Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Adrian sat in the garden doorway of his study with a fresh cup of tea cradled in his hands.
After the gentle flakes of snow that had fallen in the town, and all the way back to the castle yesterday, it had not stopped through the night and was still falling now.
Softly, silently, not in a heavy haze of white but like cherry blossoms detached in the gentlest of breezes.
I imagine Valerie is watching anxiously, worried that it might ruin her plans. He smiled, trying to envision how they would take all of the cook’s food to the town hall if another snowstorm were to hit this part of the country.
Richard would have known how; he had ridden through the first snowstorm as if it were nothing at all.
Still, as long as it remained a gentle tumble of snow, everything would be fine, and Adrian would not have to consider the logistics of moving a feast from the castle to the town without a carriage.
Several carriages, if the industriousness of what was happening in the kitchens was anything to go by.
He glanced back at the clock on the mantelpiece, surprised that it was almost seven o’clock. He had known that time was getting on by the fact that darkness had snuck in a while ago, but he had not thought it was quite so late.
I ought to see if the cook has a moment to prepare dinner for me, he mused wryly, as he rose to his feet. Old injuries ached, needing a few steps to ease the rust of his legs from sitting too long in the cold of the crisp evening air.
Once he could move without wincing, he headed out in search of something to eat.
But he had only made it down the first hallway before he realized that something was strange—namely, that Jarvis was not where he usually was.
The butler could usually be found close by on days where Adrian spent most of his time in the study, but the man was not in any of the rooms that branched off the hallway.
Nor was he at the table, tucked into a recess, where he often waited with a book or the day’s papers so that he would be within summoning distance of his duke.
Indeed, he did not knock to ask when I might like dinner, or if I intended to have it at my writing desk.
Adrian frowned, unsettled by this sudden change in a man who was as constant as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening.
Then again, it was not the first thing that had changed since Valerie’s arrival; even he had altered his habitual routines for her over the past week.
Years of doing the same thing, at the same time, in the same way, every single day, all tossed out of the window because of that vexing, charming, intoxicating woman.
Before she came to Blackwall Castle, he could spend weeks without venturing outside; now, he took a brief turn around the gardens every morning and even journeyed to town to make wreaths and help children to put up decorations, of all things.
It is temporary, he reminded himself. When she is gone, everything will return to the way it was.
He did not like how his chest tightened at that thought, like the walls that had once been sacred to him had relearned how to close in on him.
Pressing onward, taking his customary route through the drafty, dimly lit corridors of the castle, he emerged into the entrance hall and came to an immediate, jarring halt.
What is the meaning of this?
Everything had been transformed. The stone walls bore the greenery of ivy garlands tied with bows and ribbons, old tapestries replaced with banners that had been intricately woven with festive designs: mistletoe, holly, robins, and a sleigh pulled by white horses.
Bunting with stars and angels now crisscrossed above the space, while wreaths hung in the windows.
Very familiar wreaths, with red, star-painted bows.
His ability to breathe faltered, horrified by the sight.
“Who has done this?” he growled to no one.
Overcome with a compulsion he could not control, he marched to the new banners and wrenched them from the walls.
He grabbed fistfuls of ivy and dragged them to the floor, leaving a trail of ribbons and bows in his wake.
When he could not reach the bunting to rip it down, he seized the nearest wreath instead.
Heart pounding, he stared at the aged yellow of the stars that had been carefully painted on the red bows, and felt as if a great sea were rising through him, threatening to drown him.
“Your Grace?” a startled voice made him whip around.
Jarvis and Mrs. Mullens stood on the periphery of the entrance hall, staring aghast at the torn-down decorations.
“What have you done?” Adrian snarled, gripping the wreath so tight that he feared he might actually break it. “Take it all down. Every last bit. At once. If I see a single ribbon, there will be—”
At that moment, Valerie hurried in, a festive bouquet in her hands: rosemary, holly, laurel, and red roses that must have come from the greenhouse. She was smiling, her cheeks pink as if she had just been outside.
Her green-eyed gaze fell upon the destruction, and her face crumpled.
“What happened?” she gasped, looking to Adrian for explanation. “Did you rip it all down? I was… just coming to get you, to show you what we had done.”
Adrian cast a stern look at the butler and the housekeeper, who should have known better. “Do as I have asked,” he instructed, his tone only marginally softer. “Valerie, come with me.”
“But, I—” Valerie began to protest, until Mrs. Mullens gave her a gentle push and a nod of reassurance.
Meanwhile, Adrian turned and headed back the way he had come, unwilling to discover what else Valerie had decorated. At least his study was untouched; that was where he needed to be if he was to speak to her with a clear mind.
Her footsteps assured him that she was following, and when he opened the door to his study, he was relieved when she stepped in after him. What he did not like to see, however, was the pained expression upon her face, the look of someone who was lost, the sorrow in her eyes.
“We just wanted to make the castle cheerful,” she said thickly. “Everyone helped, but, please, do not be cross with them. It was me who suggested it, me who planned it. No one else is at fault.”
Adrian took a breath and carefully set the wreath down on the writing desk, unable to look at it for too long. “Mr. Jarvis and Mrs. Mullens should have dissuaded you against this endeavor. So, yes, there is some fault elsewhere. You were not to know that decorations are forbidden in this castle.”
