Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"By every law of the land, Your Grace, I am simply exercising my right to protect my own flesh and blood."
George Cluett stood by the fireplace of the cramped, low-ceilinged parlor of The White Hart Inn.
The room smelled of stale ale, wet wool, and woodsmoke.
George had taken rooms for the night there with Frederick, whom he had left sleeping in the room.
It was a modest but clean establishment on the edge of the nearest market town.
George left the fireplace and walked over to sit across from them in the chair by the window. He folded his hands on his knees, his back straight. He had not been surprised to see them. Emily thought he had probably been expecting them.
Theodore had his hand at the small of her back even though they were seated. He had placed it there when they walked in and had not moved it. She found that she was glad of it, the steadiness of it, the reminder that she was not standing in this room alone.
"I mean no disrespect to your station," George continued. "But the boy is a Cluett. My son's son. He belongs among his kin, learning the trade that will sustain him, not being raised as a curious ornament in a house where he has no name."
Emily felt the heat rise in her cheeks, her gloved hands trembling where they were tucked into her muff. "He has a name," Emily countered, her voice ringing out in the small room. "He has a good home. Better than what you can offer him."
"He was a guest, Your Grace," George said, inclining his head toward her. "You must understand that blood cannot be ignored. I am his legal guardian. I have the papers, signed by the magistrate, confirming my right to his person."
"Papers can be challenged, Mr. Cluett," Theodore said. "You took a terrified child from his bed in the middle of the night with constables at your back. That does not look like the actions of a man concerned with a boy's welfare. It looks like the actions of a man seeking a prize."
"I want to know my grandson," George said.
"Is that so difficult to understand, Your Grace?
My son left when he was nineteen. I did not hear from him for years.
He eloped. I did not know there was a boy.
" His jaw tightened. "I found out through rumors.
Through people talking about a duchess taking in her sister's child.
That is how I found out I had a grandson. From gossip."
Emily said nothing.
"I am not a wealthy man," George continued.
"I am not a titled man. I cannot give him what you can give him.
I understand that." He looked up. "But I am his family.
His father's family. The only connection he has to Thomas.
I came because I could not sit in my house knowing he existed and do nothing about it. "
"What would doing something look like?" Theodore asked. "In your mind. When you imagined coming here and finding him, what did you see happening next?"
George opened his mouth. Then closed it.
He looked at his hands.
It was the first time since they had sat down that he appeared not to have a ready answer, and Emily watched him turn the question over.
"I wanted to know him," George said finally. "That is all I wanted."
"Then why the constables?" Theodore added.
George's jaw tightened. He looked at the fire. "Because I knew she would not simply hand him over." He glanced at Emily. "Forgive me, Your Grace. But I knew."
"You were right," Emily said simply.
George let out a sigh and then sat back, his posture collapsing until he looked every bit his age. The silence in the room stretched as he took his time to think.
"You know Thomas was a stubborn lad," George said quietly, his voice finally losing its defensive edge.
"He had a laugh that could shake the rafters of the workshop. I can still see him standing there, his hands covered in sawdust, arguing with me about the grain of a piece of oak. He saw beauty where I saw utility. He wanted more than the shop, more than the life I’d built for him. "
He let out a long, shuddering breath. "When he ran off with your sister, I told myself he was dead to me.
I burned his letters. I told the neighbors I had no son.
I let my pride choke the life out of my own heart for years.
" He looked up at Emily. "Then the news came.
A notice of his passing. A cold piece of paper telling me my only child was in the ground. "
He looked at his hands again, which were gnarled and trembling against the rough wood of the table.
"The world just… stopped. Every room in my house became a grave. I spent nights sitting in his old workshop, surrounded by his half-finished projects, realizing that the silence I’d forced on our family was now permanent.
I had spent years pretending he didn't exist so I wouldn't have to feel the sting of his leaving, but his death?
His death shattered the very floor beneath my feet. "
George took a jagged, shuddering breath, his eyes searching Emily’s as if looking for a trace of the sister who had taken his son away, or perhaps the son himself.
"I heard about the boy through the rumors. I realized that while I’d been nursing my bitterness, a piece of my son was out there, breathing, growing, and I didn't even know the color of his eyes. "
"I really did think that he would come back," George continued.
