Chapter Twenty-Seven
Four days had passed since Jonathan’s confession to Verity.
In that time he’d sent Walter and Robert off to Somerton, to which no doubt their father would have returned after the wedding, and resigned himself to a long recovery.
He’d also been forced to think deep and hard about what he’d told Verity, because it wasn’t quite true.
He’d wanted to be totally honest with her about his past, but he’d held back on one thing.
Someone else knew full well what had happened that night and had elected to keep his secret.
And that someone was his mother. The only thing she didn’t know was that Kitty was his child, not his father’s.
Having formed the resolve to remain at Luxborough for his recuperation and probably for some time after that, he’d decided he was going to have to go and see her. She was, after all, both his mother and his neighbor.
So on the fourth day, which happened to be a Friday, he sent for the barouche as there and back in one day was still too far for him to walk, and set off on the short journey to the Dower House.
He’d left Kitty in lessons with Miss Bligh and Verity perusing fashion sketches for dresses for her new stepdaughter, unbeknownst to Kitty, of course. They were to be a surprise.
On arrival, having sent his coachman and the barouche back to the stables, he was escorted into the parlor by one of his mother’s footmen where he found her seated in front of a blazing fire.
He bowed, more than a little stiffly. “Mama.”
She regarded him with cold eyes. “Jonathan.”
“I shan’t wait to be asked to sit,” he said, and, sweeping his coat tails out of the way as best he could with one hand, settled in an upright chair opposite her. “I trust I find you well.”
Her expression didn’t change. “You find me much as you did last time you were here. I believe that was four years since. I am a little more stiff in my joints, a little less mobile, that is all. I doubt you would notice.”
He eased his ribs, which were aching, and leaned back in the chair, hoping for a respite which didn’t come. “I would have called last year when I was down, but Kitty had a cold and I didn’t want to pass it on to you.”
“How thoughtful.”
Damn the woman. He was her only son and, as a child, he’d always thought she had affection for him.
Maybe she had, at first. Until that fateful night, that was, when she’d stood in her nightgown in the shadows and witnessed the fight at the top of the stairs and his father’s fall to his death.
She’d emerged from her hiding place hysterical, and with only a passing glance for her son and the shaking Mary, she’d raced down the stairs to the crumpled, broken heap at their foot.
The sound of her sobbing over his father’s body pursued Jonnie as he hurried the terrified Mary back to the servants’ quarters, out of his mother’s way.
He remembered the venom in her eyes as she’d looked up at him when he returned, and how her lips had stretched back from her teeth in a vicious snarl.
He’d never forget her words of accusation.
“You’ve killed him. You’ve killed my Edward.
What did you have to interfere for? She’s just another servant girl, you fool.
You should have let him have her.” They were engraved on his heart.
She must have seen it was an accident. That his father had lost his footing and that the shove he, Jonnie had given him had been in retaliation for the blow to the face his father had dealt him.
He’d had the bruise to show for it afterwards.
But could he excuse himself like that? Hadn’t he wanted his father dead rather than let him violate Mary?
He’d been nothing but a green boy himself, in the throes of a passionate first love.
He’d almost tumbled down the stairs after his father in his haste to get to his mother.
He’d gone down on his knees beside her, desperate to explain how this had happened and for her not to be looking at him with naked hatred in the way she was.
The words, the excuses, had come pouring out, his heart beating a terrified tattoo in his ears as the import of what had happened sunk in.
“He was going to hurt Mary. He was going to take her to his bedroom. You know what he wanted, Mama. He’s done it before so many times.
He was going to rape her, Mama, I know he was.
She didn’t want it. I couldn’t let him. I love her.
” This last had come out as if he were begging her to understand, as he looked down at the shattered, sprawled body between them.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. It was an accident. ”
It hadn’t worked. She’d not cared a jot that her son was beseeching her understanding, terrified by what he’d done, with tears streaming down his face.
