Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
A Mother’s Fears
Ireturned home after the visit to the auction house to find an unexpected guest waiting for me.
“The duchess is here, Your Grace,” Milford said as he took my hat and gloves.
There was only one duchess who would visit uninvited. “Mother?”
“Indeed, Your Grace. She arrived approximately ten minutes ago. In a state, if I may say so.”
Ah. Nicholas must have told her about his intent to join the diplomatic corps. I had hoped for at least another day. Well, I would have had to face the lioness sooner or later. Now was as good a time as any.
“Where have you put her?”
“The drawing room. I have taken the liberty of ordering tea and those small lemon cakes she favors.”
“Thank you, Milford.”
The Duchess of Steele was not a woman given to dramatic displays.
She had endured a marriage of sustained cruelty with a composure that had earned the admiration of society and the private anguish of her sons.
She had emerged from it with her dignity intact and her capacity for love undiminished.
In the years since my father’s death, she had rebuilt herself—quietly, determinedly—into a woman of considerable strength.
I found her standing by the window, her back to the drawing room, her white hair catching the afternoon light. Her hands were clasped before her, knuckles white.
“Warwick, I apologize for arriving without prior notice.”
I dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Nonsense, Mother. You are always welcome.”
A maid and a footman entered with the tea service and lemon cakes. After they quit the room, Mother and I accommodated ourselves on settees opposite each other.
She wasted no time bringing up the subject uppermost in her mind. “Nicholas came to see me yesterday,” she said. “He told me of his plans.”
“To join the diplomatic corps.”
“Yes. He said he has your blessing.”
“He does.”
“Constantinople, Warwick!” she said. The word fell like a verdict. “Do you know what I thought when Nicholas said the word? I thought of plague. Of revolution. Of wars in places I cannot pronounce, fought over borders I cannot find on a map.”
“Constantinople is not a battlefield, Mother.”
“The entire Ottoman Empire is a battlefield. Even I know that much.” She fixed me with a look that was equal parts accusation and appeal.
“He has never been farther than Paris. And he wishes to go to the far side of Europe, to a country in turmoil, surrounded by—by what? Diplomats? Spies? Men who carry knives and settle disputes with poison?”
I chose not to mention that men carried knives and settled disputes rather more directly in London as well. It did not seem the right moment.
“Nicholas is intelligent, capable, and determined,” I said instead. “He has prepared carefully. His French is excellent. He has the income and the connections—”
“I am not questioning his qualifications.” Her voice cracked, just slightly. “I am questioning why my son must go to the one place on earth most likely to get him killed.”
The room fell quiet. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the half hour.
“Because it is where he can do the most good,” I said. “And where his heart tells him to go.”
She looked at me as though I had betrayed her.
“Mother.” I leaned forward. “Nicholas has found his calling. You saw it in his face when he told you—the same thing I saw when he spoke to me. He is not doing this on a whim. He has thought about it, planned for it, and prepared himself. He wants to serve his country, and he wants to do it where his service will matter most.”
“He could serve in Paris. It is civilized. It is close. I could visit.”
“Paris is not where he is needed.”
“Paris is where I need him to be.” The words came out fierce and raw, and for a moment I saw her as she had been when I was a boy—not the composed duchess, but the frightened woman who had gathered her sons close and whispered that everything would be all right, knowing full well it might not be.
Something in my chest constricted.
“I know,” I said quietly. “But we cannot keep him safe by keeping him small. Father tried that—tried to make us smaller than we were, tried to crush anything in us that reached beyond his control. You fought against that. You fought so that we could become the men we were meant to be.”
It was perhaps the most I had ever said to her about my father. Her face went very still.
“That is not fair, Warwick.”
“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t. But it is true.”
She was quiet for a long time. I did not fill the silence. Some silences needed to do their work.
At last, she reached for a lemon cake. I took this as a sign of progress.
“How far is it?” she asked. Her voice was steadier now. Not reconciled—not yet—but no longer breaking.
“Sixty-eight hours by rail. There is a direct train now—the Orient Express. Paris to Constantinople without stopping. Well,” I amended, “with stopping, but one needn’t change carriages.”
“Sixty-eight hours.” She turned the number over as though examining it for flaws. “That is nearly three days.”
“Less than three days. And the British ambassador’s wife is there. Lady White. She is by all accounts a formidable and respectable woman who keeps a close eye on the younger members of the delegation.”
I was not entirely certain of this last point, but I would make it true by the time Nicholas departed. Letters would be written. Favors called in.
“A formidable woman.” The duchess’s mouth twitched—the first sign of anything resembling humor. “Is she anything like me?”
“No woman is anything like you, Mother.”
