127: Ambiguities

The silence hung like a thick soupy fog in the library after Octavia James made her undignified exit. Outside, the rain had begun again in earnest and the patters of fat drops against the window glass, the regular ticking of the mantle clock, and the crackle of the fire seemed to come from a distance through it. Almost as if they’d been tamped down and muffled by the tension that still coiled, wraith-like and terrible, into every corner of the large room. It vied for the most uncomfortable aspect of this whole confrontation with the echoes of Andrew and Octavia’s cruel words.

Above the rush of blood past her ears, Evelyn could scarcely hear anything else, but her eyes were fixed to Andrew’s profile, slowly relaxing into its usual handsomeness after being contorted with fury. She ached for him, truly, because no matter how much he hid behind that stoic façade, she knew him as a man who felt profoundly—his love was no less fierce than his anger, his joy no less intense than his sadness.