A/N: I am surprisingly happy with how this chapter turned out – I thought it was be much more difficult to explore this particular stage.
As always, please read and review. I hope you're enjoying this story.
side note: OH my gosh! I just went to publish chapter 5 and realised I never put chapter 4 up here, what ? Anyway, here it is. Sorry about that, loves!
tick...tock...tick...tock
Archibald unconsciously swayed to the rhythm of the Grandfather clock beside him. He was settled in an armchair across from Colin's cot, but his mind was far away. He was caught in a daze, focussing his energy on the wall behind his boy, and below the hanging portrait of his wife.
He knew if he looked up and locked eyes with Lilias that he chanced losing all his senses.
"We should hang a curtain," Archibald thought, careful not to instinctively look to the object his mind was so focused on, "that way she's out of my room" – no longer "our" room – "and she can watch over her son" – not "our" son, what kind of father am I to him anyway? – "but I won't have to see her laughing face anymore."
"Laughing at me," the voice in his head continued. Now that she was gone, it truly seemed impossible to Archibald that he affections for him were genuine; they were nothing more than a joke – his heart was simply the fastest way to wealth and status.
"Or I could avoid this room all together," he further considered. The nursery felt alive, cutting of his air supply. The suffocation was getting to his head and making him go mad; "Lilias loved me," he choked out.
"I could never cover her beauty with any old dingy curtain. She would have never wanted to be hidden in such a vulgar way."
He closed his eyes to escape the oppressive room; he took a deep breath of sweet air – allowing his lungs to fully expand, the only thing which alerted to him that he was still alive – and tried to push away the events of the morning.
He had awoken later than normal. He sat up and first looked to the clock – 7.30, around the time he's expected to eat breakfast with his brother.
His brother. His gaze turned to be met with Lily's yes hanging on the adjacent wall, just as he had been doing for the last few weeks. Why had Neville hung it there in the first place? To mock me?
But it was becoming too much for Archibald. It was too much for him to be reminded of everyday in such a manner.
He leapt out of bed and tore to offending portrait from the wall.
The doctor walked in a few minutes later with breakfast, only to be met with the sight of his brother in a fit of madness trying to force the painting out of the too-small window on the far end of the room.
Managing to restrain (though failing to calm) his brother, Neville removed the portrait of the former Baroness to the nursery instead, if only because it was the nearest room with available wall space.
He hadn't considered that, in doing so, he gave Archibald yet another (poor) excuse for staying away from his son.
"It's not fair." Archibald had crumbled to the floor beneath the window, chilled by the autumn breeze invading his bed chamber.
"It just isn't fair… I don't want him, this child… I want no part in his life… I want my wife back…" he continued mumbling, as his brother shut the window and stared down at him in disapproval.
"Archie, you look truly pathetic," he condescended. The doctor understood his brother's friend – he still felt the sting of Lily's death too – but he had no patience for such weakness, even during a period of mourning.
"Quit crying and pull yourself together," practically yanking the elder to his feet, "you're a grown man behaving like a little girl," Neville concluded in a huff of frustration.
"Why did she have to abandon me, and leave me with that boy?" Archibald continued complaining, "why did you save him and not her?"
The doctor's temper was threatening to show over his brother's insulting words.
"Goddammit Archie, do you really think I wanted this? I would have gladly given the boy's life for hers! I tried to save them both, but I couldn't – she was lost to us before I even made it out to the garden. Would you have preferred I left the boy to die as well as her?"
He didn't mean it. No matter what his feelings, Neville was a man of science and honour; he would not be able to live with himself if he had let the boy die, knowing he could have saved him.
This same logic is also how he coped with his guilt with regards to Lilias. He figured he could live with himself so long as he believed there was no way of saving her – that he death wasn't because of something he could have (or should have) done differently.
Unfortunately, that was not how Archibald read the situation.
"You liar!" he roared in disgust at his brother, his brother who had done nothing but help the widower and care for the child since Lily's death, "you did this to punish me. You let her die so I would be tortured by having to raise a motherless son for the rest of my sorry, lonely life."
"Oh pity," Neville spat in objection, "I loved Lilias! Why on earth would I intentionally let her die?"
Archibald's eyes widened in a frenzy as a laugh, nearing on maniacal in nature, escaped his lips.
"You loved my wife, that's exactly why you did it," emphasizing each word, the Baron stepped closer to the doctor.
"You just couldn't bear the thought of watching us live as a perfect family, constantly dreaming that you had fathered her child, that she was your wife and I was rotting away in my library, consumed by loneliness and self-loathing.
"That's quite enough, Archie." Neville's tone was calm. The verbal abuse he could take, but the last thing he needed was Archibald worked up into a passion – another child to look after.
Nevertheless, Archibald persisted.
:Isn't that what you always wished for, though? For father to have left the estate to you, for you to have been the first born, with a wfie on your arm that could catch the attentions of every man in the Empire, whether you wanted them looking at her or not?"
"Of course I wanted all those things. Of course I was jealous of you. IS that what you want to hear?" the accused relented, "but that doesn't mean I wanted Lilias dead. She was an angel to you, and a friend to me. And if I could not call her my own, at least I got to see you happy."
The brothers sat down to breakfast, allowing the food to ease their tension.
Taking a rose from the vase on the side table, "you're my brother, and, at the end of the day, the most important person in my life, whether I like to admit it or not. I care about you, truly I do," and he tucked the rose into the breast pocket of Archibald's dressing gown, adding, "for Lily, to keep her close to your heart."
Neville cleared the dishes, leaving Archibald alone, withdrawing the rose from his pocket and rolling the stem between his fingers.
The clock struck five and Archibald rose to go down to dine, shaken from his reverie. On his way out of the nursery, he went over to the cot and placed the rose beside his son.
"Your mother and I are looking out for you, Colin."
Then, he looked up to his wife. It was a difficult task, straining his fragile heart as he looked up at her permanently laughing eyes; he did not have confidence enough to think he'd always be able to stay at least a little composed in his son's room, so long as she would always be looking down on him like that.
But he was looking at her now, and he added to his thoughts, "a rose-coloured curtain would suit you, I think. Do you agree, my love?"