“Forbidden?” A slight frown formed a line between her eyebrows. “Why on earth would you forbid decorations? They are harmless.”
He wandered to the fireplace and leaned there for a moment, his eyes fixed on the slithering light that glowed within the embers. Crouching down, he stoked it up and added some logs, using the task to gather himself.
“Because they are a reminder that I do not want,” he replied at last. “To you, they are decorations. To me, they are knives in my heart. A memory of what I have lost. A taunt of what I could not save.”
A soft, surprised gasp whispered across the stark room, but Adrian did not turn; he did not want to see pity on her face, any more than he wished to see the sadness he had inflicted.
“My mother would decorate in that same fashion,” he continued, desperate to fill that uncomfortable silence before she could offer any sympathies.
“Even then, I could not stand it. Not because of the decorations themselves, but because it was like a ghost had been through the castle, putting up such bright and cheery things. They would just appear one day, not so coincidentally while I was at my studies or had been forced to march ten miles by my father. I got to see what magic the ghost had created, but I never got to see the ghost. It was a most… painful kind of haunting.”
He paused, a great rock of regret sitting heavily in his chest, his throat so tight it was a wonder he could breathe or speak at all.
“He told my mother that I died in battle.” His voice caught.
“I did not tell you that part before. It was Mrs. Mullens who informed me of the truth.
My father was angry with my mother for some reason or another and, out of spite, he told her I was dead.
She took her own life not two days later.
“I suspect she had been holding on, all those years, because of me, because of our yearly rendezvouses at her beloved Christmas parties. She survived for those moments, and when she heard that I was gone, that she would never see me again, I suppose she thought there was no further reason to remain in the life that my father had made so miserable.”
Staring at the rising flames, he frowned; he had never been so forthcoming with anyone else about his history.
Richard was aware of most of it, of course, but it was not something that was actively discussed.
It was a silent stranger that sat with them sometimes, until the brandy made it disappear. Another ghost in a castle full of them.
Why is she not saying anything?
He did not know if the silence was good or bad, or if she was even still in the room with him. Perhaps, she had used his revelations as the perfect moment to slip out unnoticed.
Then, he felt her hand on his shoulder, and the rustle of her skirts as she lowered herself down beside him, kneeling at his side as if they were both at a confessional.
“You blame yourself,” she said.
Not a question, merely the echo of a certainty that had plagued him for a decade.
“I was not here,” he replied simply.
“You were at war.”
“And I was not here,” he repeated.
She did not look at him, but followed his gaze toward the flames.
“If you had abandoned your post, you would have been punished severely for desertion. That would have made your mother suffer more; I am certain of it. To watch her son be dragged through the mud of the scandal sheets and military judgment? Loving you as she so obviously did, I daresay that would have broken her heart.”
“I should have found a way,” he said darkly. “I was the sole heir to a dukedom; I had no reason to be fighting in a war. That would have been enough to see me sent home, or to avoid being sent to the Continent at all, if I had pleaded my case at the time.”
Valerie nodded slowly. “You do not think your father would have simply countered that he wanted you to fight? It would have been easy for him to make up some excuse about doing one’s duty and moral righteousness. Who would have been listened to—you or him?”
Adrian sat back on his haunches, not at all certain that he liked her ability to pick apart all of the arguments he had had with himself over the past ten years. All the things that had convinced him that he could have saved his mother if he had tried harder.
“I wrote to her many times, but I know my father intercepted them,” he said flatly. “I could have sent them another way, so I could be certain they would make it to her. Then, she might not have believed that I was dead.”
“Perhaps, but you said your mother could not do anything without your father knowing of it. I find it highly unlikely that you could have gotten a letter through,” Valerie replied in a soothing, soft tone that seemed to warm him from within.
“Indeed, as brutal as this may sound, and as much as you might not want to hear it, I do not think there is anything you could have done to change what happened.
“We all search for answers in situations where we feel helpless. Blaming yourself is a comfort to you, I think, because the truth is so terribly tragic.” She paused.
“I believe that it soothes you to conjure up scenarios in which you could change the outcome, if you had just done this or that or the other, because that—in a strange way—stops you from feeling as helpless.”
He turned and stared at her, feeling unanchored, his moorings cut. It was as if he had been peering through a fogged window for a decade, and she had just come along with a cloth to wipe it clear, allowing him to see everything as it really was.
Holding himself responsible did comfort him, in the most bizarre way, because it was the only thing he could control.
Punishing himself for losing his mother was a choice that he could still make, just as retreating from the society who had done nothing to help her was.
Distractions, so he would not have to dwell too much on how much he missed her and how desperately he wished he had spent more time with her and how angry he was that he had not hugged her tighter on that last Christmas together.
Valerie shyly glanced back at him. “I am sorry I decorated without asking you first.” Her chin dipped to her chest. “I should have paused to think. I did not, and… I am sorry to have caused you distress.”
“I am not distressed,” he replied, meaning it.
He rested his fingertips beneath her chin and gently tilted her head up, the shine of her eyes like a beacon drawing him closer to something like safe harbor.
“But—” she began to say, but his lips stopped her with a kiss.