Chapter Seventeen #2
Irene nodded, her curiosity overcoming her distaste. She knew why. It was not something she thought about often, naturally, but she was no fool. Her father had been born illegitimate.
Her mother was continuing the story. “None of us wanted scandal, and I thought at first that the easiest thing would be to falsify an engagement. I could break it, after a while, and then no one would have their reputations ruined.”
It was difficult not to gasp. “But, Mama—a broken engagement!”
“Better than no engagement at all,” her mother quipped wryly. “Besides, both your father and I knew precisely what we were getting into. There was to be no romance, no feelings, just…an arrangement.”
Though they both knew how that had ended. “How long did that last?”
“Not long at all.” The Viscountess Pernrith grinned, twisting her wedding band on her hand as she laughed. “The trouble with your father is that he is such an excellent man. Such a kind gentleman. Such an impressive kisser—”
“Mama!”
“Before we knew it, the false engagement had become all too real for each of us, but neither of us wished to entrap the other. It all got considerably complicated at the end,” her mother said with a wistful sigh.
“It’s a miracle that it ended well—but my point is, it did not start as a love match.
It was an arrangement—not an arranged marriage, a false engagement.
Entirely a construct. And yet here we are. ”
“Well!” Irene sat back in the armchair and tried to make sense of all she had heard.
It was…puzzling. Strange, indeed, to have one’s presumptions about one’s parents completely retold when one was an adult. You think you know a person…
Her stomach curdled. She had thought she had known Wilfred, had she not? And look at how wrong she had been in that case.
As though her mother was able to read her very thoughts, the Viscountess Pernrith leaned forward slowly. “Irene, you do not know what sort of agreement Wilfred and this woman—”
“Miss Fletcher,” snapped Irene, her anger instantly baited. “I cannot believe he would—”
“My point is, false engagements—false courtships—are rare, but not impossible. After all, you are the product of one,” her mother said quietly.
It were as though her mother had stabbed her with a red-hot knife. “You—You think Miss Fletcher is already with child?”
“No!” The Viscountess Pernrith paled as she uttered the syllable. “No—oh, bother, I’m getting this all wrong. Your Aunt Dodo was always so much better at these sorts of conversations.”
Irene tried not to laugh. “Well, that flies in the face of absolutely everything I know about her, but if you say so.”
“No, I mean…odds. Probability. What is the probability that this is just a huge misunderstanding between the two of you?” her mother persisted. “I know Wilfred. I’ve known him from a boy. Not the brightest man—”
“Mama!”
“—but you have always defended him,” her mother continued with a wry smile. “Your affection for him has been something I have watched grow with interest. I always wondered when you would see sense. See that you needed him.”
Irene swallowed. It was most disconcerting to discover that one’s secrets—a secret, indeed, from herself—had been so blatant to others.
“I know I was as upset about this as you were at first, but the more I’ve thought over it…
Wilfred strikes me as the sort of man, like your father, to get himself tangled in something accidentally,” the Viscountess Pernrith said with a modicum of pride.
“The difference is, your father fell in love with the person he entered into a false engagement with. Your Wilfred—”
“He’s not my Wilfred,” Irene said automatically.
Her mother gave her a look. “Your Wilfred,” she continued without missing a beat, “has been in love with you since before I think he was even aware of such an emotion.”
Irene wriggled in her seat. “That’s not possible.”
A myriad of memories were flickering through her mind as she said those few words.
It wasn’t possible—yet had it not been Wilfred who had always played with her as a child, when Jessica had been off at pianoforte lessons being finished, and Michael had been at school, and Gwen and Teddy had had each other?
Had it not been Wilfred who had brought her those oranges when she had cried that all the other Chance families had had them but her father was too poor?
Was it not Wilfred who had always defended her, lied for her, even, years after they had left childhood?
Even when it had not mattered?
A strange, hot aching sensation in her was making it most difficult to think.
“And I am not the only one who knows, either,” added the Viscountess Pernrith, and this time she did look uncomfortable. “A certain person came to see me this morning, early. They had a confession to make.”
Irene glared. “I don’t want to hear what Wilfred had to—”
“It was not Wilfred, though I had to say I am saddened that you and your father threw him from the house. Honestly, Irene,” her mother tutted. “That is no way to behave.”
Her temper flared again. “And Wilfred should never have—”
“You truly think Wilfred is the sort of man to come up with such a foolhardy scheme?” Her mother shook her head. “I thought you were more observant than that. Come, now. What person close to you would wish for your best but undoubtedly achieve it in the most idiotic—”
“Michael,” groaned Irene, dropping her head into her hands. “What did he say to Wilfred?”
“I believe he should tell you,” their mother said gently, her expression kind, though tired. “And I do not say such a thing to absolve Wilfred. He acted most foolishly, but he acted, Reeny, out of love.”
Love. Irene had thought she had known what love was, and then Wilfred had had to go and say all sorts of declarations, and she had felt…hot, and joyful, and free, and chained to him in a way she could never have predicted.
But now it hurt. How could love hurt so much?
“He cannot love me,” she said aloud, her voice hoarse. “He would not have done this to me if he loved me, whatever Michael’s involvement.”
“You know,” her mother said, almost as an aside, “I have always been a little envious of the two of you.”
That was sufficient to gain her attention. “‘Envious’? Of me and Michael?”
“You and Wilfred,” the Viscountess Pernrith said wistfully.
“Your father is truly a wonderful man and he makes me very happy. I like my sisters-in-law greatly, and my brothers-in-law…are an acquired taste to which I have been happy to grow accustomed. But I never had a friend, not like you did. Not as a child. Not throughout life.”
Irene stared. She had never expected anything of the sort to come from her mother. Friendship? It was not much to envy.
And yet…perhaps it was. Wilfred had always been there, like a rock.
No, like a tree. Like sunshine, sometimes fading in the winter when he had to go to school, but still there, writing to her, teasing her, encouraging her.
He hadn’t gone on his Grand Tour, had he?
The longest amount of time he’d spent on the Continent had been four months.
Oh, he’d said at the time that he had no great interest in mountains or temples, so… so he had stayed with her.
Irene swallowed. “I feel like I’ve found a great treasure and it’s been snatched away from me.”
Her mother leaned forward, took her hands in her own, and looked up into Irene’s eyes with love, but also a tired exhaustion. “Well, Irene,” she said quietly. “I would say you’ve let it slip through your fingers. Are you going to grasp it again?”
“But it’s over—”
“It doesn’t have to be.”