realized that Tuck was simply trying to protect her. “He didn't betray my confidences, Uncle Tuck. I didn't ask him not to speak to you.”

“Somehow I doubt you meant for us to know that you visited him at Black Crowne.”

Comfort had regained enough poise not to show her relief. If they believed her conversation with Bode had taken place in his office, then they didn't know she'd been in his apartment above it. More importantly, they didn't know about her indiscretion. Or his. He hadn't told them
everything
. That gave her the confidence she needed to say, “Mr. DeLong is free to report whatever he likes. I wouldn't suppose that I could restrain him from doing that.”

Newt knuckled his chin. “Bode restrains himself. He has no intention of telling his mother or Bram about your ill-advised trek through the Coast to reach his office.”

Tuck picked up that thread and continued. “Just as he has no plans to reveal anything you told him to his family.”

“That's good, isn't it?”

“We think so,” said Tuck. “He does have one expectation, however. He expects that you will tell Bram.”

“And we expect,” said Newt, “that you'll be honest with us about these dreams that are still troubling you.”

Comfort stared at them. She had forgotten there'd been any discussion with Bode about her dreams. That wasn't part of what she thought he'd told her uncles. Equally disturbing, but easier to discuss with Tuck and Newt, was Bode's expectation that she relate the whole of it to Bram.

“What I say to Bram, and whether I say anything at all, is my decision, isn't it? Bode can't dictate to me.”

Newt cleared his throat. “He hasn't. Not precisely. Tuck misspoke. What Bode expects is that
we'll
persuade you to speak to Bram.”

“Then I am sorry you've been put in that position. I'm not telling Bram. Further, there's no reason that I should.”

“From Bode's perspective there is,” Tuck said. “He believes your engagement is quite real. I think you can appreciate that he's uncomfortable with you marrying his brother while keeping so much from him.”

“He made an excellent point,” Newt said, “about your long friendship with his brother. Isn't it reasonable to suppose that over the years you should have shared at least some of this with Bram?”

“Reasonable to whom? Has everyone but me forgotten that Bram tends to act first and apologize later? I might as well place an announcement in the
Chronicle
as share a confidence with him. The nature of my friendship with Bram does not extend to telling him anything I don't wish at least ten other people to know. How could you not understand that?”

“I think I do, but maybe I'm finally understanding something else.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe Bram's your friend
because
you know you can't tell him the important things. That's as good an excuse as any to keep what's bothering you all tucked up inside. When I think about it that way, lots of things make sense to me. Like why you'd start denying your nightmares and why you'd want to pretend that you don't remember any part of them. Bram wouldn't know what to make of all that unpleasantness, so you figured you wouldn't have any. I bet he hardly ever asks a hard question anyway, and that's what makes you so easy in his company. That sound about right?”

Comfort stared at Newt. She felt the ache of tears at the back of her eyes and a solid lump forming in her throat. She didn't try to speak.

Tuck glanced sideways at his friend. “Never thought much of your carpentry skills, but you hit that nail square. Hard to believe we're only seeing it now.” He reached in his pocket and removed a handkerchief. He rose briefly to pass it to Comfort. “What happened the last time you forgot yourself and trusted Bram?”

She squeezed the handkerchief in her fist. That worked as well as pressing it to her eyes. “You know what happened. He announced we were engaged.”

“So he did. Seems to me like you need to set that right. First with him and then with Bode. Bram can tell Alexandra the truth himself. That's not for you to do.”

“I promised him,” she said dully. “Eight weeks.”

“Doesn't matter,” said Tuck. “You're deceiving people, Comfort. You deceived us. Bode. Alexandra. Everyone at that party. Could be that you're deceiving yourself.”

She pressed her lips hard together. If she said something now, there'd be no mistaking the quaver in her voice.

“Could be,” Tuck went on more softly than before, “that your head knows better than your heart and maybe you should start listening to it.”

Sleep did not come easily. She hadn't expected that it would. She tried it with the window open and the window closed, the covers off and on, the pillow pounded flat and pushed plump. There was no position that was comfortable, no activity that was sufficiently tiring. She counted backward from one hundred by threes. She named all the states in order of their admission to the Union. She stared at the clock on her mantelpiece and watched time crawl.

At three o'clock sleep overtook her. At three twenty she was awake again, or nearly so. It wasn't thirst that drove her from the bed. It was Bode. More correctly, it was Bode's kiss. Comfort stood beside her bed with the back of her hand pressed to her lips and imagined she could still feel the warmth of his mouth. Half expecting that he would emerge from the mound of rumpled sheets and quilts that she'd kicked to the foot of the bed, she took a step backward and bumped against the nightstand hard enough to make it wobble.