“Flattery.” But the tightness around her eyes eased, fractionally.
She ate the lemon cake in small, precise bites. I poured her tea, adding the exact amount of milk she preferred—a detail I had known since I was old enough to hold a teapot. She accepted the cup without comment, which was itself a form of gratitude.
“He will write to me,” she said. It was not a question.
“Every week. I will insist upon it.”
“And you will ensure he has everything he needs? Proper lodgings? A reliable valet? Someone who speaks the language?”
“I have already begun arrangements.”
She set down her cup and looked at me—truly looked—and I saw in her expression the complex geography of a mother’s love: the fear, the pride, the fierce reluctance to let go, and beneath it all, the recognition that letting go was precisely what love demanded.
“You are so like him,” she said softly. “Nicholas. The same certainty. The same refusal to be dissuaded.”
“I was under the impression I was the difficult one.”
“You are all difficult in different ways. It is the Thornburn curse.” She reached across the small distance between us and touched my cheek—a gesture so unexpected, so tender, that for a moment I could not speak. “You were never small, Warwick. None of you. No matter how hard he tried.”
I covered her hand with mine. We sat like that for a moment—mother and son, the silence between us no longer strained but something gentler.
Milford appeared in the doorway, assessed the situation with the swift competence of a man who had survived three decades of Thornburn emotional weather, and adjusted his approach accordingly.
“More tea, Your Grace?” he inquired, directing this at my mother with a warmth he would have denied possessing. “And perhaps another lemon cake? I believe there are several remaining, though I cannot vouch for their continued survival. Mrs. Hendricks has been eyeing them from the kitchen.”
The duchess surprised us both by laughing. It was a small sound—fragile, weary—but genuine.
“Yes, Milford. More tea. And guard those lemon cakes with your life.”
“Most certainly, Your Grace.” He bowed with the gravity of a man accepting a sacred commission and withdrew.
She stayed for another hour. We did not speak of Constantinople again. Instead, she asked about the household, about Phillip’s latest escapade—he had apparently wagered an alarming sum on a horse race and, against all odds and good judgment, won—and, inevitably, about Lady Rosalynd.
“You danced with her at the Langley ball,” the duchess said, her tone carefully neutral. “And you escorted her to the Royal Opera House.”
“News travels quickly.”
“News involving my eldest son and a beautiful woman travels at the speed of light.” She studied me over her teacup. “Do you care for her, Warwick?”
The question was simple. The answer was not. I cared for Rosalynd with an intensity that frightened me—that reminded me, in my darker moments, of another woman I had cared for, and what that caring had cost.
“Yes,” I said.
One word. She heard everything it contained.
“Good.” She set down her cup. “She has a kind heart and a sharp mind. I approve.” A pause. “Though I wish you would stop being so mysterious about it. You get that from your father.”
I stiffened, involuntarily.
“The reserve,” she clarified gently. “Not the cruelty. Never the cruelty. You are nothing like him in that regard, Warwick. You never were.”
I nodded. It was all I could manage.
When she rose to leave, she had recovered her composure entirely. “You will speak to Nicholas,” she said at the door. “About the weekly letters.”
“I will.”
“And the lodgings.”
“And the lodgings.”
“And this Lady White person. I should like to correspond with her before Nicholas arrives.”
“I will arrange an introduction.”
She nodded once—satisfied, or near enough—and allowed Milford to hand her into her carriage. I stood in the doorway and watched her go, a small, upright figure framed by the carriage window, her white hair bright against the dark interior.
Milford materialized beside me as the carriage turned the corner.
“The lemon cakes, Your Grace,” he observed, “were a success.”
“They were.”
“Shall I order more for next time? I suspect there will be a next time.”
“There will be several next times, Milford. Order a great many lemon cakes.”
“Very good, Your Grace.” He paused. “If I may say, you handled that with considerable skill.”
“You may not say. But thank you.”
Milford inclined his head and withdrew, his expression one of barely perceptible satisfaction.
I headed to the study. There would need to be a second letter to Sir Philip Currie—further arrangements for Nicholas, details that could not wait.
I sat down, picked up my pen, and wrote it with the care of a man who understood that promises, once made, must be kept absolutely.
Especially promises made to one's mother.
Nicholas would go to Constantinople. The duchess would worry. And I would do what I had always done—stand between the people I loved and the things they feared, absorbing what I could, deflecting what I could not.
It was, I reflected, not so very different from fencing. One simply had to know when to parry and when to yield.
I set the letter aside to dry. Then I drew a fresh sheet of paper toward me and wrote a note to Hargrove at Stevens' Rooms, inquiring about the sapphire parure in the gallery case.
Strictly a matter of business, I told myself.
I did not believe it for a moment.