A/N: y'all have been kicking my ass about this and rightly so because it's been tWO MONTHS?! i am so sorry this one's on me guys.
Dinner the next evening is a quiet affair. Mr. Hale arrives and the three of them wait in the parlor until the meal is served. Margaret asks her father about the house in Crampton and is careful to avoid any mention of Oxford. John eats little and says even less.
After the last plates are cleared, Margaret leaves the two men together with their brandy and goes back into the parlor, where a fire has been lit. Her sewing is waiting for her on the couch but all day she has borne the weight of John's silence and it looks far too heavy for her to lift now. Instead, she wanders over to John's desk.
He's left a few sheets of paper sticking haphazardly out of a drawer, but otherwise the surface is orderly. His ledgers are stacked on one side of the desk and his inkwell is positioned carefully so that it hides most of the large ink stain that spreads across its back left corner. Running one hand over the chair's high, stern back, Margaret pulls it back a little to accommodate her skirts and sits down gingerly.
If she turns her head a little, she can just see the spot on the couch where she usually sits. This is how John sees her – a small, hunching shadow in the evening.
"Are you enjoying my chair?"
She twists around sharply, her hand flying to her mouth in surprise. John is in the doorway, his eyebrows raised as he looks at her. There is a slight curl at the corner of his mouth that makes her breath catch in her throat.
She gets up and pushes the chair back in, brushing her skirts back into submission. "I'm sorry," she says in a rush. "I couldn't face my sewing."
John lets out a short, startled laugh, and her answering smile is the wide sort Aunt Shaw always used to discourage. This is what it might have been like, she thinks as his mouth settles back into its customary line.
"Your father thought he might speak to you now," he says, coming towards her, his eyes fixed on his desk.
"Yes, all right."
She does her best not to look at him as he reaches past her to the stack of ledgers. He pulls a book from the middle – old, with a peeling binding and gold-edged pages – and then retreats from her, his shoulders drawn back and away.
"Will you go upstairs?" she asks, the words spilling out of her as he heads for the door. He stops, glancing back at her over his shoulder.
"Yes, I think so."
"I'll come say goodnight, then. When my father's gone."
"You will?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
She tries to smile but it feels rather like a grimace. "The aim of saying goodnight is, generally, to say goodnight."
She knows this is not a ritual they usually engage in, but she remembers the pressing silence of the evening before, the way he faded from the room like sunlight, and she cannot bear another night of it.
"All right," he says finally, and then he's gone and her father is peering into the room with a warm smile.
"Shall I come in, dear?"
She escorts him to the couch, her hand at his elbow, and sits close by him, her head bent near to his.
"So, Papa," she says lightly. "Oxford?"
"Yes," he replies. "My school friend – you know Mr. Bell, don't you? – he's invited me down for a stay. A great many of us will be there, I think."
"I imagine you would like it very much."
"Indeed." He shifts on the couch, turning to look more closely at her. "Margaret, you might come with me, you know. For a long while. I know you have your duties here, but John's a good man. He wouldn't keep you from your father."
She bites back a laugh that tastes of bitterness. "You're right. He is a good man."
"He would let you come with me. I'm sure of it."
"I know he would."
They are quiet for a moment. Margaret stares at her hands where they clasp the sleeve her father's coat. Then Mr. Hale leans in and kisses her gently on the forehead.
"Think about it," he says softly, "and visit me tomorrow."
She nods, and they stand together.
At the door, Margaret helps her father into his outer coat and peers out the window to check the weather.
"You might tell John to focus a bit more on his Aristotle," Mr. Hale says as he adjusts his hat. "I'd hoped for a rousing discussion."
"Oh, and what did you get instead?"
"Altogether too much talk," he replies as he steps out the door towards the carriage, "about mythology. Goodnight, my dear."
Margaret lingers at the door for a long moment to watch her father's carriage pass through the gates, and then she lights a candle and goes upstairs.
The door to John's bedroom is closest to the landing and hers is down the hall. She is used to the way her stomach tightens as she passes his door, but not to the way it nearly turns over as she stops in front of it now.
Her knock is clear and firm. The door swings open almost immediately and she looks at everything but John as she crosses the threshold. The bed is neatly made up with white linens, and there's a large, dark chair by the fire. Next to it, a small round table is piled generously with sheets of paper, and a book, one she recognizes from the parlor, keeps them in place.
John steps around her and takes a few paces back, his face impassive and shadowed. He's left the door open behind her, and a draught from the hallway is plucking at the hem of her skirt.
"Right," he says, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "So. Goodnight."
She feels ridiculous, now, for coming all the way in here just for a word or two. Surely, there must be something else she can say.
"Your book," she blurts out.
"My what?"
"Your book, from before. From the parlor. Could I borrow it?"
"You want to borrow a book?"
"And to say goodnight. But yes, the book."
He goes to the table and picks up the cracked volume. It must have looked quite pretty once, she thinks absently.
"This one?"
"Yes."
He holds it out to her, and she takes it with hands she hopes aren't shaking.
"Thank you," she says. "I'm sure I'll like it."
He waits a moment, and then she thinks she hears a low laugh. "Do you even know what it is?"
"Not especially, no."
Again, the soft echo of a laugh, and she lifts her chin, turning and going to the door. "Goodnight, sir," she says, and she means it to sound starched and stiff, like one of his collars, but somehow a golden sort of warmth bleeds through and she feels a blush rise in her cheeks.
"Goodnight, Miss Hale."
Later, in her own room, under the sheets and with only the one candle lit, Margaret cradles the book in her lap and lets it fall open as it will. It settles on a story near the front of the book, one with creased pages and soft, well-worn edges. This particular story has been read many times, she knows – the pages seem to swoon, rather than turn.
It is "Hades and Persephone." She reads.