Chapter Twenty
Henry turned the queen of hearts over and over again in his fingers, practicing that showy flourish of the fingers that Grace had once shown him, with which the card would vanish from sight.
The glass of brandy near his elbow had run dry almost an hour before and he had had no inclination to fetch more.
Absolution would not be found at the bottom of a bottle.
It was doubtful he’d find it anywhere at all.
The queen of hearts vanished from his fingers; reappeared moments later in the cup of his palm. He wasn’t half so good at this as was Grace, but he’d managed a passing proficiency. Enough that probably only a trained card sharp would have spotted the manipulation.
She was supposed to be his good luck token, the queen of hearts—meant to bring him success. And yet, he didn’t have the sense that she’d failed him so much as that he had failed her.
Grace. He’d failed Grace.
A shred of sound in the distance made his heart lurch in his chest and leap into a disjointed rhythm, half hopeful, half fearful.
“Why is it,” Mother said from the shadows as she stepped out into the night, “I find you most often out here?”
Henry’s heart sank once more to his toes.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, turning the card over in his fingers once more.
Possibly because the house had begun to feel less like his every day.
Possibly because he knew that inevitably he would have to make certain explanations which would cast his family into even more uncertainty.
“Somehow,” Mother said as she approached his small table and slid into the chair, “I have got the feeling I am not who you hoped to see. Miss Seymour?”
Henry shrugged one shoulder. “Or Tansy,” he said, and his voice grated on the words. Because either would have been a comfort, and Tansy, at least, might have led to Grace. He’d have had to return her to her home, eventually, and—
Who the hell did he mean to fool? He’d grown rather fond of the damned cat.
She’d become more or less a fixture of his garden, lazily eyeing him as she rolled through the catmint in feline ecstasy.
Occasionally leaping into his lap for a short nap and a scratch beneath her furry chin.
He’d never imagined himself the sort of man to have a fondness for cats, but somehow he’d developed one. For this particular beast, at least.
“I came to dinner this evening,” Mother said softly. “But you did not. Have you been out here all this time?”
“Most of it,” he answered.
“And you had no evening engagement?”
“I sent my regrets,” he said. He hadn’t known, really, whether or not Grace had received an invitation to the same event he had been scheduled to attend, but he had surmised—from the duke’s description of her constitution earlier—that she would not be attending, even if she had been invited.
And he had not cared to spend the entire evening watching the door, holding his breath in the faint hope that she would walk through it.
“Henry.” Mother reached across the table and touched his hand gently. “Is something amiss?”
He looked down at her fingers atop his hand and thought—she had made some small progress just lately, wading through the thick of her grief.
Even if she had not yet braved the society she still feared, she had sought him out, even sought Eliza out.
She had lost a bit of that reticence with which she had cloaked herself, showed signs of making her way back toward being the mother he remembered; the one who had patched up his wounds and comforted him when he had been very small.
He wished he deserved that comfort now. That he would not have to tell her how he had failed to save them. That he had proved himself a disappointment. That the shame he had always given her was justified.
But when he opened his mouth to admit to it, all that came out was, “Mother, I am going to marry Grace.”
“Ah,” she said. “I suppose I had begun to suspect as much.”
“If she will have me,” he pressed on. “And I hope you will not be disappointed—”
“Darling, why would I be disappointed?”
“—But I love her, and I—” Henry paused, his brows drawing. “You won’t?”
“Henry, of course not. Whatever has given you that impression?”
Just the whole of his life. Just the knowledge he’d held from childhood that he was always meant to be better, to not follow in his parents’ footsteps. To be of sterling character and unimpeachable honor; to be perfect in every regard.
To never make mistakes. Mistakes like himself.
An odd, cold sweat broke out upon his brow, and Henry let the queen of hearts fall from his fingers to the surface of the table, where her face gazed up at him accusingly.
He yanked at the knot of his cravat, tugging it away from his throat, which had gone too tight.
“I know,” he said softly, in a bland monotone, “that I have often been the cause of shame for you.”
Mother jerked, her eyes going wide. “No,” she whispered. “Not ever. Not for one moment. Henry, why would you think such a terrible thing?”
“Because—because—” There was a knot in his gut.
In his heart. A wound he’d lived with as long as he could remember, suppurating within him.
“It’s my fault,” he said, “that you can’t bring yourself to leave the house.
My very existence has caused you nothing but pain.
If not for me, we would not now be in the position we are. If not for me—”
“Oh, Henry.” The words emerged on a muffled sob, and Mother dragged her hand away from his to stifle it with her fingers. “Oh, my sweet, darling boy. That’s not true. I swear to you, it isn’t.”
“You and father always warned me,” he said in a low voice, “not to repeat your mistakes.”
“You have never been a mistake!”
The sharp cry surprised him, and he glanced up at last to see Mother flying out of her seat. For the first time in months she embraced him—like he was again the child he had once been. Her fingers ruffled his hair with the same affection they had always had.
He had never doubted her love. But he had always thought it had been hampered by the weight of what he had cost her.
“My mistake,” she said, “was in burdening you with this before you were even born. You were always innocent, and I—I brought you into a world filled with so much uncertainty. I loved your father from the very beginning, as he loved me, and if I had only trusted that love a little more, a little sooner, I could have spared you so much pain.” She drew in a shuddering breath.
“I could have spared you a childhood filled with brawling.”
Henry startled. “You knew?”
“Always. Every time. Even if you would never tell me yourself.” Another tiny sound, almost a whimper.
