Chapter Six #2
“Speak of the devil,” Aunt Emma said, with an inclination of her head toward the drawing room doorway, “and she appears.”
Tansy entered the room with a particularly feline swagger, directing a casual hiss at Danny’s legs as she sauntered by.
The people in the room parted as the Red Sea had done for Moses as she passed, keeping well away from the reach of her claws.
Even Rafe shifted closer toward the arm of the couch as Tansy stopped before it and coiled up to pounce.
“She’s not a demon,” Grace said as she patted her knee, and Tansy picked a delicate path across the cushions toward her, her grey tail swishing and flicking gracefully with each step.
“She’s a perfectly lovely cat.” Tansy curled up upon her lap, settling in to nap as Grace rubbed her furry grey head affectionately.
“To you,” Aunt Emma said. “The last time I tried to pet her—only tried, mind you—I thought she was going to take my finger off.”
“She ruined my cravat last week,” Uncle Rafe said. “Tore straight through it as if it were only paper. I’m fairly certain it was a warning that she could have gone for my throat, if she had had a mind to do it.”
Tansy blinked her large green eyes, the very picture of innocence. Turning onto her side, she tucked her face beneath one massive paw and began to purr.
Caught in between her claws was a single purple catmint flower, the evidence of a long and satisfying romp about his lordship’s garden. Grace plucked it out surreptitiously, crushing the petal between the tips of her fingers before it could be noticed by anyone else.
It seemed Lord Lockhart was a man of his word.
∞∞∞
It was a hell of thing to sit across the dining table from one’s mother and to know that you had been a mistake she regretted making.
Henry listened with half an ear to Eliza’s animated chatter as he furtively watched Mother eat her supper in the same mechanical way she did each evening—on those evenings she bothered to attend dinner.
As if she were only going through the motions of life, with a sort of brittle fragility that suggested any cross word, any hint of strife or discord might splinter her to pieces.
She’d retreated within herself this last year.
It had started the day Father had died, and with each day that passed, she had seemed to lose a little more of herself.
Until her voice had dimmed to a whisper.
Until she walked the halls like a ghost living out the repetitious cycles of the life that had once been hers.
Once, but no longer. Mother had surrendered it a bit at a time, and it had begun with the donning of her widow’s weeds. Though their mourning period had elapsed, she continued to wear them in tribute, he thought, to the husband she had loved so dearly.
He couldn’t recall the last time she had attended an event, though she had most certainly been invited.
He couldn’t recall the last time a friend of hers had been admitted when they had come calling.
He couldn’t recall even the last time she had left the house, except for the occasional walk in the garden.
The talk they had had just a few days ago, when she had tearfully informed him of his illegitimacy, had been the most they had spoken in weeks. Months, perhaps.
She simply did not know how to exist in the world without Father’s stalwart presence at her side.
Father’s undeniable love and affection had, he thought, quelled the worst of the gossip about their relationship, and she had worn that adoration like a shield against the cruelty that the Ton had once slung at her.
They had once slung it at him, too. It had, thankfully, lost its traction before Eliza’s birth, but Henry remembered well enough just how many scrapes he’d become embroiled in during his younger days, in an effort to defend his mother’s honor.
He’d always known his parents’ marriage had not come about under the best of circumstances.
He just hadn’t known exactly how dire those circumstances had been. How his very existence had led them to the precipice over which they were now precariously balanced. A fall from dubious grace that could come at any moment and ruin them all.
Mother couldn’t even bring herself to meet his gaze.
He had never doubted that she loved him, but it was impossible to deny that his very existence had brought her shame.
How many years had she agonized over those few days which had rendered him illegitimate in the eyes of the law?
How many nights had she lain awake, this long-held secret burning in the back of her mind?
Had she always wondered whether it would slip out, eventually?
Had Father also borne that shame? Had they regretted that they had never had another son—a legitimate heir who might inherit, should the truth of his birth reveal itself?
