Chapter Thirty-Five
Aldric would not have guessed that Crofton still had the ability to shock him. But he did.
“You are reclaiming Norwood Manor?” The question sputtered from him.
“One does not have to reclaim what was already one’s own.” Crofton pushed his plate a little away and eyed Aldric with a smirk.
“You don’t need Norwood.” The fact that it was so unnecessary a holding amongst the vast family holdings was one of the reasons Henri had managed to convince Father to give Aldric the use of it.
“Perhaps I don’t need it.” Crofton’s sneer remained.
“But I like it. It could be a lovely place to spend a few weeks each summer. And making the acquaintance of the Marquess of Grenton wouldn’t be a horrible thing.
I outrank him, of course, but he’s well liked in London and has made connections I would very much like to cultivate myself. ”
Aldric’s home, stability, and future were being snatched away so Crofton could have a summer escape for a couple weeks each year and could toady to a Peer he thought could help him. It was both infuriating and entirely fitting.
“This, then, is why you were here when I arrived. You were waiting for my return so you could tell me this in person.”
“Do not make this about you, Aldric. It is the summer, and this is a summer home. Roderick and I are here enjoying Norwood. This will, of course, one day be his, so I thought it a good idea to begin his acquaintance with the quaint little estate.”
Aldric did not believe for a moment it was mere coincidence. Crofton would not have denied himself the satisfaction of this moment.
“I, of course, don’t mind you staying for a few more days,” Crofton continued with a wave of his hand.
“I hadn’t intended to have houseguests, but I can be accommodating.
Perhaps when the Greenberrys arrive, you can ask them if they would allow you to be a guest in their home.
Your friends would make space for you. They have done so before. ”
It had actually never come to that before.
While his father hadn’t cared for him, and Aldric had done his best to avoid the man, he’d always been permitted to lay his head at any of the family estates he chose to stay at.
He’d simply always chosen one that didn’t include his brother or the late duke.
Aldric suspected instructions had now been sent to all the Hartley holdings declaring Aldric to be persona non grata.
He was not merely to be robbed of his home; he was to be relegated to the status of interloper in everyone else’s.
At some point, Céleste had set her utensils down and pushed her plate away as well. Aldric only noticed because she spoke into the awkward silence hovering over them all.
“Please forgive me,” she said, “but I’m exceptionally weary from our journey and would like to return to the bedchamber I am using.” She didn’t look at him and only glanced at Crofton.
As unwelcome as Aldric was feeling, she must have felt it a hundredfold. They weren’t in the same danger they’d run from in France, but everything was still in upheaval.
She rose, necessitating that Aldric and Crofton do so as well.
“I believe I will write my letter to the Beaumonts,” she said. “Now seems a very good time to do it.”
“Any of the servants would be happy to deliver it for you,” Crofton said, as if it were a generous offer rather than a gleeful dismissal of a guest he hadn’t invited.
Céleste slipped from the room, somehow managing to cling to her dignity even as she looked, to Aldric’s more attuned eye, rather defeated.
Benicks ruin everything.
Everything.
Crofton lowered himself back into his seat once more, but Aldric found himself entirely unwilling to do so.
“I’d wondered why all my things had been moved to a guestchamber,” he said. “I thought perhaps you simply wanted the use of the master’s chambers while you were here. I hadn’t realized it was a permanent rearrangement.”
“I am willing to give you a couple days, but do not press my generosity.”
“One cannot press something that does not exist.” Aldric chided himself for the insult as he made his way from the room. While Crofton deserved all the disparagement that could be heaped on him, Aldric did need to keep the peace enough not to be thrown out immediately.
The Beaumonts would, he didn’t doubt, allow Céleste to stay with them and would accept Adèle if need be. But Aldric didn’t want to lose them yet. And he had this time with Roderick, which was far too rare a thing.
He made his way slowly up to the wing containing the guestchambers.
It had taken a little doing and the help of a couple servants to sort out where his things had been taken.
The house was in a bit of chaos, which ought to have raised his suspicions immediately.
It had been running seamlessly since he had taken over.
Nothing short of Crofton arriving and ruining it all would have upended things so entirely.
He really was going to have to ask Niles and Penelope to let him stay at Fairfield. Or perhaps they could drop him at Lampton Park to see if Lucas and Julia would make room for him. How hard they’d all worked to pull Henri out of this very situation, only for Aldric to be in it himself.
He’d only just stepped into the doorway of the room he was using when Céleste’s voice a couple doors down stopped him. “Aldric.”
He looked in that direction, and she waved him over. As much as he would like to have not needed to explain things any further to her, she deserved to understand her situation. Crofton’s announcement had, after all, necessitated a change in all their plans.
He met her in the doorway of the room she was using, and they both hovered there on the threshold.
