Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
The Weight of Obligation
"Very well," Lark said, setting down her cup.
For the first time since entering the tavern, I found myself wishing I had ordered whiskey instead of tea.
I had rehearsed this half a dozen ways on the ride over, and every version had abandoned me the moment I saw her face.
My hand found the edge of the table and gripped it—an old habit, the same one that steadied me before addressing men under fire.
Ridiculous, that a conversation over bread and butter should require the same discipline as a battlefield. And yet here I was, marshaling myself.
"Yesterday, my estate manager arrived in London.
He brought with him a boy of ten years of age.
His name is William, though he goes by Will.
His mother was a housemaid at Everthorne Manor.
Sarah Hodge. She died of a fever a fortnight ago in a village near the estate, and her sister cannot keep the child. "
The words felt strangely heavy once spoken aloud, as though naming the boy made him more real, more mine to fail or not fail.
"The boy is my brother's son," I said. "He is at present in my house. I need to determine what I should do with him."
For a moment, Lark simply stared at me. I made myself hold still under it, though every instinct urged me to fill the silence, to soften the confession before she could judge it. Then, "He goes by Will rather than his full name?"
The question caught me off guard. I had braced for something else entirely—disapproval, or the polite recoil of a woman calculating scandal—and her question arrived instead like a hand extended where I had expected a closed door.
"He refuses William," I said. "Claims he will not answer to it."
A faint smile touched her mouth. "Then I already like him."
God help me, I had expected disapproval. Or pity. Or careful aristocratic concern wrapped in polite language. Not immediate allegiance to the boy himself. Something in my chest loosened a fraction, some knot I had not realized I was carrying until it began to ease.
"He is a fine lad," I said. "Angry. Frightened. Grieving. He wants nothing belonging to his father. Not the name. Not the money. He informed me of this within ten minutes of entering my library."
"And what did you tell him?"
"That he shall have what is owed to him, not as charity.
" My fingers tightened against the edge of the table, the wood biting into my palm.
"That he may keep his mother's name if he wishes, or take another, but that I will not force him to carry his father's.
And that I will be honest with him, provided he is honest with me in return. "
"And the larger question?" she asked carefully. "Whether you acknowledge him publicly?"
The fire cracked softly in the grate. I found myself watching it rather than her, gathering something from the flames I could not have named. And then I lifted my gaze to hers. "I have not decided. I wished to speak with you before I did."
I could not explain why I'd sought out her opinion.
Perhaps because I trusted her judgement more than my own, where society was concerned.
Perhaps because she possessed a kind of moral clarity I had encountered in very few people.
Or perhaps because somewhere along the line, her approval had begun to matter to me far more than was wise.
I did not examine that thought further. I had learned, over the years, which thoughts were safe to finish.
"I had not expected that," she admitted softly.
"No?"
"I thought you would already have made your decision and wanted me to confirm it."
I gave a humorless huff of breath, dragging a hand once through my hair before catching myself and stilling it in my lap.
"I nearly did." I had spent most of the night convincing myself there was a practical solution to the matter.
A respectable solution. A school somewhere in Yorkshire.
Tutors. Funds placed discreetly in trust. A comfortable life arranged from a safe distance.
The sort of arrangement men of my rank had been making for generations.
The sort of arrangement my father would have made without a moment's hesitation.
That realization had turned my stomach. Even now, remembering it, my jaw tightened of its own accord.
"Why me?" she asked after a moment.
Because there is no one else in London whose judgement I trust. I did not say that part aloud. I looked instead at the grain of the table, at anything that was not her steady, waiting face.
"Because you understand society better than I do," I answered instead.
"I can imagine very well the hell that would be unleashed on the boy if I were to declare him my brother's bastard to the entirety of Mayfair.
" My mouth tightened. "Because whatever else he may be, he is still an Ashcombe.
And because I will not treat him shabbily. "
She was quiet for several moments while she considered my words. Then she looked up. "Tell me about him."
