Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Oh, I have heard the talk of London, Euphemia,” Emily said. “Your sisters’ beauty is said to be the talk of every ballroom. It must be quite something to have such a trio in one family.”
The arrival of Euphemia at Cavendish House was a mercy Emily hadn't known she needed. For two weeks, the house had felt less like a home and more like a gigantic prison. There was a dull, persistent ache in Emily’s chest, like the sensation of having been stretched too thin, like a cord pulled just past its breaking point.
It wasn't a sharp pain, but a heavy, pervasive cold that made the grand rooms feel drafty and the silence of the hallways feel like a physical weight.
She had not realized how glad she was that Euphemia came until she heard Peggy announce her and felt something in her chest loosen. She had been managing. She was good at managing. She had been managing the estate, Frederick, and the household, and she had been doing all of it with her chin up.
But she was tired.
Not the tiredness of too little sleep, though that was also present.
But the tiredness of carrying something heavy and not being able to set it down because setting it down would require acknowledging what it was, and she was not ready to do that.
There was a space in the house that had not been there before Theodore left.
It was not just the physical space. Something less definable than that.
A quality to the mornings that was different.
A particular silence at the breakfast table that she had been eating around for fourteen days.
“Oh, I appreciate the compliment.” Euphemia smiled, though the expression didn't quite reach her eyes. "We are nothing alike, my sisters and I. Not in looks, not in temperament, and certainly not in the way we move through a room. We are three entirely different creatures."
"That is remarkable," Emily noted and giggled. "Given you were raised in the same home."
"That is precisely why," Euphemia replied softly. "Lady Byron never tried to make us the same. She let us be who we were. My sisters and I are really nothing alike.”
"I would very much like to meet them both," Emily said.
"I think they would like you very much," Euphemia said, nodding. She went quiet then, her gaze dropping to her lap. "I just wanted us all to be happy. That was the whole of it."
Emily reached across and took her hand. She recognized that look, the exhaustion of trying to hold a world together while your own heart felt like it was drifting out to sea.
The moment was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Peggy appeared in the doorway, looking slightly flustered. "I beg pardon, Your Grace, but there is a visitor downstairs. An older gentleman is asking to see you."
Euphemia stood immediately, smoothing her skirts. "Well, I should take my leave. The ride back to Mayfair is a long one. I’d best get going and leave you to your guest." She squeezed Emily’s hand. "I am glad I came. I liked talking with you today."
"We will see each other again soon," Emily promised, walking her toward the door. "When I visit London, we shall do all the fun things we spoke of."
Euphemia gave a small, hopeful nod, her smile lingering at the corners of her mouth. "We’ll see, Emily. I should like that very much."
Emily watched her go. Then she turned to Peggy, who was still standing by the doorway. “You said a man, Peggy?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
"Who is he?" Emily said.
"I do not know, Your Grace," Peggy said. "He did not give a name. He simply said it was a matter of some urgency and that he needed to speak with the Duchess." She paused. "He looked agitated. Not angry exactly. But unsettled.”
"Did he give a name?" Emily asked, her voice tight. "Or a reason for such an urgent visit?"
"No name, Your Grace," Peggy replied, her brow furrowed. "He’s been pacing the drawing room like a man waiting for a verdict. He has a look of the city about him, but his clothes have seen better days."
"Where is he?" she asked.
"I put him in the front drawing room, Your Grace."
Emily straightened her dress and walked downstairs.
The front drawing room was the formal receiving room on the ground floor, the one Mrs. Holt kept in perpetual readiness for visitors of consequence, and which Emily had used precisely twice since arriving at Carrowell. She pushed open the door.
He was standing by the window.
He was perhaps sixty years old, solidly built. His coat was clean but plain. His hair was grey and close-cropped, and his hands, she noticed, were large.
He turned when he heard her enter. His face was weathered and tired, and he looked like he had come a long way.
"Your Grace," the man said. His voice was low and slightly rough, a working voice, a voice that had spent its life outdoors. "I apologize for arriving without notice. My name is George Cluett.”
The moment he finished his sentence, Emily felt a slight shiver run down her spine. It made the air leave her lungs in a long, shaky exhale.
Cluett.
The icy, defensive wall she had erected the moment Peggy announced a stranger began to crumble, replaced by a sudden, aching softness.
This man was Frederick’s blood. The realization that there was someone else in the world who might have a claim to the boy’s history, who might see his father’s eyes in Frederick’s face, made her hands tremble.
For a fleeting second, the Duchess vanished, leaving only a woman who was desperately relieved and terrified to find that they were not as alone as she had thought.
"Mr. Cluett," Emily said, inhaling sharply. "To what do I owe this... unexpected visit?"
"I have come for my grandson," George announced, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "I have come to take the boy home."
“Your grandson?” she blurted as her eyes widened.
The room seemed to contract, the air growing thin and cold. The relief she had felt only a moment ago instantly curdled into a sharp, jagged fear.
This was the one variable she hadn't accounted for. She had prepared for the scandal of the Ton, the judgment, and the prying eyes... But she had not prepared for a grandfather to appear so suddenly, and now stood in her drawing room to demand custody.
"Please sit down, Mr. Cluett," she finally said, feeling a little lightheaded.
He sat. She sat across from him, folded her hands in her lap, looked at him, and waited.