“For what other reason does a boy so kind and well-mannered come home with blackened eyes, if not because he was put into a position where he was forced to defend his mother’s honor?
My heart broke for you, each time. Every time you came home with a bruised cheek or a split lip, I knew it was on my account.
” Again a soft riffle of her fingers through his hair.
“I have made mistakes,” she said, “and you, my sweet boy, were made to pay for them. But you were never a mistake. You are my pride and my joy, and there had never been a single moment in which I was anything less than proud of you.”
All these years, he had tried so very hard to be perfect. To be a son she could be proud of. To alleviate that shame he had brought to her. “I thought—I always thought—I had to be perfect,” he said, with a tremulous breath.
“Henry, no one is perfect. Not even you, sweetheart. The most we can ever do is our best.”
He hadn’t even done that, lately. In fact, he’d been at his very worst. So determined to be perfect that he’d fallen shorter of it than ever. But perfection had never been mother’s expectation of him, nor father’s. It had only been his own muddled mind which had demanded it.
And in that moment when he’d let his own anxiety get the best of him, when he’d thought he’d blundered in the same manner he had always been warned against, he had let those anxieties—those insecurities that had been his since childhood—hurt Grace.
He’d given to her the very same pain he’d suffered.
The mistake hadn’t been in loving, or in being loved. It had been in leaving things unsaid. In letting fear sink its vicious claws in and rip away any possibility of joy. Was it already too late for him? Had he, in trying to avoid it, made it a self-fulfilling prophecy?
“I had no idea you felt this way,” Mother said as she released him at long last to dab at her eyes. “Oh, Henry, I am so very sorry. I should have spoken to you long ago.”
But how could she have known? He had never told her until now.
It had taken a whole dismantling of his life to bring him to this point; to the point where he had nothing left to lose—quite literally.
“I should have told you,” he said. So many things he ought to have told her.
For so long, now. “I’m afraid Grace won’t have me,” he admitted.
“I behaved very poorly evening last. I made her think something that wasn’t true. ”
Mother settled into her chair once more. “Which was?”
“That I had to marry her,” he said. “Instead of that I wanted to marry her. I didn’t—I didn’t want to place her in the position you had once been in. To give her a reason to be ashamed. Nor to let anybody else shame her.” And in the doing of it, he had shamed her.
“Oh, Henry,” Mother said softly, reaching for his hand once again. And where he would once have expected to find judgment, he found only comfort.
“The truth of it is, I have wanted to marry her for some time.”
“Then you must clear up this misapprehension immediately,” Mother said, squeezing his hand. “Don’t let things fester and rot between you.”
“I would,” he said, “but she won’t see me.” He winced. “Possibly I compounded my error,” he said, “by visiting this morning to declare my intentions to her brother-in-law, the duke.”
“And he said?”
“Some very impolite—though justified—things which I won’t repeat in your hearing.
Suffice it to say I do not expect to be welcome within their household anytime soon.
” That weight settled once again in his stomach like lead.
“I have to see her,” he said. “Even just once. Even if she tells me to go to hell.”
“Surely she wouldn’t.”
Henry chuckled weakly. “You don’t know Grace.”
“No,” Mother admitted. “But I would like to.” Another squeeze of his hand in gentle reassurance. “Do you suppose I have still got an invitation to attend tea? Would she…turn me away?”
Henry thought for a moment. Naturally his welcome had disappeared entirely.
But he could not imagine Grace turning away anyone who had not personally offended her, for any reason—not even his mother.
“I don’t believe she would,” he said. “But, Mother, there’s something you must know.
” He held her fingers in his, hoping it would lend her strength.
“Despite my best efforts—despite Grace’s—Uncle Nigel has gotten his hands on the evidence he requires.
Probably he is even now putting it to use. ”
For a moment Mother froze. “Oh,” she said at last, in a small voice.
Oh? Only oh? “Mother—”
“Do you know,” she said quietly. “It is…almost a relief, in a way.”
“A relief?”
She grimaced. “I mean to say, Henry, that I have lived in fear of this day for thirty years. When one has got such a secret, one is always fearful that it will one day come out, no matter how careful one has been. And thirty years is quite a long time to dread something happening, you know, and now that it has—well, I suppose it doesn’t feel quite like I thought it would. ”
“How had you thought it would feel?”
“Like the end of the world,” Mother said. “Like I had brought about the end of your world, and Eliza’s. Will we be very poor?”
Henry winced. “I don’t know,” he said. “I will have to meet with our solicitor to review Father’s will.
” Possibly there had been some clever wording that would still allow him to inherit something just by virtue of being the named inheritor.
He’d lose the earldom, of course, and anything which was an asset thereof, anything outright entailed.
But perhaps they wouldn’t quite be left penniless.
“It’s possible,” Henry added, “that Uncle Nigel intends to call the validity of your marriage into question. And if he does, then Eliza…” He hesitated, his voice lowering.
“Eliza will be illegitimate; just the same as me. And there won’t—there won’t be anything I can do for it. ”
Mother took a deep, steadying breath. Her shoulders straightened and firmed into that regal poise that had become so rare after Father’s death.
It was like watching her be reborn, stepping out of the shadows in which she had swathed herself at last. “Regardless,” she said, “she will always be the daughter of an earl. Both of you will always be your father’s children, and mine.
And we—we shall just have to teach her how to hold her head high, won’t we? ”
“Lead by example?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes,” Mother said, and her voice was so much firmer, so much more resolute than he had heard of her in recent memory. “Leading by example. Starting, I think, with tea.”