She could not remember the last time she'd stood in silence with someone and not felt the need to fill it, to make herself smaller, to manage the discomfort of simply existing in another person's company. You should know, she said finally, that what you did in there, it was kind, but it may make things harder for you. People here have opinions about how things ought to be, and they don't take well to having those opinions disturbed. He looked at her. You worried about my reputation, Miss Whitaker?
I'm just being honest. I appreciate it. He paused. For what it's worth, my reputation survived worse than a disagreement with Victoria Harrington. It wasn't just a disagreement, she said.
You publicly took the side of a maid over the wife of one of the most prominent men in the county. People noticed they're going to talk. Let them, he said. She studied him. You say that like you mean it.
I do mean it. Most people say it, she said, and then discover they mind very much. He was quiet for a moment. That's probably true, he said. But I found that worrying about what people might say doesn't actually stop them from saying it.
So, you might as well just do what you think is right and deal with the rest when it comes. Amelia was quiet. She wanted to argue with that. She had an argument all loaded and ready. The argument that said he could afford to take that position because he was Nathaniel Carter and owned half the county.
And taking the easy moral stand was a very different thing when you had every possible cushion against the consequences. She had that argument ready because it was true and because truth was something she clung to with both hands. But she also thought standing there in the warm Montana dark, honest with herself for once, that he hadn't said it carelessly. He hadn't said it with the breezy confidence of a man who had never actually faced a consequence. There was something waited behind it, something that suggested the philosophy had been arrived at rather than inherited.
So, she kept the argument for later and instead said, "I should go refill my coffee pot." "Yes," he said. "You should." She pushed off the railing and turned toward the kitchen door. She was halfway there when he spoke again. "Miss Whitaker." She stopped. "I hope this is a good enough evening when you look back on it," he said.
Despite, she turned. He was still looking out at the dark, his profile lit from the distant lanterns, his hands still in his pockets. She repeated. Mrs. Harrington, he said, "And the rest of it." She looked at him for a moment.
You know, she said, "It might be. It might be a better evening than most. And she went inside. She didn't see him again that night." She refilled her coffee pot, and she finished her rounds, and she helped clear the tables afterward while the guests filed out in their expensive clothes. And at no point did Nathaniel Carter reappear in her part of the room.