Chapter 11 #2
His almost smile went away. “But I promise I was a bad father. I treated my sons as my father treated me, rather like mindless soldiers who needed to be trained to do their father’s bidding.
I did not see them as their own persons.
Their mother was affectionate, and I knew children need their mother, so they were with her mostly, but I brought them here now and again so they might come to know this place. ”
“And know you.”
“I never let them know me.”
“You must, you must. Charles must know you,” she cried out, wanting to hammer sense into his head.
He did not meet her emotion with any of his own. “He doesn’t want to know me. Because there came a time when I took both of them away from their mother. I forbade them from seeing her unless she removed someone from her life, a man who committed atrocities . . .”
He covered his eyes for a moment, but when he removed his hand, his eyes were still dry.
“Pardon, I cannot speak of it. I wanted my boys safe. And they were not safe with their mother.”
Susannah wished more than anything she could put her arms around him, hold him.
Instead, she asked, “Did you tell your sons your reason?”
Henry shook his head. “They were already against me. To them, I was a monster. And I did not want to tell them that their mother was, in her own way, a monster by association. Then what would they have? An unfeeling father and a selfish mother who would not sacrifice her own gratification to protect them.”
How could he be so calm? She wanted to scream to the heavens at the injustice of it all.
Thousands of bullets whizzed over his head, a horizontal deluge of lead. A man screamed.
Henry strolled in a rose garden with an enchantress.
He had never spoken of his sons this way, not to anyone.
Some part of him believed Susannah had charmed him, used a spell to make him speak of the unspeakable.
The other part knew that was ridiculous, and the only magic at work here was her.
Her interest in him, her kindness, the way she moved through the world, leaving motes of sunshine in her wake.
He feared clouding that sunshine the way he feared a rain of bullets.
And he feared how Susannah might see him once she knew his history, but, once started, he could not stop talking.
He was a river, and the words would not stop flowing.
“Both boys tried to run away several times. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. They saw Bledsoe Park as their prison, and I was their prison keeper. In time, they went to school, and Diana would travel to see them there and bring them presents, but the school was careful, and as long as she never removed them, never brought that man,” he could not hold back his shudder, “and they came here for their holidays, I was satisfied. They had a little piece of their mother, but I had kept them safe.”
“You did well,” she said, her eyes brimming. “You did as you should. You’re an honorable man.”
He could not hear her praise. “Then their mother became ill, and, in a matter of a few days, she was near death. Word was sent to me here, and I sent a message to the school to have the boys come to London to see her. And I went to London myself.”
Where he had drawn a pistol on the so-called poet who had been Diana’s primary lover for years, living off of Diana’s money and fucking her just enough to keep her happy while still indulging in vices that involved children.
Henry had forced the fiend from Diana’s house at the point of that pistol.
His sons would never be near that evil. Never again.
His boys were coming to see their mother before she died. This last meeting was for them. Henry cared nothing for Diana’s comfort. She had chosen a devil over her sons, and once Henry had taken Hal and Charles away again, the poet and Diana could go to hell together.
When his sons arrived by post-chaise, eighteen-year-old Hal stiff with either fear or anger and fourteen-year-old Charles in tears, they gone together into Diana’s bedchamber.
There, she had used some of her last breaths to bring up all the old insults and accusations again.
Mean, priggish, a tyrant, a thief, stealing her money and her youth.
Spiteful not to give her the divorce she wanted. Cruel to keep her boys from her.
“He’ll use you,” she croaked to their sons. “As he used me.”
Henry said not a word. He moved not a muscle. He willed himself to be a rock, to withstand.
Diana died the next day after Henry had already taken Hal and Charles back to Bledsoe Park. The boys stayed together in one room and would not come out until their mother’s funeral.
They returned to school, and Henry never saw them again. Hal left school, took up life in London as a Corinthian. Henry was told by a solicitor when and where to send money, and he did.
Charles went to London to see his brother on his school holidays, and Henry never again forced either of them to come to Bledsoe Park.
He paid all the bills that came to him, responded to every solicitor’s request. A month after Charles had left school for the Continent and his grand tour, Hal died, and Charles did not come home for the funeral and interment as Henry had hoped.
It had been three years now, and Charles was still abroad.
But Mina, the most precious gift of his life, had helped Henry forget some of his grief and his own sins. He looked at her now, racing ahead to meet a nursemaid who had come out of the house to meet her.
He turned to Susannah. “Their mother died, and my sons chose not to see me again.”
“You.” Susannah faltered. “You say you protected them. That is just as it should be. You did what was right. But Charles is no longer a boy, and your wife is dead. You must tell him why you did what you did. You must justify yourself to your son.”
He shook his head. “I do not have the words.”
They both watched Mina go into the house, hand in hand with her nursemaid.
“Shall we keep walking?” Henry asked. He did not want to end this time with her.
“Yes,” she said.
He turned and led her away from the house.
“I hope I have not ruined this beautiful day for you, Miss Beasley.”
“No, of course not. I only hope I haven’t— No, I know I have overstepped. I let my feelings carry me away. You did not ask for my advice, but I was very generous with it anyway.”
“You meant well.” She always meant well. She could only mean well. It would be impossible for her to do otherwise. “But shall we talk of other things?”
“I would talk of anything with you,” she said.
He hoped that was true. They wandered, and she asked about his life before he became the earl, before he married.
He had already told her the stories from his time in the army that were fit for her ears, and he knew she had wanted to go to London, so he told her about his visits there when he was a youth.
About the crowds of people, the theaters, the museums, the shops.
He remembered. “The Manwaring Brothers want you to write to them in London.”
“Oh?” She did not seem interested, and he was glad in the most childish, selfish way.
He then told her about the wonders of Vauxhall Gardens and the fireworks there. He did not have her gift for making pictures with words, but he did his best to describe the spectacle of a night sky full of falling embers. He wanted her to see it, and he thought she did.
But he had unthinkingly steered them towards the mausoleum, to where Diana and Hal lay. And his brother and his nephew and his parents and so many other Delameres.
He hoped she might think the building was just another folly, but she knew what it was.
“I loved my mother,” she said thoughtfully as they turned away from the mausoleum and towards the lake. “But when she died, it was a relief. And not just because it ended her suffering. It ended some of mine.”
“You had been nurse to her for many years.” And mother-in-her-stead to five boys for many more years before that. Only Susannah could have borne up under it.
“Yes, true love is not poetry or heroic deeds. It’s emptying endless chamber pots.” She made a face and laughed, and although he did not think it humorous, he almost laughed, too.
For the first time, he acknowledged what he had known since his arrival home. Henry Delamere might not survive Susannah Beasley with his heart intact.