All his life, he’d striven to be the best son it was possible to be. To be honorable and good, of unimpeachable reputation and sterling character. To be upstanding and virtuous and moral. Only to discover he’d failed before he had even been born.
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t allow it to matter. Still he owed his parents for his very life. He owed Eliza the security she would lose if Uncle Nigel succeeded in his aim. He might have been an accident, a mistake—but still he owed a duty of care to those beneath his protection.
“Henry!”
Eliza’s abruptly-shrill voice pierced the fog of his thoughts at last. “Hmm?”
Her lips pursed into a truculent pout, Eliza said, “I was saying how charming Augusta Coombs’ new bonnet is. I would so like to have one like it. Might I?”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” Henry swallowed down the guilt that welled up from the pit of his stomach with another bite of roasted potato.
There was always the possibility that in some not too distant future, there would be no money for the purchase of such things.
Best, then, to let Eliza have those things which pleased her so while there was yet the opportunity.
Eliza gave a muted squeal of glee, wriggling in her seat with excitement. “Oh, thank you! You are just the best of brothers,” she enthused.
Was he, though? Would she still think the same if he failed to rescue them from the calamity he’d brought down upon their heads? That Sword of Damocles might swing at any moment.
“May I be excused?” Eliza asked sweetly as she laid down her silverware and patted at her mouth with a corner of her napkin. “I must write a note to Augusta for the name of her hat shop so that I may send it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“If you’ve finished with your supper, by all means.”
“And you will take me shopping tomorrow?” Eliza inquired eagerly. “Once Augusta has written back?”
The tines of his fork pierced the tender flesh of the filet of turbot upon his plate a bit too deeply. “Mother would be better suited—”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Mother demurred, her voice quavering over the syllables. “Not—not tomorrow, certainly.”
Not ever, he thought she meant to say. Not if it meant leaving the house and risking an encounter with anyone she knew. Not without her husband by her side to protect her from the worst of society’s censure.
Not even for her daughter.
Henry swiped one hand across his face in an effort to relieve the scowl that had settled there. “I’ll take you,” he said to Eliza. “Go on, then. Write your note.”
With a joyous little screech, Eliza bounced out of her chair, pausing only briefly to plant a loud smack of a kiss upon his cheek before she scampered from the room. And then Henry was left alone with his mother, at an oppressively silent table.
The candles upon the table sputtered, flickering flames ill-equipped to hold back the veil of darkness that seemed to collect between them. Like a funerary shroud had been draped across the table.
Henry’s cravat felt unnaturally tight against his throat, and he resisted the urge to tug the knot loose. “She’s just fifteen,” he said into that all-encompassing silence. “We’ve been out of mourning for—what, two months?”
“Henry.” Mother’s voice, pitched to a pleading tone, warbled in the air between them.
“She wants to wear pretty clothes again,” he said. “To visit with her friends and laugh and play. She ought to be allowed those things. And she needs—she needs—”
She needed her mother. He needed his mother. One didn’t stop needing one’s parents only because one had grown up. And now, Father was well beyond their reach. There was only Mother, and Mother—
Mother couldn’t bring herself to do it. She could not pluck herself from the depths of grief and guilt and shame, even long enough for a short outing with the daughter who still needed her. Or to speak to the son who still loved her, who still wanted nothing more than to make her proud.
Would she ever be able to bring herself to meet his gaze again? Or had he become unworthy of even that much respect the very moment the secret she’d harbored for so many long years had at last been revealed?
What little appetite Henry had had vanished as his stomach knotted anew. Silently he laid his napkin upon the table and rose to his feet. “I beg you to remember,” he said softly, striving to keep his tone even and bland, “we have all lost Father. But Eliza oughtn’t lose her mother, too.”
Henry left her alone, to the silence which she preferred, to the darkness in which she had enshrouded herself. And her anguished sob followed him from the room.