Chapter 31
“Ithink I am fond of you now, Uncle Oscar!” Henry declared, sprawled across the pianoforte bench, his feet kicking the air as if composing a score of his own.
Oscar, hands resting on the keys, only gave a dignified sniff. “That’s generous. I do not find you as intolerable, Henry.”
“Rave review,” Clara murmured, not looking up from her relentless quest to play scales faster than her fingers allowed. She had the concentration of a chess master and the impatience of a thunderstorm.
Nancy stood in the hallway and watched the scene, so disoriented by the display of domestic peace that she had to check herself for fever.
Oscar, of all men, guiding small hands to the right octave, correcting posture, offering rare but real praise when Clara nailed the run. Henry, more obstacle than student, had turned the lesson into a pageant of interruption, inserting random chords and “surprise” arpeggios with manic delight.
It was chaos of a gentle sort—noise, but not destruction.
Clara pointed a finger. “Your left hand is on the wrong key, Henry.”
“That’s how Mozart played it,” Henry argued, which was probably a lie, but said with such conviction Nancy nearly applauded.
Oscar, to her infinite surprise, did not scold. “Perhaps,” he said. “But until you have composed a symphony, you must use the keys as directed. Play from the top.”
Henry grumbled, but complied.
Nancy found herself grinning, then muffled it with a hand, then let it show. I should let them be. The world has turned upside down, and I am only going to ruin it by breathing too hard.
She was just backing away when a dry tickle seized her throat. She coughed, quick and sharp.
The effect was immediate: Clara wheeled around, hair flying, and Henry fell off the bench entirely.
Oscar twisted in his seat and found her at the door.
He looked—she blinked to be sure—almost pleased.
“Are you spying on your own family, Duchess?” Oscar asked, rising with the air of a man who had not just been caught pretending at fatherhood.
“I am only taking stock of the damage,” Nancy said. “So far, the room remains upright and all limbs are accounted for. You are either a miracle worker or they have broken you down to your constituent atoms.”
“Both,” said Oscar. “Clara, will you demonstrate the piece for your aunt?”
Clara’s face brightened by five degrees. “Which one?”
“Your favorite.”
Clara slid onto the keys and played a few bars of something classical, then—impishly—switched to a marching song Nancy knew from childhood. Henry chimed in, banging a parallel melody at the far end of the keyboard.
Nancy laughed. “That is the best version I’ve ever heard.”
Henry beamed. “We are a band now. I am the leader.”
“Clara is more skilled,” Oscar said, “but you have the louder voice.”
Henry nodded, as if this were not only true but a point in his favor.
Nancy caught Oscar’s eye. For a moment, the chaos receded, leaving only the two of them in the room.
He said, “Would you like to join us, Duchess?”
Nancy nearly said yes—nearly—but before she could, Clara bounded over and seized her arm. “Did you hear? Uncle Oscar promised to write us a song. All for us.”
Nancy, carried along by the tide, allowed herself to be dragged closer. “He did? I didn’t know the Duke composed.”
“He does not, but he’s going to try,” Henry said. “For us.”
Oscar shrugged. “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“Or the mother of disaster,” said Nancy, but she was smiling.
Oscar’s hand hovered near hers for a moment before he remembered himself and tucked it behind his back.
“I have never heard the twins so happy since they arrived,” Nancy admitted. “You are either a genius or a lunatic.”
“I am both,” Oscar said.
Nancy felt her pulse trip. He’s not joking. He is—
“Uncle Oscar showed us how to play scales with only three fingers,” Henry announced.
“He showed us the secret,” Clara corrected. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Oscar’s lips twitched. “If you’re sworn to secrecy, perhaps we should send you to the Tower for treason.”
Henry paled, uncertain if this was an actual threat.
Nancy rescued him. “The Tower is drafty this time of year. I think we should stick to the music room.”
Oscar looked at her as if she had just handed him a map through some uncharted territory.
Nancy, aware that her own feet were in foreign soil, nearly backed away. “I should leave you to your lessons,” she said, voice a shade less certain than she’d hoped.
