Chapter 10 #2
Mantheria laughed even harder until it appeared that she could not breathe. She wiped the tears that fell from her lovely blue eyes. Sunny couldn’t help but chuckle, too. Helen was certainly an original.
“And Frederica seems very happy with Lord Pelford. And the duke doesn’t seem to mind that she rules the roost, which is more than I can say for most men, so again, I think Frederica has done very well for herself.”
She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “You’re right. Frederica and Samuel are perfect for each other.”
“I have never been friends with Norwich, but he is known to be a man who never breaks his word. Some lords don’t even ask for his written vow, for they know that he is good for it. So perhaps Becca will be very happy with him. People can change, and I do think that he sincerely loves her.”
At least he prayed most desperately that people could improve because he wanted to change. To be better. Sunny needed to be the sort of man who Mantheria could both love and respect. A husband who was faithful and dependable. A good father to his stepson.
“I pray so.”
Sunny took a sip of milk and set down his glass rather louder than he’d meant to. “And you haven’t even mentioned Wick or Matthew. You assisted both of them in finding their perfect mate. So, I think you’ve done a bang-up job of watching over your family.”
She didn’t say anything for several moments, and Sunny was about to stand up and see if Mr. Edwards had any new information when, at last, Mantheria spoke.
“I was able to forgive him in the end—Glastonbury—Alexander. I just told myself a different story. Rather than being the betrayed wife, I was the enabler of a great romance between him and Lady Dutton. And I wasn’t a complete failure as a wife either, for I provided Alexander with a male heir to inherit his dukedom and continue his family line.
So, ‘It was the best of all possible worlds.’”
It took Sunny a beat or two before he remembered where he’d read that particular line: Voltaire’s Candide.
A satire about the foolishness of optimists and optimism.
It was a book that he had read at Oxford and not particularly enjoyed.
Despite everything that he’d done wrong and the choices that he regretted, Sunny did hope and believe in a better future. One that included Mantheria.
“Then you have watched well over your siblings,” Sunny said carefully.
“Perhaps it is time to let Elizabeth’s words go.
She was a child, and you were a child at the time that they were spoken to you.
And despite your perceived mistakes, your family members are happy.
Maybe it is time that you were happy, too.
Maybe being happy is the best way to be good. ”
Mantheria stood up abruptly and set down her napkin on the table. “Your quite philosophical over breakfast. I fear if we linger into luncheon, you might turn into a radical thinker.”
Sunny was ready to leave the table as well. He’d said almost everything that he’d wished to say to her. Except for one thing. “Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself. But you can’t move forward until you do. I’ve had to learn that for myself.”
The year after Mantheria’s marriage, he’d been drunk more than he’d been sober.
He so keenly regretted not courting her.
Not telling her how he truly felt. And he would have continued to live as a drunken sot until he was able to forgive his own mistakes and try to do better.
Like Odysseus, it had been a long and hard road back to Mantheria.
But he had journeyed it, and he would continue to do so.
* * *
Sunny had spent more time than he’d wished to in Bath.
His mother liked to partake of the waters in the Pump Room, and he could only pray that she was not visiting now.
The last thing that he needed during his search for Andrew was to bump into his mourning mama.
She would try to push him into an eligible young woman with a healthy dowry.
And since Mantheria had been married for the last dozen years, his mother had been barely civil to her.
She blamed Mantheria for the fact that Sunny hadn’t wed a wealthy young lady or produced a son and heir.
And a few spares. Mama had said at Christmastime that even if Glastonbury were at last to die, Lady Glastonbury was getting long in the tooth to be bearing children.
Mantheria was nine and twenty.
Five years his junior and wealthier than any heiress his mother had tried to foist on him.
At least Sunny was no longer in debt, as he had been for the twelve years previous, but his own depleted estate was nothing compared to her private fortune and her son’s inheritance.
Mantheria was like her brother Matthew; they used their money to make more money.
They were both shrewd investors and cutthroat negotiators.
Sunny usually left such dealings in the hands of his steward.
He did, however, have a secret profession: he was a translator of classical Greek texts.
His books included the three Theban Plays by Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus.
The publications had met with moderate success, and he’d even earned a few hundred pounds profit.
Pocket money compared to Mantheria’s fortune, but he was proud of it.
Although he didn’t print them under his own name.
And he was currently working on a translation of Euripides’s Medea, and her sister Helen had promised to publish it at her newly acquired publishing house.
She’d even told Sunny that he did not have to help cover the costs of printing, like he’d done with his previous editor.
Sunny helped Mantheria down from the carriage, and he felt a modicum of relief that she did not flinch from his touch today.
He knew that he was more scholarly than savvy, but he was certain that Bridget’s smile had not been forgotten, even if Mantheria had confided to him about her belief that she had failed her sisters.
Sunny wished that she could see herself like he saw her.
Her mirror seemed to only show her flaws, instead of her incredible achievements and stunning beauty, but he was wise enough not to mention that again.
“Why don’t we go into the Pump Room first?” Mantheria suggested. “As I recall, it is a hotbed for gossip, and perhaps someone might have seen or heard tell of a boy in black going by the name of Andy String.”
The Pump Room was his least favorite place in all of Bath. His mother, on the other hand, loved it. Sunny thought that the mineral water tasted like dirt, despite its supposed healing qualities. And it was chock-full of old tabbies who couldn’t mind their own business or stay out of his.
Sunny offered his arm and held his breath for several awkward moments before Mantheria at last placed her three middle fingers lightly on the inside of his elbow.
Exhaling, at least it was a start. Leaning in, he led her into the Pump Room, which was across from Bath Abbey.
The room was already crowded with invalids, spinsters, and widows who eyed him like Christmas pudding.
He scanned the room, so desperate not to see his own mother that he missed another woman coming up to him.
“Well, Sunny, what has brought you to Bath?” she asked in her booming voice.
The Dowager Countess of Oxford was a bosom beau of his mama and quite deaf in one ear.
She was a large woman with an even bigger voice.
The countess was dressed in a hooped skirted gown in the older style of her generation, although her dark blue dress was obviously new.
She also wore the most incredibly intricate wig with more brown curls than any woman could boast from her own hair.
Her wrinkled face was also painted and powdered.
She was a walking relic with an ear trumpet in one hand and her lorgnette dangling from a chain on her opposite wrist.
He bowed deeply to her. “Lady Oxford, may I introduce the Duchess of Glastonbury?”
Lady Oxford chose that particular moment to bring her wrist to her nose and sniff her snuff into each nostril.
Belatedly, she bowed her head slightly as if pretending not to be able to hear him.
Or perhaps if she dipped her head a little lower, the monstrous wig on top of it would fall to the floor.
Mantheria bowed her head. She did not curtsy, for she was of the higher rank, and Lady Oxford’s behavior was insolent.
Sunny wondered how many snubs Mantheria received because her late husband had been unfaithful. It felt terribly unfair.
He would have moved past the dowager countess, except she was the greatest gossip in all of Bath.
Clearing his throat, he spoke loudly, “Lady Oxford, we are looking for Lady Glastonbury’s son, Andrew.
” He watched as she put the horn close to her ear.
“He’s age eleven and was last seen wearing all black, since he is mourning his father.
His hair is also black, but his eyes are blue like his mama’s.
He is going by the name of Andy String.”
“And odd occurrence to be certain,” Lady Oxford said in her loud voice.
She held up her lorgnette to her eyes and gave Mantheria a thorough examination.
“Her eyes are a very unique shade. Almost unnaturally light. I don’t think I have seen blue eyes like them before among the haute ton—perhaps they come from her mother’s side of the family. The common one, you know.”