"Thomas. After a month, after a year, I kept thinking he would come back and we would find some way to be in the same room again and say the things we had not said.
" He shook his head slowly. "He did not come back.
I did not go after him. I told myself he was the one who left. That it was his place to return."
George sat up straighter. "So, please... try to understand. I am an old man, and my house is a tomb. Let me take him. Let me raise him in the trade of his father. It is the only way I have left to get my son back. It is the only way to make things right."
He looked at Theodore. "I am asking you, Your Grace. Man to man. Please."
Theodore looked at him.
Emily held her breath.
"No," Theodore said.
George's face tightened.
"I am sorry," Theodore said, and he meant it. Emily could hear that he meant it, but his voice did not waver. "I cannot do that, and I will tell you why, plainly, because I think you deserve a plain answer."
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at George Cluett directly.
"Frederick came into my life a few months ago," he said.
"He was closed off, frightened, he barely spoke, he flinched at loud sounds, and he would not look at anyone he did not know.
He had lost his father and his mother, and he had a scar on his face that was a constant reminder of the most tragic day of his life.
" He paused. "But now, he does not flinch anymore.
He laughs. Openly, without reservation, the way a child is supposed to laugh.
He asks questions about everything. He has opinions about things he does not even understand.
" He held George's gaze. "He did not arrive here that way.
He became that way because he felt safe.
Because he was loved. Because he had people around him who were not going anywhere. "
George watched Theodore, not blinking.
"He calls for me in the mornings," Theodore said quietly.
"He has done so since I sat with him through a fever one day.
He calls for Emily every night before he sleeps.
He has built a life with us, and he has built it on the certainty that we are not going to leave him.
" He sat back. "I cannot hand him to a man he does not know and send him to a house he has never seen and call it what is best for him.
I cannot do that, and I will not do that.
Not without a fight, that I promise you, Mr. Cluett, you do not want because I will not stop until every resource I possess is exhausted to bring him home. "
The room fell silent. George looked at the fire. He looked at it for a long time, and Emily watched his face, hoping that he would understand... hoping that they could come to some sort of agreement.
"I do not have the strength for this fight,” he said softly. “But I still insist that in some way, I need to be part of Frederick’s life.”
"Then you will be," Emily said almost immediately, causing him to turn his attention to her.
"I mean that without reservation. You are his grandfather. That is not a small thing, and I won’t treat it as one.
Frederick deserves to know you. He deserves to know his father's face through yours, his father's hands through yours, and every story about Thomas that you hold dearly.
" She held his gaze. "Those stories belong to him, and you are the only one who can give them to him. "
"You can visit whenever you wish," she continued. "There will always be a room for you. We will never turn you away, we will never make it difficult, and we will never allow Frederick to grow up not knowing who you are."
The old man’s face finally crumpled in a profound sense of relief. “You can promise that?”
“She can,” Theodore added. "What Emily has offered you is a door that will remain open for as long as you wish to walk through it. You have my word, too."
George looked down at his hands. Thinking to himself.
Emily felt as though she could not breathe; she leaned into Theodore, trying to anchor herself as she waited for George’s verdict.
Deep down, she really hoped that he would consider their offer.
The last thing she wanted was to create a bad relationship between Frederick and his grandfather.
Just then, George stood. He did not say anything immediately. He simply stood and straightened his coat. Emily and Theodore stood with him.
“I shall fetch him,” George said. “Give me a moment. He finally fell asleep this morning after whining all night. Perhaps, I should not have rushed him into meeting me.”
As George disappeared, the heavy tension that had gripped the room finally shattered, leaving only the soft crackle of the hearth.
Emily turned to Theodore, her heart swelling with gratitude so profound it felt like it might explode.
Without a word, she threw herself into his arms, burying her face against the wool of his coat and clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had almost tilted off its axis.
"Thank you," she breathed, her voice a whisper of relief.
Theodore’s arms wrapped around her instantly, pulling her flush against him with a fierce, possessive strength. He rested his chin atop her head, his eyes closed as he drew in a long, shaky breath of her scent.
In that cramped, dimly lit inn, Emily felt a radiant, untouchable happiness. The nightmare was over, and it was the first time in her life that she was held by the man she loved.