“If I had known Crofton was here, we would have gone somewhere else,” he said. “And if I’d known he’d been planning this mischief—”
He had suspected Crofton was up to something.
There’d been far too much of a look of satisfaction in his eyes as Father’s will had been read and the estate settled.
Aldric had assumed it was simply delight at having his inheritance.
He ought to have known the idea of hurting his brother would have appealed to him even more.
“He is doing this to be cruel,” Céleste said.
Aldric nodded. “That is who he is, I’m afraid. He inflicts pain, and he enjoys it.”
“A person ought not to be permitted to simply snatch away another person’s house.” Her fierceness proved a balm in that moment. “And you deserve to have a home, a true home.”
“You don’t have one either.” He brushed his hand over her arm before catching himself and pulling back.
He had promised Stanley to look after the Gents, and that promise needed to extend to everyone who mattered to his brothers-by-choice.
He needed to be wise where Céleste Fortier was concerned.
He’d not only made a mull of things in France; he was, in England, now homeless and, thanks to the loss of his mother’s necklace, hadn’t enough income to ever change that.
Distance was, without question, best.
“Your mother’s necklace—”
“It’s fortunate for all of us that you already know the Beaumonts.” He didn’t usually resort to interrupting people, but he still couldn’t talk about having had to trade away his mother’s gift. And he was certain she had been about to bring up precisely that.
“Your mother—”
“Adèle can stay here until I am forced to leave, but at least you’ll be nearby.”
“Aldric.” She spoke his name quietly. He’d expected frustration; he hadn’t expected compassion.
His shoulders drooped in a sudden wave of exhaustion.
“He’s taking my home away, Céleste. And I can’t stop him.
I promised you and Adèle that Norwood Manor would be a safe place to rest and decide what to do next, and he is making me break that promise.
” He took a tight breath. “How am I going to tell ma petite douce that she can’t stay here after all the times I told her we would? She will never trust me again.”
Céleste softly touched her fingers to his jaw. “She loves you, Aldric Benick. A change of residence is not going to alter that.”
Adèle loved him. That meant the world; it truly did. But Céleste . . . he closed his eyes and took a breath, forcing himself to regain some of his equilibrium.
“Your mother took Crofton’s measure.” Céleste’s hand dropped to his chest. He barely resisted the urge to set his hand atop hers and press them both to his heart. “She wisely gave you a means of escaping him.”
“And I lost that escape.” He opened his eyes, feeling a little surer of his emotions. “What was done had to be done, and I know she would have understood. But I’m still disappointed and frustrated.”
“Do not abandon hope.”
“Opening my mother’s parcel felt like losing her again.
Relinquishing her necklace compounded that.
And now I’ve lost my home too.” His words emerged a little sharp.
He took a quick breath. “Please allow me a chance to grieve this all. I’m not ready to talk about any of it, so please don’t ask me to. ”
“But I—”
“You have a letter to write, Céleste. The sooner you have made arrangements for taking care of yourself, the better your situation will be. You’ll be happier there.” And he would worry a little less about her. “Everyone will be happier with you there.”
She paled. Her hand dropped away, and he felt the loss of that touch all the way to his soul. “One of these days, Aldric Benick, you are going to stop hurting me.”
The rebuke hit its mark. He was so confused and lost. He didn’t know how he was meant to interact with her.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to navigate a future that kept being snatched away.
But there was no excuse for causing pain to the one person in all this world he wanted most to be happy.
This was more of the misery his family forever inflicted on others.
She stepped away from him and pulled her violin case from just inside her room.
“I do enjoy when you play,” he said, “but if Crofton hears, he will likely find a way to use it as a weapon against you.”
Céleste didn’t say anything and didn’t look at him. She set the case on a bench in the corridor beside the doorway they stood in, opened it a little, and pulled something out before closing it again.
“You deserve to have your freedom, Aldric. You deserve a future.” She pressed whatever she had retrieved into his hand. “It is time you claimed both.” She stepped back.
In his hand was Mother’s parcel, still wrapped, still tied in twine, still just as heavy as it had been when he’d handed it to Céleste on the pier in Le Tréport.
“But you paid for our passage with this. We hadn’t money enough. You didn’t have any money at all with you. How did—?”
“I have a letter to write.” She slipped inside her room and closed the door.
It was a message he could not misinterpret: she didn’t want to talk.
He looked back at the parcel in his hand once more. How did she still have this? The captain of l’Horizon would not have given them passage out of mere charity, especially doing so in a cabin where they had privacy. How?
Until she was ready to explain, the question would nag at him. But her closed door told him he would have no answers that night.
She’d left her violin in the corridor. Would she even allow him to knock and return it to her? At least he could latch it closed so her violin would be safe should it be jostled.
He crossed to the bench. Not wanting to accidentally catch anything in the hinges, he opened the case.
His heart dropped to his toes.
The case was empty.