The Hour After He Left (#2)
Found beneath lace handkerchiefs and under a half-empty vial of perfume
Early April 1912
I had made tea before he arrived.
I do not remember doing so. The pot is still warm, the cup untouched, and the lemon slice already withering at the rim. I must have moved through the motions as one does — by instinct, not intent. Or perhaps it was intent, masked as routine. I haven't decided which is more dangerous.
Yates was expected — though not by me.
He had come to meet with my husband. Something to do with the estate boundary on the southern pasture, or perhaps the matter of Mr. Holloway’s tenants. I only half-listened, as I often do when men speak of fences and fines.
Lord Bergamot greeted him in the entryway with an affable clap on the shoulder and a familiar bark of laughter. I stood two paces behind, gloved and pleasant, prepared to slip away as soon as I was no longer required.
But then — the horses.
The bay gelding had thrown a shoe or gone lame — it was unclear — and there was a stable boy red-faced in the foyer asking for my husband's immediate attention. And so, with a brief apology and a muttered curse about "not trusting grooms with even one hoof," Lord Bergamot turned to Yates with a laugh and said:
“You won’t mind waiting, will you? My wife will keep you entertained — she has better sense than I, and more books to show for it.”
And just like that — he was gone.
The air changed as the door shut behind him.
Not uncomfortably. Just… noticeably.
I gestured toward the library, and Yates followed. We said nothing at first. I fussed with the drapes. He removed his gloves. There was no reason to speak.
Until, foolishly, I reached for a book I could not reach.
It was one I’d read years ago — something dry and scholarly, something I pretended to still care for in case I needed a reason to be looking. I stepped onto the small footstool and extended my arm — far too dramatically — and felt the sudden stillness of him behind me.
He stepped forward.
“Allow me.”
His voice was low. Closer than I expected. I felt his presence before I saw it — the warm weight of it, like standing too near the hearth. I stepped aside, barely, as he reached over my shoulder.
Our fingers nearly touched.
I could feel the moment tighten, as though the entire room had stopped to see what I would do. My breath caught — not loud enough to be noticed, but enough to feel.
He plucked the book from the shelf and offered it to me with a small smile.
“A treatise on agricultural policy. Light reading, I see.”
It made me laugh — quietly, unexpectedly.
“Yes. I find nothing so thrilling as grain tax in a foreign century,” I replied.
He blinked, and then smiled in full — not the polite one he wears in company, but something crooked, unguarded, almost boyish.
“I should’ve known better than to underestimate you.”
And just for a moment, the air between us changed shape. We weren’t smiling anymore. We were simply looking. His eyes lingered just slightly too long on mine. And mine, I admit, did not look away.
He was about to say something — I’m certain of it. I felt the breath held between us, the pause that always comes before a truth. I felt myself sway toward it.
And then the door opened.
“I see tea hasn’t made its appearance yet,” my husband said cheerfully, reentering the room with the force of a man who has never needed to lower his voice. “You’ve not bored him already, have you, my dear?”
Yates stepped back as though burned. He laughed — too quickly — and made some remark about the fine condition of our library. My hands moved to the tea tray without thought, rearranging cups I hadn’t realized were out of place.
We spoke only briefly after that. Nothing of consequence. A few polite comments, a question about the Holloway matter, and something about the weather, which had grown unseasonably warm.
But I noticed it.
The way he tugged slightly at his collar.
The way his eyes drifted toward me in the glass of the cabinet — never directly, but often.
The way he stood a little too still, as though waiting for his heart to slow.
When he left, it was with the same ease he always carries. But he hesitated — just slightly — before the door. Enough for me to notice. Enough to wonder if he had meant to turn back.
Now, an hour later, the tea is cold. The room is quiet again. But I am not.
I sit here with the book in my lap — the one neither of us truly wanted — and I cannot stop thinking of the moment our hands nearly touched.
His voice still lingers — low, deliberate, too measured to be unthinking. He said nothing of consequence. And yet I keep hearing the space between his words, as though meaning had settled there without permission.
It was not a confession.
It wasn’t even a flirtation — not in any language we’ve been taught to speak aloud.
But it was something.
Something with weight. Something with breath.
It felt like the moment before a match is struck — that fragile pause where heat and danger live side by side, and all you can do is wait for the spark.
I do not know which of us will pull away first.
Or if either of us still intends to.
—L.B.
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