Because she’d never loved him. The only person she’d ever loved, despite his countless dalliances, or perhaps because of them, was his father.
And he was dead, by the hand of a son she now despised. That much was clear.
She’d looked up at him in vicious fury, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Look what you’ve done.” It came out as a hiss.
“You saved a worthless, ten-a-penny servant girl and killed your own father. Swapped one for the other. I can never forgive you. Never. He was worth twenty of you. Twenty, thirty, forty of you.”
He reeled back, unable to understand, knowing he’d played a part in this but also knowing the blame lay at his father’s door.
Knowing also that it was a mother’s job to protect her child.
What if it had turned out differently and it had been him lying broken on the hall floor?
Would his mother have been this angry with his father?
His mother had always been the one he’d thought had loved him.
His father had always been distant and uninterested in his only son.
More interested in the maids and in other people’s wives and his own hedonistic pleasures.
He swallowed. Just the way he now was himself. Like father, like son. He’d turned into his father, a man he’d hated.
He fought these thoughts into the back of his mind. “I came to let you know I’m recovering well after the attack on me.”
Her thin brows knit. “The attack? What attack?”
She must have noticed his arm and bruised face, surely?
It had been nearly a week. Had no one told her? His own staff associated with hers at the Dower House, he knew. Any hope that she might retain a modicum of concern for him vanished. He indicated his splinted right arm. “I’m not wearing this for fun, you know.”
She pursed her lips. “I assumed you had fallen from your horse.”
He sighed. “No, I didn’t. I was set upon by seven footpads and one of them has turned out to be in the pay of my Uncle Sylvester.”
That did shock her. “Your uncle?”
“Yes. My uncle who has spent all of my life wishing me dead. He nearly got his way last week.”
Her frown deepened. “What happened? If you were set upon by seven, how is it you are here in my parlor apparently little harmed?” Her tone was cool and matter of fact, as though it didn’t matter to her whether he’d lived or died in that attack.
The determination washed over him that if he and Verity were lucky enough to have children one day, he would not emulate either of his parents.
He would love his children above all else.
“You will be glad to hear I fought them off,” he said, careless of the little lie and the sarcasm.
She bowed her head. “Fortuitous for you.”
“I am flattered you think so.”
He eyed her knobbly hands. In the four years since he’d last seen her, they’d grown worse.
They looked like gnarled tree roots, the fingers twisted and bent.
When he’d been a child she’d had hands like his, smaller, of course, but with long, elegant fingers on which she’d worn a variety of beautiful rings that had fascinated him and played the harpsichord with skill.
And her hair had now gone completely white.
A brief memory of standing in her bedroom while her maid brushed out her waist-length dark hair flashed into his head.
How different she was now. How cruel life could be.
She cleared her throat. “I assume there is a point to your visit. It cannot be from feelings for me.”
Could it not? Just because she didn’t love him, it didn’t mean he didn’t love her, in some small way.
Perhaps he’d loved her properly, once, but she’d killed all but a small vestige of that love.
A child’s love for the distant parent who occasionally would appear in the nursery in a beautiful gown, reeking of exotic perfume, to pick him up and hold him close, his face in her warm neck.
Had he mistaken that longing for her attention for love? Had he been wrong all along?
“I came to tell you that I shall be staying on at Luxborough for the foreseeable future.”
“And I need to know that, why?”
“You are my neighbor.” He refrained from telling her she was his mother.
Surely she knew that. “I need time to recover from my injuries and Verity likes it here better than in Town.” He gave a rueful smile.
“And I have no intention of returning to London before I’m capable of defending myself from possible assassins. ”
She fixed him with a hard stare. “If you get yourself an heir, you will automatically be safer.” She paused. “Until a son of yours sees you as a barrier to his own progress.” Her tone was icy, tinged with long-matured dislike. Hatred, even.
He bristled. Did she really think that of him? “I shall endeavor not to follow in my father’s footsteps by pursuing the female servants and so offending a son of mine.”