Something in my chest loosened again, some further measure of the weight I had been carrying since Will's small, furious face first appeared in my library doorway.
I told her about Will's Yorkshire accent and his narrow shoulders.
The way he lifted his chin when he expected cruelty.
The suspicion in his eyes. The refusal of food offered too gently and the acceptance of bread and butter offered plainly.
The bitterness with which he had referred to "a great gentleman" who had not acknowledged his own blood.
And, against my better judgment, I told her about the moment that had nearly broken me entirely.
The moment when I had informed him that I was sorry his father had not claimed him the way he should have done.
My voice had roughened even now in the retelling, and I had to look away from her toward the fire to finish the thought.
By the time I finished speaking, Lark's eyes had grown suspiciously bright.
"There will be gossip," she said. "Mayfair will notice a child in your house within the week, if it has not already."
"I know."
"And the gossip will be worse if you conceal him than if you acknowledge him.
Concealment implies shame. Acknowledgment implies obligation.
" Her voice strengthened, gathering the certainty I had come to associate with her when she believed something to her bones.
"A marquis who publicly acknowledges a child is doing something difficult but honorable.
Society will eventually come round to respecting it.
But a marquis who hides a boy away for ten years becomes a man with secrets. "
My instincts had reached the same conclusion. Hearing her say it aloud felt oddly like relief.
"That was my thought as well," I admitted. "I wished to test it against yours."
"I think you should acknowledge him." No hesitation. No calculation. No concern for scandal before the welfare of the child.
The simplicity of it struck me harder than it should have. I leaned forward without meaning to, closing some of the distance between us across the small table. "Then I shall."
Something flickered in her expression at that. Not triumph. Approval. It settled somewhere low in my chest and stayed there.
"The question now becomes how," I said. "Do I keep him in London or return him to Yorkshire? Do I engage a tutor or send him away to school?"
A faint smile curved her mouth. "You have been thinking."
"All the blasted night." I caught myself a fraction too late, the oath slipping out before discipline could stop it. "Begging your pardon."
That earned me an actual smile, the first unguarded one I had seen from her all afternoon, and something in me responded to it entirely against my will.
"You can take the man out of the army," I said.
"But not the army out of the man,” she finished.
For several seconds neither of us spoke. I was aware, with an acuteness that unsettled me, of the small distance remaining between us across the table, of her gloved hand resting near mine.
The tavern around us faded strangely into the background. The muted voices below. The crackle of the fire. The fogged windows and smell of ale and smoke.
There was only Lark sitting across from me in candlelight with her gloved hands resting lightly beside her untouched tea. And the deeply unsettling realization that this felt dangerously close to peace, something I hadn't experienced in a long time.
She glanced toward the neglected meal between us. "Surely this establishment serves something stronger than tea."
Relief broke the tension at once, and I welcomed it. "Aye," I said. "They serve an excellent ale, and the chops are surprisingly decent as well."
"Then I should like both."
I rose to find Burch, grateful for movement, grateful for anything that put my body back under my own command. "Shouldn't be long," I said when I returned.
Barely any time had passed before the food and drink arrived in a cloud of steam and roasting meat.
For a little while, we spoke of nothing at all while we ate, and I found the silence between us easier than any I had shared with another person in years.
Only after the plates had been cleared and fresh ale poured did I retrieve the pencil from my coat. "Now," I said, "what do you advise?"
She laid out a practical strategy with astonishing efficiency, ticking items off on her gloved fingers as though she had already composed the list in her head before ever arriving.
A distant relation had entrusted the boy to my care.
Legal wardship would follow. I should keep Will in London.
He would never forgive me if I sent him away so soon after losing his mother.
I would need to hire a tutor as well. She recommended one she knew from her literary salon.
The boy would require an entirely new wardrobe.
The clothes he'd worn in Yorkshire would not do.