Chapter 16 #3
Bernard sat up. “My mother had choices. Had somebody confronted her at the age of seventeen and held her responsible for her various schemes and pranks, a lot of innocent people might have been saved a lot of pointless misery.”
Real bitterness colored that observation. Real pain. “Bernard, I am sorry your mother was a disappointment, but she is halfway around the world. Are you perhaps confusing old ghosts with present difficulties?”
He rose, went to the fence, and commenced pacing. “Sorcha, why won’t you even entertain the notion that this situation requires a resolution?”
Sorcha stood as well rather than be literally talked down to.
“The resolution is to move forward, Bernard, and keep a close eye on matters where the children are concerned. You could send your mother to the ends of the earth. I am stuck three streets from Coraline and Tallister and three streets from Their Graces. The Dolforths have the authority and power to separate me from my children. If I must appear to ignore Annette’s foolishness to placate the Dolforths, ignore it, I will. ”
The same bay mare who’d inspected the children’s progress lifted her head to peer at Sorcha.
“Sorry,” Sorcha said, moderating her tone. “I do not mean to be contentious, but you have little proof. Please recall that these people can also ruin your businesses, Bernard, and they will do it while chatting pleasantly with their acquaintances over tea.”
He gave her the same sort of inspection he’d turned on her once before. Both penetrating and distracted, as if he was seeing a version of her she could not recognize for herself.
“When we joined the Greers for Sunday supper,” Bernard said, “Tallister went into the kitchen to fetch the ham. He made a little production out of bringing it forth and laying the platter on the table. My own father was prone to the same ritual, half in jest, half as symbolism for a papa’s role as provider.
Tallister could have meddled with the children’s servings of raspberry fool.
The two youngest were given smaller portions, and both children had bellyaches. ”
Sorcha scuffed her boot over the grass, when she wanted to scream. “Bernard, I esteem you greatly. You are an estimable fellow in many regards, and I do admit the need for some caution.”
He nodded. “Now comes the part where you give me a verbal birching. If it matters, I don’t merely esteem you, I love you, and I love those children. I do think a trip to Scotland is in order, for you and the children. The sooner you depart, the happier I will be.”
Unfair. Unfair and just like him to say the hardest part at the hardest moment.
“If you love me, you will not tell me what to do, Bernard. Chanderton remains the ultimate authority over my children unless and until a new guardian is appointed. Even then, he is the patriarch and a peer. Even the courts will show him great deference. That is the reality I face. His Grace nearly had an apoplexy when I hired Gilchrist without his permission.”
A lump had caught in Sorcha’s throat. She ignored it.
“I did not endure the courtship and marriage Barclay subjected me to, did not endure Mayfair’s tender mercies toward a blameless Scottish girl, just so you—who doesn’t know one hostess from another—could come along and make a scandal out of a squabble.
I will be careful, Bernard, but that’s all I can promise, and being careful means treading softly with those who could make my life and the lives of both my children hell. ”
Jordy and Bridget rose and began climbing the paddock fence.
“I understand your reasoning,” Bernard said, sounding damnably self-possessed.
“I am asking you to choose between a semblance of peace, which you have crafted at great cost over a period of years, and certain conflict with people you might not be able to best. I am offering only my humble self as an ally. Not the best odds, but consider this, please: I have not raised a brood of my own children, though I have been responsible for any number of boys boarding from time to time under my roof. I also was a boy, Sorcha, an often unhappy, bewildered boy.”
He was about to deliver the worst blow. Sorcha watched the children scramble into the paddock and blinked ferociously.
“Go on. I must fetch those children before the horses take exception to a visit.”
“Sorcha, the greatest harm to Jordy thus far is not a passing bellyache or a rap on the head or even a dunking in the lake. It’s that he doubts your commitment to his welfare.
He knows you love him, but in his little-boy mind, it’s already a strong possibility that you value placating the Dolforths more than you value his dignity or respect.
He hasn’t the words to express that, but you’ve seen his sullen and difficult mood in recent days.
Your child needs you, and I fear you will disappoint him, albeit with the best of intentions. ”
How the gently pleading note cloaked an accusation designed to haunt even the best parent. Your son needs you…
“Bernard, I will do what I can to keep the combatants in their separate corners. Modest measures will keep Jordy safe until Annette finds other matters to absorb her attention. Hurling accusations now will cause a rift that will hurt Jordy far more than a bit of bruised boyish pride.”
