Part 13
Edmund accepted every condition.
He still sent a car when she had not requested one. She still sent it back.
He began attending her students’ recitals. At the first, he wore a dark suit that cost more than the community center’s annual piano-maintenance budget and sat in a folding chair beside Mrs. Bennett.
A seven-year-old boy stopped in the middle of his piece and announced that he had forgotten everything.
Edmund leaned toward Clara. “What happens now?”
“We wait.”
The boy stared at the keys, breathing hard.
Clara approached but did not touch him.
“Start from the part you like,” she said.
“That isn’t the beginning.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
He began from the middle, missed two notes, and finished.
Edmund applauded before anyone else.
Afterward, he donated money for a new roof through an anonymous trust.
Mrs. Dyer identified him in the paperwork within a week.
“Rich people think anonymous means using another expensive lawyer,” she told Clara.
The first anniversary of the ball arrived with less attention than Clara expected.
News had moved on. Other scandals replaced hers. Her face disappeared from morning television. Parents returned their children to lessons. The trustees asked her to resume full duties as though their request for leave had been a misunderstanding.
Mr. Shah made them apologize in writing.
Clara kept the letter in a drawer for unpleasant days.
On her twenty-third birthday, Edmund invited her to the palace for dinner.
She agreed on the condition that there be no guests, no formal table, and no food shaped like architecture.
They ate in a small room overlooking the garden. Sophie came. Harland joined them after Clara insisted. The cook served roast chicken, potatoes, and a pear tart no one had warned Clara about.
Edmund stared at the dessert.
“I forgot.”
“You remembered an ambassador’s shellfish allergy for nineteen years.”
“He controlled trade negotiations.”
“So pears are less threatening?”
“Until now.”
They laughed.
Later, Clara went alone to the ballroom.
The chandeliers were dimmed. Moonlight entered through the tall windows, cooling the gold walls. Without music or guests, the room seemed smaller than she remembered.
Edmund found her standing near the place where the key had fallen.
“I brought something,” he said.
He carried the music box.
Clara had kept it in her apartment for most of the year, but the mechanism needed repair, and Edmund had taken it to a conservator.
He placed it on a small table.
“The spring was weakening,” he said. “Nothing was replaced. Only cleaned.”
Clara inserted the key.
The melody began more clearly than before, though one note retained its faint buzz.
“I asked them to leave that,” Edmund said. “It sounded wrong without it.”
Clara looked at him.
“That is a very un-Ashcombe opinion.”
“I am trying to improve the family reputation for imperfection.”
She opened the hidden panel.
Eleanor remained inside the lid, forever young, holding a child who would never grow beyond the ivory cloth.
Clara no longer searched the painted face for proof. The proof had become less important than the life around it: letters, mistakes, silence, fear, Margaret’s stubborn love, Edmund’s late honesty, Beatrice’s damage, and the years Eleanor had built after believing everything was lost.
“I’ve been thinking about the portrait,” Clara said.
Edmund waited.
“It should stay with the box. But I want it displayed differently.”
“How?”
“With the truth. Not ‘Lady Eleanor, missing.’ Her name, what happened, Morrow House, the foundation theft. All of it.”
“Some members of the family will object.”
“I know.”
“They will argue that private suffering should remain private.”
“It stopped being private when everyone else used silence to control it.”
Edmund nodded.
“I agree.”
“You don’t have to agree immediately.”
“I have been practicing.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
The lullaby reached its pause.
Clara touched her chest, as she always did.
This time Edmund did not study the gesture as evidence of resemblance. He looked toward the windows and allowed her the privacy of it.
“I used to imagine what I would say if Eleanor came home,” he said.
“What was it?”
“At first, that I forgave her.”
Clara winced.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
“And later?”
“That she should forgive me.”
“That isn’t much better.”
“No.”
The music box continued.
“What would you say now?” Clara asked.
Edmund considered.
“I would ask whether she had eaten. Then I would try to remain quiet long enough for her to tell me what she needed.”
Clara smiled.
“She hated pears.”
“So I am told.”
They stood together until the mechanism slowed.
At the final note, footsteps sounded in the corridor. Sophie entered carrying a paper bag.
“I brought cake,” she said. “Normal cake. No towers, crests, or edible monarchy.”
Harland followed with plates.
Clara closed the music box.
The room did not become silent. Sophie complained that palace security had searched the candles. Harland insisted this was standard procedure. Edmund claimed not to know where matches were kept because someone had always lit fires for him. Clara laughed so hard she had to sit down.
They ate cake at the edge of the empty dance floor.
A few crumbs fell onto the polished marble. Edmund noticed and chose not to summon anyone.
Before leaving, Clara returned the key to the place inside her glove where Margaret had hidden it years earlier.
It was no longer necessary to conceal it.
She kept it there because the slight pressure against her palm reminded her that small objects could carry terrible histories without deciding the future of the person who held them.
At the ballroom doors, Edmund offered his arm.
Clara looked at it.
“Is this ceremonial?”
“I’m tired, and the corridor is long.”
“That is the first sensible use of aristocracy I’ve encountered.”
She slipped her hand through his arm.
May you like
They walked slowly, adjusting to one another’s pace.
Behind them, on the table beneath the chandeliers, the silver music box remained open. The painted mother held her child beneath a lid that would no longer be sealed, while the imperfect lullaby faded into the ordinary sounds of people going home.
