Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sterling pushed his fingers through his hair. He did not want to talk about his mother.
“I do not understand.”
How could she? Sterling was certain that his mother would have been too proud to let anyone know that her husband had left her behind.
It was a private family matter…except, Sterling wanted to tell Caroline. Maybe then she would understand.
“She left us.”
“What do you mean she abandoned you?”
Sterling then went on to explain how when his parents sailed to the Cape Colony with Caroline’s family that his father had returned to England without his mother.
“She stayed here and your father went home. Therefore, she abandoned you?”
“Yes!” Maybe now she would understand.
“I was fourteen at the time. How old were you?”
“Ten and eight.”
“Your brothers, were they much younger?”
“Damian was six and ten, Elliot four and ten, Jules three and ten and Avery was only eleven.”
“Did you all live at home?”
“No. They were at Eton and Cambridge. I had already finished my studies.”
“You were an adult who claims to have been abandoned by his mother.”
When Caroline worded it so slowly and deliberately, it sounded ridiculous.
“My brothers were also affected, especially Avery, who was only eleven,” he reminded her. “A boy. That is who she abandoned.” Maybe now she would understand.
“There had to a reason. A woman simply does not up and leave her children never to return.”
“She did.”
Caroline narrowed her eyes. “Tell me the whole of it. You are leaving something out. Unless it is too private of a matter.”
Sterling withdrew what remained of the wine after they had shared their midday meal from the basket and took a drink before he passed the bottle to Caroline, who declined.
“I am reluctant to tell you because it does not show my father in a very good light.”
“Then maybe you are casting too much of the blame on your mother.”
“I was, or I did, but not any longer.” He then began at the beginning, piecing together the story as he knew it from his father and his mother and presented it in the order of how the separation occurred.
He even told her how they were not allowed to talk about her and that she wrote to them regularly.
“You have held onto the bitterness of her not returning when you are the one who cut her from your life.”
He pulled back at her scolding.
“By your own admission, you stopped opening her correspondence. At least she reached out to you.”
He didn’t like that Caroline pointed out his fault in the matter, nor did he want to admit it to himself. “Avery had the most difficult time of it. He was always reading scientific journals and studying plants, but even more so when we realized she would not return. He became sadder, quieter.”
“I am sorry for that. Did she write him?”
“Yes, and I know Avery returned her letters, though he snuck them into the post.”
“I think you need to forgive yourself, Sterling.”
“I did nothing wrong,” he objected.
“When your mother abandoned you, as you say, you turned your back on her. Did it ever occur to you to write and ask why she never came back?”
He hadn’t because he had accepted his father’s explanation, even though he knew there was more. He knew because his father would mumble about his mother when deep in his cups, which he denied the next day after he was sober.
*
Caroline did not question Sterling any further but left him alone with his thoughts for the remainder of their journey.
She hated the pain that he must have suffered when his mother did not return, but she also thought that Lady Wyndham had been treated unfairly.
Except, had she been separated from Livia, she would not have asked permission but would have gone to her anyway.
She also had not known the family then, at least not as she did now, and it wasn’t her place to judge Lady Wyndham, her family, or Sterling.
When they finally arrived back at Wyndview Farm and entered the lavender sitting room Lady Wyndham loved, Livia spotted her and ran into her arms.
This may have been the longest she had been away from her daughter and Caroline suffered a wave of guilt for not thinking about her daughter more often, but she realized that the travel to Stellenbosch had turned out to be something just for her.
However, now that she was back, her responsibilities settled on her shoulders.
But first she needed a private audience with Lady Wyndham.