It was the act of steadying the table and centering the oil lamp that brought her to full wakefulness. She needed a moment to orient herself, and when she did, when she realized why she was standing beside her bed and no longer lying in it, she simply shook her head at the absurdity of her response. It made no sense that she would bolt from Bode in her dream when she had done nothing so sensible in reality.

She released a long, slightly shaky breath that she meant to be self-mocking laughter, and she could only sigh when it didn't touch any of the right notes.

Barefoot, she padded quietly to the bathing room, where she soaked a cloth in cool water and pressed it to her flushed cheeks and forehead. When she was finished, she stared at her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin and wondered what she was supposed to make of it all. “How did things become complicated?” she whispered. Except for an accusing, faintly contemptuous smile, her mirrored self had no answer.

Comfort took her robe from a hook behind the door and found her slippers under the bed. After putting them on, she removed the oil lamp from the night table and carried it to light her way through the house. As much as she would have liked a cup of warm milk, she liked her aloneness more. Entering the kitchen, even at this time of night, would have disturbed one of the servants, and talking to anyone just now was more effort than she wanted to make.

Comfort's intention was not to wander aimlessly through the house like some wraith. She had a destination in mind when she left her room, and she chose her route so she would arrive quickly and with the least chance of being surprised by a servant or her Uncle Newt, who sometimes did haunt the hallways when he couldn't sleep.

Slipping inside the conservatory, she closed the door and leaned against it. The air was pleasantly humid, and she embraced it like a second skin. The heavy scent of rich, dark soil made her nostrils flare as she breathed deeply. The room was crowded with delicate orchids and lush, green foliage, and where her lamp could not penetrate the thickest fronds and ferns, deep and unwelcoming shadows discouraged exploration.

Comfort set her lamp down just inside the door and walked under the umbrella of the darkest shadows without any hesitation in her step. She'd taken the path so many times that her feet knew the way even when the shadows made her eyes doubt the course. Occasionally the feathery fingers of an exotic plant would brush her cheek or the back of her hand. She felt as if she were being greeted by friends.

At the heart of the conservatory was a circle clearing. Benches surrounded a sundial whose pattern had been laid into the green-veined marble floor. Above the clearing was a large glass cupola that, day or night, was a window to the sky.

Comfort chose a bench and sat. She leaned back and tilted her face upward. She never tired of this view, never felt as deserving of her name as when she spied on heaven. It wasn't possible to look up from here and not think of the first time she remembered staring up at the stars. Tuck had been beside her then; Newt hovered nearby. For a long time no one spoke. She'd liked that, liked it still when they sat together and none of them had a need to fill the silence. Those moments had no expectations attached to them, no demands.

What happened earlier when she'd been summoned to the study was different. There, silence was awkward and unforgiving. It yawned as widely as a gulf and required a bridge of such proportions to cross it that none of them could manage that feat of engineering.

Was Tuck right? she wondered. There was no question that she'd allowed herself to be made party to a deception. She accepted that she'd wronged Alexandra and Bode most particularly and had done almost as badly by every other guest that night. It was not as easy to know about the matter of self-deception. What did anyone ever discover by peeling back the layers of that onion except more tears and more onion?

Then there was all that Newt had said.
I bet he hardly ever asks a hard question anyway, and that's what makes you so easy in his company.
Certainly Newt believed that her friendship with Bram was something less than she'd always supposed it to be. How was she to know if he'd truly hit the nail square when every part of her recoiled at the notion?

It was not often that Tucker and Newton stated their expectations so clearly. They didn't ask her to end the fraud that was her engagement. They didn't try to persuade her. They told her to set it right.

Comfort blinked. She'd been staring at the stars for so long that they had begun to pulse, or maybe it was that her eyes were watering from contemplating that onion. She pressed a thumb and forefinger to the corner of her eyebrows and held them there. Calm came upon her slowly, and the urge to weep passed.

She would send a note round to Bram in the morning and call on him after she left the bank. He wouldn't be expecting her visit to have a serious nature, and if it were anything else she meant to discuss, she might have given him a hint. This was different. He could be persuasive in any circumstance, but lying on his back in bed, his leg splinted from ankle to hip, he was likely going to try to engage her pity as well. Knowing that gave her some small advantage. She wasn't going to toss it away by warning him what to expect when she arrived.

Perhaps, depending on how Bram accepted her decision, she would suggest that they tell Alexandra together. It didn't matter if Bram mistook her offer as a gesture of support, or more likely, that she was prepared to share the responsibility equally; being at his side when he told his mother the truth was the surest way she had of knowing that it was done, and done fairly. She also wanted to hear Alexandra explain how they should proceed with a public declaration. Bram's mother knew something about holding herself above personal scandal.

That left Bode. Comfort tried to imagine what she would say to him and could not. Likewise, his reaction to whatever she might eventually say was also outside her imagination. She could tell him what she'd done easily enough. That was not the problem. It was the explanation for it that twisted her tongue.