Oscar looked as if he wanted to stop her. “Stay,” he said, quietly.
But before she could decide, there was a clamor in the hall, and Miss Mercer appeared, searching for her charges.
“Clara! Henry! You must return to your beds.”
A groan went up from the bench. Henry slumped against the keys; Clara made a face.
Oscar glanced at Nancy. “I fear your reprieve is over.”
Clara’s expression shifted to cunning. “Can’t we finish the lesson first? We’re learning so much.”
Miss Mercer’s shadow appeared at the door. “What is this conspiracy?”
Henry piped up. “We are not conspiring. We are composing.”
Nancy stifled a laugh. “Miss Mercer, would it be possible for the children to finish their music? Just for today?”
Edith eyed the group, then nodded. “Ten minutes. Then arithmetic. No mutiny, or I’ll bring out the extra sums.”
She departed, leaving the door open.
Clara shot Nancy a grateful look and dove back to the keyboard.
Henry sidled up to Nancy, tugging her hand. “If we are a band, will you be in it too?”
“Of course,” Nancy said. “But you must let me be the conductor.”
Henry considered this. “Will you wear a hat?”
“I’ll wear two hats, if it helps,” Nancy promised.
Oscar watched them, something soft and unreadable in his face.
How strange, she thought, to have wanted so long to be elsewhere, and now to want nothing more than to stay right here.
She caught herself. “I’ll leave you to your symphony, then. Don’t let them eat the piano, Oscar.”
He gave a courtly bow. “I will do my utmost, Duchess.”
Nancy, not trusting herself to look back, walked out. Behind her, the music resumed—louder, wilder, somehow more joyous than before.
She thought, as she led the twins down the hallway, that maybe this was the start of something dangerous.
The following morning after breakfast, Nancy closed her office door, exhaled, and collapsed into the chair behind her desk.
Nancy had barely begun to sort the household accounts—scarlet ledgers marching in disciplined rows—when the handle creaked. She glanced up, ready to dispatch whatever emergency required her immediate attention, only to see Oscar entering with a covered plate.
He set it down on the desk and uncovered it with a flourish. “Jam biscuits, freshly abducted from Cook. For Henry.”
Nancy arched a brow. “And you have volunteered as courier?”
“Something like that.”
There was a curious, almost buoyant edge to him today. He looked lighter, less burdened. But Nancy’s own thoughts were in disarray, caught somewhere between the memory of his warmth at the piano and the truth that she could never quite touch him without burning herself.
She tried for breezy. “Are they poisoned?”
“Only with an excess of jam.” He gestured at the plate. “You may try one, if you wish. They are not guarded.”
Nancy reached for the smallest biscuit. “If I take one, does it count as robbing a child?”
Oscar sat, uninvited, in the chair across from her. “I will lie for you if the matter ever comes to trial.”
Nancy bit into the biscuit, found it indecently sweet, and tried not to look as if she enjoyed it. “Henry will not be pleased if I finish his entire plate.”
“We can always commission more.” Oscar took a biscuit for himself, made a face at the amount of sugar, but finished it anyway.
They ate in companionable silence, which—once she adjusted to it—was not uncomfortable. The awkwardness that had lived between them seemed, at last, to be dozing.
Oscar set his biscuit down and regarded her with careful consideration. “You managed the children well. Clara is remarkably improved.”
“Bribery and threats,” Nancy said, licking a smudge of jam from her thumb. “The usual tactics.”
Oscar almost smiled. “You make it look effortless.”
Nancy’s pulse skipped. She looked at the jam stain on the paper, then back at him. “It’s not.”
“I know,” Oscar replied. He looked at her, really looked, as if he were taking stock of every mark she’d left on the world and found it wanting for nothing.
She wanted to hold onto the moment. Wanted to keep it from sliding away into regret or silence.
Instead, she blurted, “I found your letters.”
Oscar stilled. “Which letters?”
