Chapter Ten
Compared to the London Docks, the docks of Bristol, though loud and bustling with stevedores, offered only a small taste of the intense smells and sensations of their eastern counterpart.
Faced with returning to his temporary lodgings after a perfunctory visit to the Herron Shipping Company’s warehouse and offices at the docks, Wolf ran a hand down his face and endeavored to hire a hansom cab.
He had not seen his aunt or uncle at the offices, which despite his promise of oversight to John, had been the primary purpose of his travel to Bristol.
Instead of returning to his inn, Wolf instructed the hansom past High Street, down the street he had traversed so many times as a boy with his aunt and uncle, where he came to the townhouse he was raised in.
Nothing like the ostentatious Wolfridge House that was now his London abode, this townhouse was warm in its simplicity, its frame of wood built from the large amounts of timber that his family’s company imported to the docks.
The wooden gables resembled the famous Dutch House not so far away, of course without the eccentricities that made Dutch House so well-known.
The sight of the building after such a long time ignited a warmth within him, a feeling he had only recently discovered with Petra.
That warmth was swiftly tempered by healthy amounts of guilt, the bitter fruit of the many years he had remained a stranger to the aunt and uncle who had raised him.
He wondered if he would be turned away, then remembered that they had written to him after all.
Mullins, the same butler he had known as a lad, met him at the door.
As a boy, Wolf had thought Mullins an old man, but now he appeared the same as the last time Wolf laid eyes on the man at fourteen.
Perhaps all adults seem old to children, Wolf mused as Mullins’ gray brows ticked up, the only indication he was surprised by the appearance of a sudden guest.
“Lord Wolfridge,” the man took his hat and his coat and then led him to the drawing room. There was a time when he would not have needed to be led, but over a decade’s absence had a way of changing things.
In the drawing room, before Mullins announced him, Wolf took in the tableau of his aunt and uncle reading the evening post before him. Although they sat over five feet apart from each other, the quiet affection each held for the other was palpable in the air.
This is what you could have had with Petra, a voice inside reminded him and he cleared his throat, attempting to force away his own bitter regret at his thoughtless actions.
He now understood the ease with which Kemberley had manipulated him, exploiting his intricate emotions regarding his father.
Petra’s unexpected will and spine of steel, despite her fairy-like appearance, was something neither of them had anticipated.
At his announcement, his aunt and uncle both slowly looked up from their reading, their eyes meeting the other’s gaze, then widening and turning to Wolf.
“Julian?” His aunt rose tentatively, and Wolf braced for the rebuke he was sure was coming.
Instead of the harsh words he expected, he found his Aunt Diana’s arms wrapped tightly around his middle as she rushed to embrace him.
Over her head, Wolf’s uncle slowly rose.
From the kind expression on the man’s lined face, Wolf recognized the slow pace was likely from the rheumatism they had written of and not any wariness.
“I didn’t know if we would ever see you again,” his aunt murmured.
Wolf stood in his aunt’s arms as his uncle clapped him on the back unsure of what to say.
As with Petra, “I’m sorry” felt far too meager.
Eventually, his arms moved of their own volition and he found himself returning his aunt’s embrace for the first time in well over a decade.
He swallowed hard against the sudden, aching tightness in his throat as a stinging dampness threatened to cloud his vision.
“I knew he would come eventually. I knew we would see him.” Uncle Elliot grasped Wolf’s hand within his own, shaking hands with him in the American style once Diana had lessened her vise grip. “Brandy?”
Wolf finally spoke, “No thank you…Uncle.”
Elliot’s mouth ticked up at that and he began to move slowly to sit down while Diana stayed before him.
“Just look at you, how tall and handsome you are,” she noted as she turned his head this way and that. “Where is it you are staying? You should stay with us.” Wolf held himself still under her perusal, willing back that moisture in his eyes.
I was not sure I would be welcome. “I am staying at the Ostrich.”
“You will stay with us. We’ll have your valet move your things by evening.”
Giving him a look that would brook no argument, Diana turned and pulled the bell pull.
“You must stay for tea, of course. Sit, sit.” Gesturing with her hands, Diana became a flurry of activity as her husband watched on with fond amusement from his armchair.
Before the discomfort of the situation fully sank in, Wolf found himself sitting to tea with his estranged aunt and uncle.
Without even asking, his aunt poured for him in exactly the same way he had always taken his tea.
Of course, she had not forgotten, as warmth and guilt once again twisted through Wolf’s insides.
Finally, he arrived at the purpose of his visit.
“How do you fare, Uncle?”
Uncle Elliot paused, set down his tea with a shaking hand, then glanced at his wife. “I am slow, much slower than I ever thought I could be. I will likely never recover.”
Wolf looked between them. “Is it…” He could not bear to finish his question if this malady was fatal as fear that he had wasted all these years away from his uncle rained fresh upon his psyche.
Diana spoke next as she brought her husband tea.
