Influences of Stars

Chapter 16

"Gideon, please. I'm begging you. I swear, I shall be good for the rest of my days. I'll be a perfect saint!" Tibby's pleas continued. She had strained herself for the last day in reaching out for him, trying to find a softness she perhaps imagined existed. Yet she had seen it before, hadn't she?

"No. I can't," he told her for the thousandth time. "To question him on his marriage again would be a grave imposition. I don't dare to presume."

"What could he possibly do to you that would be worse than what he could do to Charis if he marries her?"

They were sitting at the dining room table, both utterly worn down by the argument that seemed to have no end. The morning haze highlighted the dark circles under their eyes and the knots which had built up in their hair over the night. In exasperation, Gideon placed his head in his hands but Tibby remained as fervent as she could.

"It's expected he shall become governor soon. He could have me, and my father, removed and we would have no form of living or standing. We would have to leave Rowley Bridge and you wouldn't be able to see anyone you love again."

A coldness washed over Tibby. He had struck her at her core. Knowing that she didn't care about positions or status or money, he had taken her great love and threatened to suppress it.

"How can you be so unfeeling?" She knew it was not out of concern for her that he said all those things.

"I'm not. I'm simply being reasonable," he said. He kept his voice calm as if to prove he was the sensible one and she, driven by something as frivolous as compassion, was concocting fantasises.

"Then use your reason to find a way to help Charis," she said, despite his insistence that there was nothing to be done; it was too late and he had seen Yeardley already, rife with a conviction. No words could change his mind this time.

"You spoke for me," she said. That showed decency, didn't it? She had seen his sympathy as she wept on the cold night. It had torn at his ambition which told him to support whatever venture Yeardley pursued, yet in the end he chose the light even when it condemned him to this miserable marriage he now toiled in. "Why is Charis any different?"

"Miss Wiley isn't my wife. My obligation lies only with this family," he said.

"I wasn't your wife when you helped me," she said.

He sat back in his chair and looked at her with pity. She seemed incapable of acting upon anything sensible. A naivety wrapped her mind, blinding her to the realities of the life they lived. How, after all that had happened to her and all she had seen, did she still live on hope?

Noticing this condescension, Tibby stood up, moving as far away from him as the room would allow. "She's in love with Theo and having to marry Yeardley will kill her."

"If she loves another, why hasn't she married him?"

"Because she...she does what she's told. She always has." Tibby placed her hands on the back of the chair, needing to hold herself up. "That doesn't mean that people should manipulate this amenability."

Gideon told her he wouldn't. He said it with a finality because he meant it- every thought in his mind directed him towards submission. So why did her expression of utter disappointment move him so? She looked sickened as she turned away from him, and she was allowed to because she ignored every sensible argument he presented to her. Yet none of them seemed to matter against the weight of her fear for Charis.

Perhaps Gideon's attention had always been drawn to Tibby; her wild ways somewhat demanded it. Nonetheless, he knew Charis a little as well- he had grown up in the same way as she had. Even if he knew nothing of her, did she not deserve the same relief as they all did? Did she not weep?