Nancy flushed, realizing how that sounded. “The ones in the music room. The ones for Peter and Teresa.”
He went very still, as if bracing for a blow.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, and meant it. “I stumbled on them during the hide and seek.”
He nodded after a moment. “They are unsent. I could not—” He stopped, as if the words themselves required more courage than he possessed.
Nancy reached for another biscuit, mostly to give her hands something to do. “You loved your brother,” she said. “I can tell.”
Oscar laughed, but without any mirth. “He was everything I am not. Kind. Open. Impossible to dislike.”
“I have met you, Oscar,” Nancy replied. “Impossible is a strong word.”
He tilted his head. “You manage it.”
She threw a biscuit crumb at him. It bounced off his jacket, which pleased her immensely.
But he grew serious again. “I was not angry at Peter for marrying. Or even for the scandal. I was angry because he left our mother. He left me.”
Nancy tried to imagine it. “He must have had a reason.”
Oscar looked away. “Our father was cold, a tyrant in every sense. He tolerated us so long as we were invisible and obedient. But our mother—she tried. She loved us. She especially loved Peter.”
He said it without bitterness, but Nancy felt the current of pain underneath.
“She used to tell the housekeeper,” Oscar continued, “that I would always have my title, my name, my place in the world. But Peter—Peter would have nothing but what love she could give him.” He gave a thin smile. “I never resented it. I understood. I had everything else.”
“So what happened?” Nancy asked.
“When Peter brought Teresa home, our mother objected, but only at first. She wanted better for him, but more than anything, she wanted to be loved in return. I thought Peter would talk to her, find a way to bring her round. Instead, he left. He took Teresa and left.” Oscar’s mouth twisted.
“Mother never recovered. She grew ill. But she was more broken than sick, I think.”
Nancy saw the truth in it, the wound that had never healed.
“Peter did not come back,” Oscar said, “not until she died. He claimed he hadn’t known she was so ill, and I believe him. I think he was just… afraid.”
He fell silent, fingers tracing patterns on the desk.
“That was my last conversation with him. At the funeral.” Oscar’s voice was flat.
“I told him I never asked him to give up Teresa. That if he’d only spoken to mother, she would have forgiven him anything.
But she died believing she meant nothing to him.
I told him that, and he wept. Then he left. Again.”
Nancy’s heart ached for him.
Oscar shrugged, as if trying to shake off the memory. “I should have been kinder. I should have forgiven him. Instead, I blamed him for everything I lost. And then he was gone, too.”
A silence stretched between them, heavy as the sea.
Nancy said, softly, “You wrote those letters.”
He nodded. “I wanted to say all the things I never said when he was alive. But I couldn’t send them. I thought—if I wrote it down, maybe I could make sense of it. Maybe I could let go.”
“Did it work?”
Oscar smiled, but it was not a happy smile. “No. Not until now, maybe.”
Nancy reached for his hand. It was a reckless thing, but she did it anyway.
He looked at her, surprised.
“I am sorry for your loss,” she said. “But you have not lost everything. The twins—they are still here.”
“They deserve better than me.”
“They deserve you,” Nancy insisted. “They deserve a duke who brings them jam biscuits and teaches them to play piano and paints with them. You are not your father, Oscar.”
He looked at her, as if the idea had never occurred to him.
Nancy let go of his hand before she could think better of it.
Oscar watched her, the warmth in his eyes startling and new. “You make it sound possible.”
“It is possible,” she said. “But you must forgive yourself, too.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
They sat in silence for a long moment, jam biscuits forgotten.
At last, Oscar rose and circled the desk. He stopped in front of her, searching her face.
Nancy’s breath caught. “What are you doing?”
He took her hand, pulled her gently to her feet. Oscar traced a finger down her cheek to her jaw before he brushed a stray curl back behind her ear.
“Nancy,” he said, her name an entire plea.
She looked up at him and saw everything he’d tried to hide, everything he was trying now to offer.
He bent his head, drew her close. She realized, in a rush, that he meant to kiss her.
I should let him.