A weak defense. Jordy’s pride was sorely battered, as Sorcha’s had been all but destroyed in her first Season.
Sorcha was casting around for conciliatory words, for common ground, when the bay mare went on alert, head up, not chewing. She swished her tail at the small human intruders who’d breached the fences of her citadel.
“Jordy and Annette are not combatants, Sorcha. They are cousins. When we are dead and gone, they will still be cousins, and that should count for something positive. Instead, we leave them a legacy of distrust and disrespect, which appears to be the real glue holding Mayfair Society together. They deserve better. Jordy, leave the foal alone!”
Bridget was intent on crossing the pasture, while Jordy had tarried to approach a foal curled in the grass. The bay mare’s ears were back, her tail swishing from side to side as she trotted across the grass.
Bernard was over the fence in a single athletic bound. He’d been standing a few feet from Sorcha one moment, then his hands were on the top rail, and he was on the other side of the fence.
“Please call your son,” he said, jogging off toward the mare. “Halloo, Madam Horse! I’m over here! Ignore the boy, he’s no threat, and I am much bigger and noisier.”
The other mares were showing concern, moving to stand between Bernard, who was trotting around and waving his arms, and their babies.
“Jordy, get out of that field now!” Sorcha yelled. “The mares don’t like you meddling with their babies.”
“C’mon, Jordy!” Bridget bellowed, picking up her pace. “Race you to the fence!”
Jordy stood rooted to the spot, apparently torn between the foal, who continued to regard him placidly from its bed on the grass, and the need to appease parental authority.
Bernard scooped the boy up and jogged away from the foal. “Sorcha, make some noise, please. Move about, distract the ruddy mares.”
“Over here, ladies!” Sorcha thundered as she marched along the fence and shook her skirts. “Have ye no’ had visitors afore? We mean ye no harm. We only came calling to admire yer weans!”
Bridget clambered over the rails. “They are lovely, wonderful babies,” she called. “We would never, ever hurt them.”
Bernard handed Jordy over the fence, then vaulted after him in another athletic bound.
“We’re out!” Jordy called, sounding vastly pleased. “Sorry, mares!”
Sorcha dropped to her knees and hugged her son. “You idiot. You foolish, foolish boy. That mare meant business, and she was bigger and faster than you and determined to protect her baby.”
Jordy tolerated the embrace and then wiggled away. “She scared me. I didn’t know mares got all fierce like that.”
“They do,” Sorcha said, rising. “They don’t like surprises. They don’t like strange creatures sneaking into their paddock to possibly take their babies away.”
The lump was back in Sorcha’s throat.
Bernard ruffled Jordy’s hair. “What have we learned from this, my brilliant little scholars?”
“Stay out of the mares’ paddock,” Bridget said, “unless you want to be kicked.”
“Mama can make quite a racket,” Jordy added. “She yelled at those horses.”
Bernard offered Sorcha his arm. “So she did, and the mares were distracted, and all’s well. I, for one, am a bit peckish after all this excitement. Let’s inspect the buffet, shall we?”
Amiable and authoritative, and Sorcha was both resentful and grateful.
Bernard had once again been gallant, putting himself at risk of harm without a moment’s hesitation.
Chanderton himself would not have done that.
Tallister, Coraline, Lilly… At best, they would have shouted at the children and then criticized Sorcha for her lack of vigilance.
A quarter hour later, Sorcha was busying herself with helping the children choose one small portion of a sweet to tide them over until supper while Bernard fetched glasses of lemonade.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Bernard said when the children were settled on a picnic blanket. “I would like to have a word with my brother. My lady, I will see you at supper. Children, good day.”
The words were pleasant, the demeanor congenial, and yet, the distance Sorcha felt between them was real too.
For the best, perhaps, but even as she had that thought, Sorcha knew it for a lie.
She wasn’t about to whisk her children up to Edinburgh without any explanation to the duke, but she wished she and Bernard had not quarreled. She wished even more that she’d chosen her words more carefully and that Annette was safely married to some doting German prince.
“Mama, are you looking for cloud beasts?” Bridget asked, setting aside an empty plate. “It’s a good day for cloud beasts.”
The sky was lovely, full of puffy white clouds against a serene blue canvas. “I am watching for flying pigs.” Though such signs and wonders were unlikely. Unless, of course, Annette caught the attention of a Continental royal.