“We do not know. He could have many more years. Or not. The doctor was not certain.” It was the first time her voice wobbled all afternoon and Wolf longed to reach out and comfort her.
Elliot beat him to it and wrapped her small hand in his large one.
As her voice trailed off, his uncle’s grew in strength.
“It matters not, for I aim to live every day as if it were my last. All I need is my lovely wife…and the occasional spot of brandy, I suppose.”
Wolf stared at the tea in his hand. “I’m sorry I did not come sooner.”
His uncle batted his hand as if to brush the words away. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”
Setting his tea down, Wolf rose to gaze out the window, viewing the bustling street below. “You are too forgiving. I left you, both of you, and never came back.”
“Julian,” his aunt’s voice was very small behind him, but closer. Only when he looked up again did he realize she was standing beside him.
“You were a boy. When your father sent for you, you were just a boy.”
Her small fingers wrapped around his forearm in a comforting grip but he did not turn. He would not let them absolve him so easily.
“Would we have liked to see you more after you left? Yes, of course. You were the son we never had.” His aunt’s words drove in the dagger of guilt he knew he deserved, and she went on. “But we also knew you had responsibilities as a viscount. We would never have dreamed of stopping you.”
At that, Wolf turned. “Who my father taught me to be…was so at odds with everything I learned from you. Hard work. Kindness. I fear I’ve…become him somehow.”
“Oh, Jules,” his aunt whispered, and the name carried him to another petite woman he had wronged just as deeply. She squeezed his arm and placed his hand softly into her own.
“Your father was not a good man,” his uncle said with a grimace that pulled on the lines of his face.
“But he was a persuasive man. My sister, your mother, initially did not wish to marry him. Yet somehow, he found her alone in the garden at a ball and used that opportunity to secure her hand. My objections fell on deaf ears, as her mother supported the match.”
Elliot had been the son born on the wrong side of the blanket and raised in his father’s household. From everything he knew, his uncle loved Wolf’s mother dearly as a sister, but Wolf’s grandmother had hated Elliot and he had little power in the family, especially once he married someone in trade.
Elliot’s story confirmed the lingering threats that Kemberley hinted at: his father had trapped his mother. And Wolf had done the exact same damn thing.
“I took the wrong lessons away.” Shame flowed within him, stiffening his joints.
His head suddenly felt monstrously heavy, and he let the weight guide his gaze to the Turkish carpet below him.
“I did not come to see you, I trapped someone very…dear to me. Just as my father would have done. How does that make me different from him?”
His aunt, after a meaningful glance with his uncle, returned her attention to him.
“What makes you different is the guilt you feel now. From what I know of him, your father never would have contemplated such a thing. Because that feeling will lead to action to address the hurt you caused. Pretty words are all well and good, but you showed up to see your uncle.”
His aunt’s words could not shake the vise that now gripped his chest and his head remained down.
“Unless,” he could feel his aunt glance back at his uncle, “unless it was not just us you feel you wronged. This person you trapped, you mean in marriage?”
His mouth tight, he finally looked up at his aunt.
“Oh Jules, you fell in love, didn’t you?”
Giving a small tip of head, he turned his glance to the ceiling, unable to bear her gaze. “As I said, I did almost the same thing my father did to my mother. I ran roughshod over her wishes and took what I wanted for myself.”
It was his uncle who spoke next. “Don’t you see the difference? Your father never felt an ounce of guilt for what he did to my sister, for how he secured her hand. You can make it right.”
Wolf shook his head. “I destroyed her trust in me. I don’t deserve—” He drew a deep breath. “She has disappeared, there is no way I can make amends.”
“Jules, do you care for this girl?” His aunt’s hand came to rest on his, her fingers nimble yet strong from years of work. While Elliot worked at the dock offices, she was always one to aid in the warehouse when needed.
“More than my next breath.” He had not meant to reveal so much to his aunt and uncle, and yet sitting with them in his childhood home stripped him bare.
“Then hopefully she will come back to you,” his aunt said softly. “But in the meantime…”
“In the meantime?” Hope, which felt so foreign to him mere moments earlier, suddenly sprung like a shoot from his chest.
“In the meantime, you can do better. You can make right not for the sake of winning her back, but because it is right. What does your lady care about?” Diana exhaled through her nose, her eyes alight as he imagined a thousand thoughts coursing through her mind.
“How can you see the world from her perspective?”
“How can I see the world from her perspective?” Wolf repeated, his mind’s eye taking to Petra racing through Covent Garden in a muted gray cloak.
Then, another gray cloak swam to the top of his vision.
A woman with pride and dignity, who would not take from him but for the sake of her child.
And, with that image firmly rooted in his mind’s eye, an idea came to him.
It was mad, bad, and dangerous. Something he would never share with a single soul.
And yet, it might help him understand Petra better.
“I think he has an idea, Di. Care to share, nephew?”
“Not one whit,” Wolf murmured, “but I thank you for the inspiration.”