Chapter Thirteen
Lucinda slipped through the double doors and made her way over to the window so that she could look out on the dark street below.
The moonlight lit the street with a silvery glow.
It gave it a magical quality. So transfixed by the scene, she did not notice Tony coming in.
He came up behind her and touched her shoulder.
She turned and found herself stepping into his embrace.
He was still dressed in his evening wear, and she could detect the faint smell of sandalwood and citrus.
The warmth that radiated from his body was comforting.
She wanted to kiss him more than anything, and when she lifted her face to look at him, she detected a longing in his eyes that must surely be mirrored in hers.
He stepped away but took her hand and led her to the sofa. She sat and waited for him to speak. He looked at her with an expression of excitement and walked a few paces before returning to her.
“Lucinda.”
“Yes?”
She watched as he took something out of his pocket, looking down at it in the palm of his hand before looking back at her.
“I went to your solicitor’s today,” he began. “I wanted to know what, if anything, your father had left for you.”
“Let me guess,” she said, knowing the answer. “Nothing. No letter. No note. No explanation.”
“No. I am sorry. I wanted so much for there to be something that would fill in the blanks. Your father has, however, left you a very generous dowry and an inheritance from your fraternal grandmother. There is some jewelry that belonged to your mother as well. All of which will come to you on your majority or when you marry.”
She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice. Although she should have been grateful for her financial security, she felt numb. Even the thought of her mother’s jewelry did not elicit any joy. “Thank you. That is nice to know.”
“I do not think you realize what this means. You will be a wealthy young woman. There is no need for you to marry in such haste.”
She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I am not marrying for financial security. I do not even need a title.”
“Then what do you want, Lucinda?”
“I want…” You. She nearly said aloud. It was almost painful to look at him, so she lowered her head and stared at her hands in her lap.
“Tell me. You can trust me.”
Trust? She had only herself for so long that to trust in others, especially on such a subject, was almost impossible.
“You know I want a family. I no longer wish to be a pitied orphan. Now, what is it you have for me?”
He frowned at her change of subject, but he had to get back to the subject at hand. “These. I thought you might like them.”
Lucinda looked up, and as he placed an item in her hands. Did she dare look down? But of course she did.
All the air left her lungs when she saw what was in the palms of her hands.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she refused to let them fall and her heart, that needy thing that beat within her, shattered in her chest, making it hard to breathe.
The miniature of her mother. The one she had thought lost. Her mother’s blue eyes stared back at her.
A lock of fair hair lay in a concave curl at the bottom of the frame.
Her beautiful mother, whom she didn’t know and hardly remembered.
Her mother. Stuck in time. Forever young.
“Where did you get this?” her voice sounded fragile, even to her own ears.
“The solicitor had them,” he explained.
“Them?”
“Oh, yes, there is this one too.” He handed her another miniature portrait, this time of her father.
Just as she remembered. Short cropped hair the exact same auburn shade as her own. His eyes smiled, and he seemed so happy. He too stuck in this pose forever. The pain in her heart threatened to burst from her chest.
Tony’s voice broke through the fog of her thoughts. “They were a handsome couple. I see a lot of you in your mother.”
“My parents,” she choked out. Her throat had closed around the lump there. “These are my parents.” Her voice was barely audible, even to herself. A tear slipped down her cheek. “This is how they would have looked before she… when I was a child.”
“She was beautiful,” he said as he kneeled in front of her and wiped the tear from her cheek with his thumb.
“She was, wasn’t she? Do you think… would she have?”
“I am sure she loved you with all her heart. She would never have chosen to leave you.” She fell into his arms, both now kneeling on the rug before the sofa.
She cried in earnest now; she could not have stopped the tears if she tried.
A flood of hot salty tears, bitter grief and the great gulf of loneliness that she had held at bay for so long.
Tears that soaked his shirt and made her body shake with the violence of her emotions.
“But my father did. He chose to leave me.”
“No,” Tony told her in his quiet tone, with the reassurance of his arms. “I am sure that is not true. He must have had a reason. Perhaps he was trying to protect you.”
She looked at him, this shimmering man before her. Could she believe that this might be true? “Protect me from what? What could possibly be so important that he abandoned his child? Abandoned me, when I had no one else?”
