Chapter 28 #2
Upstairs, silence echoed through the halls, a stark contrast to the happy shouts that had filled the house only days before. He was a Duke, a man of many talents, but in the silence of his study, he had never felt more like a failure. He took the glass of brandy and sipped deeply.
What do I do now?
The brandy burned his empty stomach, but it couldn’t touch the cold that had settled into the marrow of his bones.
Ambrose stared at the crumpled parchment until the words blurred into meaningless black ink.
He was a man who moved armies of tenants and dictated the flow of capital across a shipping empire, yet he couldn’t find the strength to simply stand up.
The silence of the house was interrupted not by the slamming of the front door, but by a soft, rhythmic thudding overhead. The sound of pacing, little, anxious feet padded across the wooden floors of the nursery above.
Ambrose closed his eyes and rubbed them with his palms, but the darkness offered no relief. A moment later, the heavy oak door of his study creaked. It wasn’t the confident stride of a servant or the boisterous intrusion of Morgan. It was hesitant.
“Uncle?”
Ambrose didn’t move. “Go back to the nursery, Philip. It’s late, and you need your sleep. You know better.”
“We are not trying to be naughty, Uncle. We can’t sleep,” a second voice whispered.
Oh, Arthur.
The two boys drifted into the room like ghosts, looking small and frayed in their matching velvet waistcoats. Their faces were scrubbed clean, but their eyes were red-rimmed and sad.
Ambrose finally looked up, his chest tightening at the sight of them. They looked exactly as they had the day he had fetched them from their mother and father’s funeral, lost, braced for a blow, and utterly alone.
“When is she coming back?” Philip asked. He stepped closer to the desk, his small hands gripping the edge of the mahogany. “She didn’t say goodbye. We know she would say goodbye if she was really leaving!”
Ambrose reached for the brandy glass, then pulled his hand back. He couldn’t do this drunk. “She had to leave, Philip. It was… a matter of her own future.”
“She said she would stay with us,” Arthur cried out.
“Adults make promises they cannot keep, Arthur,” Ambrose said, his voice sharp, yet sounding dead even to his own ears. “Life is… complicated. There are rules. There are—”
“I hate adult rules!” Philip shouted.
He wasn’t a child who shouted. He was the quiet one, the observer. Seeing him tremble with rage was like watching a dam break.
“You sent her away because of YOUR rules, didn’t you?”
Ambrose stood up, the chair scraping harshly against the floor. “That is enough, Philip! You do not understand the weight of a name. I am protecting you. I am protecting her reputation! Miss Lewis can make her own choices!”
“She was crying,” Arthur whispered, the sudden drop in volume more piercing than his brother’s shout.
Ambrose froze. “What are you talking about?”
“It was about a week ago,” Arthur said, his bottom lip trembling.
“I went to the schoolroom because I had a nightmare. I saw her through the door. She was holding that little locket of hers and crying so hard she couldn’t breathe.
She looked at your door, Uncle. She looked like she wanted to go to you, but she just stayed in the dark. ”
I knew she was hurting, that she needed me… but my attentions were too much, too late. And now we are here, with no future or solution in sight. What do I say to these poor boys?
“She didn’t want to leave,” Philip said, stepping around the desk to stand directly in front of Ambrose.
He looked up, his face an accusation. “She cares about us. And she cares about you, too. Even I can see it, and I’m just a little boy.
Why are you letting her go to a place where no one loves her? ”
“Philip, it isn’t that simple!”
“It is!” Philip cried. “You are wrong! We heard Uncle Morgan say it, and he’s right! You’re afraid! You’d rather stay in this dark room with your papers than be happy. You’d rather let us be sad forever than have people whisper about a governess!”
The boy’s words were a mirror, reflecting the ugly truth Ambrose had tried to dress up as propriety, duty.
He looked at the twins, the two souls he had sworn to protect.
He realized then that by protecting their future, he was stripping it of its warmth and familial joy.
He was teaching them that love was secondary to status, that duty was a cage.
She is your missing link… Morgan’s voice echoed in his head.
Ambrose looked at the crumpled letter on the desk. For the boys’ sake, she had written. To ensure they are never shamed by my presence.
She was sacrificing her entire life, her heart, her safety, her very meager means, to save him and the boys from a social slight. And he was sitting here letting her do it because he was terrified of the very power he held.
“Uncle?” Arthur asked, his voice small now, clearly fearful of the silence. “Are you all right?”
“No, I am not,” he said with a sharp rasp. “I have a recommendation to write for Miss Lewis, as that is her only wish from me. You will respect me and this household by going to bed at once and leaving me to work. That is my final word on this subject. Now, goodnight.”
Ambrose didn’t look up as the boys retreated.
He couldn’t. If he saw the shattered hope in Philip’s eyes or the way Arthur’s shoulders slumped, he knew the wall he had built around his heart would come crashing down.
Ambrose picked up his quill and dipped it in the ink, his hand shaking so violently that a fat bead of black liquid fell, staining the blank parchment like a tear.
He stared at it, the silence of the house pressing in on him until he felt he might choke on the scent of her lavender and the cold, empty air.
He crumpled the paper, tossed it in the wastebasket, and pulled out a new one.
Damnit, he cursed as he sat in the flickering candlelight. Try again, Ambrose.