"I did not know," he started. "About my son's life.
Thomas left our house when he was nineteen, and I did not hear from him again.
He made his choice, and I made mine, and there were many years between us.
" He paused, and then his shoulders dropped.
"I did not know he had married. I did not know there was a child.
" He looked at his hands. "Until recently. "
"How did you find out?" Emily said carefully.
"Your parents," he said. "Lord and Lady Hatcher. Also, everyone in London is talking about it." He paused. "There are rumors, apparently. About the boy. About you taking him in."
Emily absorbed this quietly. She had heard that the rumors had changed over the past several weeks, transforming something damaging into something else entirely.
What had begun as whispers about a child born outside of wedlock had, somewhere along the way, become the story of a woman who had taken in her dead sister's son.
This story was not scandalous but moving, the kind of story that the Ton found it easier to admire than to condemn once the truth of it was properly understood.
She had noticed the shift. She had been grateful for it in a way she had not been able to fully account for because she had not arranged it herself and did not know who had.
She still did not know.
But it had reached George Cluett through her parents and had led him here. Now she was sitting across from Frederick’s grandfather, and she was thinking very carefully about every word she was about to say.
"What is it you want, Mr. Cluett?" she asked, refusing to believe what he had said earlier.
He looked at her directly. "I want my grandson," he said. "He is the only family I have left. My son is gone. My wife is gone. The boy is all that remains, and he is a Cluett, and he belongs with his family."
Emily kept her hands very still in her lap. "Mr. Cluett, Frederick is well cared for here," she said, evenly. "He is happy. He is settled. He has a home, a name, and people who love him. You cannot just come and take all of this away from him, make him start over."
"He has a grandfather," George Cluett said. "Who did not know he existed until two weeks ago and who has come as soon as he was able. I want to know him. I want him to know where he comes from. His father's family. His father's name."
"He does not know you," she argued, her hands gripping the back of a velvet chair to keep from shaking. "He is happy here. He is safe. He has just begun to heal from the loss of —"
"He will heal at my hearth," George snapped.
“What claim do you have to him, Your Grace?
Your family disowned your sister. They want nothing to do with the boy.
You have taken him in, and I am grateful for that, genuinely, but you are his aunt by blood and nothing more.
You have no legal standing. No guardianship.
Nothing in writing that says he is yours to keep. "
He pulled a tarnished silver watch from his pocket, checked it, and snapped the lid shut with a definitive click. "I want to take him with me tonight," George said. "The boy."
"Mr. Cluett —" Emily tried to say.
"I have arrangements to make for the journey, Your Grace," George cut her off. "I shall return tonight. Please have his things packed. I’ll not have him leaving with nothing but the clothes on his back, though I expect the finery he wears now will be of little use where we are going."
"Tonight?" Emily gasped, her mind racing. "You cannot possibly expect —"
"Thank you, Your Grace," George said, already turning toward the door. "I’ve lost years of his life already. I’ll not lose another night."
He stood up and bowed slightly before walking out of the room without a backward glance, leaving Emily standing in the center of the drawing room. The silence that rushed back in was deafening. She looked up at the high, ornate ceiling, feeling her eyes sting.
The door creaked open, and a skitter of small boots on the hardwood broke the suffocating silence. Emily had no idea how long she had been standing there, frozen in the center of the rug.
"Is he back?" Frederick burst into the room, his face flushed from playing, his small chest heaving. He skidded to a halt, his eyes darting around the expansive, shadowed drawing room as if Theodore might be hiding behind the heavy velvet drapes. "Did Uncle Theo come home?"
Emily couldn’t even force a smile. For the past week, Frederick had become a persistent shadow, his usual play replaced by a restless, searching energy.
He asked at breakfast, at lunch, and before bed.
It was a realization that gnawed at Emily’s heart.
Her presence, once his entire world, was no longer enough.
The boy had found a tether in Theodore, and in his absence, Frederick seemed to be drifting.
"Not yet, darling," Emily said.
"But it's been so many days," Frederick slumped, his bottom lip trembling just a fraction. "He said he had business. Is London very far? Maybe he got lost."
"No, he isn't lost," she promised, kneeling so she was eye-level with him.
She reached out to smooth a stray lock of hair from his forehead, her fingers trembling.
She was now in a fight to keep him, yet here he was, pining for the man who had fled the house to get away from her.
"The Duke is very good with directions. He’ll be back soon. "
"Soon?" Frederick pressed, his eyes wide and searching.
"Soon," she repeated, the word tasting like a lie.
Her mind was a whirlwind of static. George had said he was coming back tonight.
She looked at Frederick’s small, innocent face and felt a wave of nausea.
How was she supposed to protect him? If she kept him here, she was defying the only blood relative who claimed him.
If she let him go, he would be taken to another life by a man he didn't know, away from the only stability he had ever found.
"Go back to the nursery, Frederick," she said, her voice sounding distant even to her own ears. "Peggy has... she has a game for you, I'm sure."
"I want to wait by the window," he insisted, his stubbornness so like the man who had just left the room. "I want to be the first to see the carriage."
"Frederick, please," she whispered, her composure beginning to fray. She couldn't think straight. The ornate walls of the drawing room felt like they were closing in.
She needed a plan. She needed a lawyer. She needed...
She needed Theodore.