Releasing her, he sat back on his heels. “I wish I knew the truth of it, Lucinda. I really do. I have no proof but from what I heard he had done something dreadfully wrong. Something that had put him in a position where, perhaps, certain people wanted him… dead.”
“So, he was murdered then.” It was a statement. A fait accompli. “What did he take?”
“We do not know for sure but maybe some information, so important that he sacrificed everything to keep it away from these people. He perhaps thought he would be able to somehow find safety and once that had been obtained he would have come back for you.”
He handed her another kerchief. How many did he have? “Such a noble story. Farfetched, but I guess I will never know the truth of it.”
He smiled, tucking an errant curl behind her ear. “Would it be so awful to think that he died a hero?”
“If it were true, but what if it was nothing more than a gambling debt? Or some stupid wager gone wrong or…”
He took her face in his hands, so she had to look up at him. “Don’t do this to yourself. Even if it were one of those things, what is the use of souring your memory of him when it too could be untrue?”
She twisted her ring on her finger nervously. “That is the problem. I have no memories, not reliable ones in any case. Sometimes I fear I have replaced my memories with fantasies of how I wished it was, rather than actual memory.”
He pulled her into his arms again and held her as her whole body shook with the shock of it all. The reality that she did not, had not ever really known her parents. They were nothing more than paint on a canvas entrapped forever within a frame.
She was grateful he had brought them to her, but at the same time she wanted to throw them into the fire and watch them consumed by the flames until they were nothing but ash, just like her memories. Nothing more than whispers in the wind, as if they had never existed at all.
“I am sorry, Lucinda. I thought, foolishly now I see, that they would make you happy.”
“It is not your fault, and I am thankful that you brought them to me. I had for so long wanted something I could hold on to, something tangible. And now I have that. So, thank you.” She stood on shaky legs, and he stood too.
She went up on her tippy toes and kissed his cheek.
Turning, she ran from the room, the miniatures clutched to her chest as she ran.
*
Well, that had not gone as expected. Tony really thought they would have made her squeal in delight.
Instead, they had dredged up every deeply hidden insecurity she had about her parents.
The small paintings had given her no answers.
Nothing but evidence that she was, indeed, all alone.
He couldn’t give her what she wanted—her parents back—though if it were within his power to do so, he would in a heartbeat.
Despite his family growing to love her, they were not her own family either.
She had pinned all her hope on finding a husband who could offer her the familial bond she longed for, but he knew that not every family was a happy one. Not every man may be willing to give her the loving devotion she no doubt craved.
He decided that he had to try, at least, to find out if her grandfather on her mother’s side was still alive. To find one family member who was indeed of her blood might soothe her. That, at least, he could do.
He went to his study to plan. A list of people to whom he could speak to in order to find out whether Lord Shorten still lived.
He rubbed his forehead. What if she reacted like she had over the portraits?
Or what if her grandfather wanted nothing to do with her and she found out?
He would have to do this in secret. If the old man wanted nothing to do with her, he would keep it from her at all costs.
He sat heavily on his chair in front of the fire and stared at the door, wishing she were standing there.
His heart ached for her. He knew the loss of a parent.
Though he had never been close to his father, the events of his death had affected them all.
Chaos had reigned in the house, its extent immeasurable.
His mother crying nonstop, Edward looking haunted by his new station as duke, and his siblings walking around like ghosts.
Everyone afraid to laugh or smile. The whole house had been draped in black, as were its occupants.
The color sucked all the happiness from everyone until one day one of his brothers, was it Charlie or Thomas, cracked a joke and it was such a relief to laugh again.
Lucinda had no one to mourn with. No one to break the bleakness of death.
She had to endure it on her own. He kept forgetting how resilient she was.
She was innocent and na?ve in many ways, but he would not call her a shrinking violet.
Tonight, she had mourned her parents and let her tears flow.
Even though he was surprised by her reaction, he understood it.
They were real people. People who had loved her and then had left her through circumstances they could not have controlled.
Lucinda Sterling had come to occupy his thoughts more and more these days, and he knew not how to keep his emotional distance from her.
He knew he had to if he was not to declare himself besotted and lose everything he had fought so hard to keep.
His independence, his position, his sense of worth.
He would not give that up, not even for her.
He needed to maintain a cool indifference so that she could find her damn husband and set him free from this infernal obligation.