D is for Deception: A Langley & Porter Mystery

20 Whole

The following morning we shared the news of our engagement with our friends. They erupted in congratulatory cheers, offering us hugs and well wishes before settling in to a very pleasant breakfast full of happy chatter. Elena and Nathaniel had opted to stay the night at the Langley manor given the late hour as well as, I suspected, their desire to ensure their friends were truly alright after such an ordeal.

After breakfast, Alexander dismissed himself with Jake and Nathaniel to both wrap up the American business he had begun abroad and catch up with the English business he had left behind. Elena grabbed me by the arm and led me upstairs, telling me that it was time to return to my original hair color. She had a box of dye upstairs already. I didn't ask how she had gotten it, knowing she must have left very early in the morning to retrieve it. She explained that it wasn't a precise match but it was close enough to wait for my hair to grow out to its original color. I appreciated the effort. She was helping me to return to normalcy, to get back to the life I had left behind. And part of returning to my old self was looking like my old self. Even if I had been forever changed internally.

"I'm so happy for you and Alexander," Elena told me as she worked. I watched her in the mirror in front of me, lathering my hair in the dye, running her fingers through to ensure it had coated every strand. "It's about time."

I laughed and she met my gaze in the mirror, smiling.

"I know you couldn't tell me," she said then, tone more serious. "And I'm not mad. You did what you thought you had to do to protect all of us. Getting Alexander out of the country was the right move. You and I both know he would have gotten himself killed in messing with the Keene family if he'd remained here. You saved his life. I won't forget that. But you told Nathaniel and my father. I just... wish you would have felt comfortable telling me too."

"Elena..." I tried but I wasn't sure where I was going. Trust hadn't been the issue. I had known that she would have been just as invasive as her brother, putting us both in danger by trying to convince me not to do what needed done. But I couldn't tell her that.

"I read the police report," she told me. "Nathaniel got a copy of it since he supplied so much evidence on your behalf. It seems the police are one Keene short."

My eyes snapped to the mirror to find that she was already looking back at me in the reflection.

"You don't have to tell me," she said. "And Alexander will believe anything you tell him. But do you really want to start out your marriage like that?"

I fell silent, knowing she was right, knowing that no matter how difficult the conversation might be, Alexander had a right to know what I had done to survive these past few months. Even if it were painful for me to tell him. Even if I were afraid of how it might change his opinion of me. He deserved to know before he made a commitment to me to spend the rest of his life at my side.

We did not speak again until she had finished dying my hair back to its original black and even then I only thanked her and left her room, heading back downstairs to the others. I emerged at the bottom of the stairs to someone calling my name from the drawing room. I entered to find Jake and Ada sitting on opposite chairs, smiling up at me.

"I can't believe you actually did it," Jake said when I entered. He was shaking his head and grinning. "When I left, I wasn't sold on this plan, you know."

"You made that very clear," I reminded him and he chuckled.

"It wasn't that I didn't have faith in you," he told me. "I was worried. Not because I thought you weren't capable but because there were so many unknowns. I didn't know how far the Keene's influence stretched. I didn't know how dangerous they might be. I didn't even know what you had planned. Turns out, it was probably for the best that I didn't. I never would have agreed if I had."

"I'm sorry I was so difficult about leavin'," Ada said then. "I know I made it harder on you than I should have. I've just gotten used to it around here and I- well, I missed you, Charlotte."

I smiled and leaned forward to give her a side hug.

"I missed you too, Ada," I told her and then glanced over to Jake. "Both of you."

"He was a madman every day," Jake said with a grin and I raised a brow. "Alexander. The second we hit dry land, he was off to the trains out west, then to buy horses for travel. We made it to the sheriff's office in record time. When he got the case, he threw everything he had into it. I've never seen the man so focused. It was like he... almost like he..."

"Had a reason to come home," Ada finished, smiling at me as she did.

"Yeah," Jake agreed.

"He loves you, Charlotte," Ada told me quietly. I nodded, standing as I remembered the reason I came downstairs in the first place.

"I know," I told her and then left them there in the drawing room in search of my fiancée.

I found him in his office, pouring over some of the papers that Nathaniel had left for him before heading into the office this morning. He looked up and smiled when I entered and I shut the door behind me and approached. Now that I had made the transition from employee to fiancée, however, I wasn't sure where to go, just that I needed to be near to comfort him once I'd told him this. I glanced down at the chair across from him that I usually occupied and then passed it to step behind his desk. He smiled up at my choice as I drew closer.

"Alexander, we need to talk," I said and his smile diminished in an instant as a look of concern overtook his features.

"Of course," he told me. "Is everything alright?"

"I- well, yes. I just... while you were gone, in order to do what I needed to do, I had to get close to the family. I befriended Cecily at first, I thought that was my easiest opening, but then-"

"You don't have to tell me."

"No, Alexander, please. Just let me-"

"Charlotte, I know that this is painful for you, to talk about it so soon. You don't have to do so for my benefit."

"But you have a right to know-"

"It doesn't matter. Nothing that you could have possibly done would make me love you any less. Nothing you could say would make me want to not marry you. So it doesn't matter. You can tell me, if you wish, or I can wait. We have the rest of our lives to discuss it."

He was smiling when he said it but he was also moving. He'd collected his things and reached the door which he held open for me now.

"Where are we going?" I asked, feeling a rush of heat when he smirked at me in the way I loved so well.

"I'm to marry the love of my life," he answered. "You don't expect me to wait to tell everyone, do you?"

I smiled back at him and looped my arm through his. We made our way through the hall, collecting our things as we went, nodding to Bernard as he opened the door for our exit. And then we walked outside, the crisp morning air blowing at the hem of my dress, the warm sun heating my flushed skin.

Harold was just ahead, seated in the driver's saddle as always. And just like it had been a hundred times before, Alexander led me to the carriage and helped me inside. When he climbed in next to me and shut the door behind him, I smiled.

Everything was the same and yet it would never be the same again. Nothing had changed except for everything. It was the same motions but we were different people, better people. And, as Harold lurched us ahead upon that familiar rickety London cobblestone, I felt something swelling within my chest that I hadn't experienced since before my father's shop had burned to the ground. Hope.

THE END.

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