Chapter Thirty-Four
Duke rode out with Colm the next morning. His parents and grandmother had turned the delight of a house party into something dreadful, but he was grateful to be coming to know his cousin better.
“You ride well for a Cambridge man,” Colm said as they walked back into the house.
“And when you were splattered with mud this morning, you kept your tongue very civil for an army man.”
“If Eve asks, tell her I have treated you exceptionally well.” Colm slapped him on the back. “I have no desire to be on the receiving end of her next well-deserved condemnation.”
“Your mother has called Father to account a few times, and Grandmother certainly delivers her fair share of criticisms to all of us, but that was a stinging rebuke for the ages.” Duke shook his head in amazement. “Eve is truly remarkable.”
“I hope you told her as much.”
Duke couldn’t help the hint of smugness that tiptoed into his smile. “I believe I managed to deliver the message.”
Colm’s laugh echoed around them as they reached the stairs. “I hope your next message will be something similar to ‘I’ve lost my heart to you entirely, Eve O’Doyle. Marry me, or I will waste away in a state of desperate, unmitigated longing.’”
“ Unmitigated is not a very romantic word to include in a marriage proposal.” Duke shook his head. “I’m certain I can think of something better.”
Colm paused and turned to look at him. They’d made it halfway up the stairs to the first landing.
“Then, you are planning to propose?” Colm asked.
“Things haven’t reached that point yet.”
“Why on earth not?” Colm actually sounded a little offended, though whether on Duke’s behalf or Eve’s, he wasn’t entirely certain.
“Your parents have offered me an escape from home, but I don’t yet know how much of an escape from my parents this change of residence will afford me. Until I know how often I will see them and how much grief they will still manage to cause, I cannot tie her to that life.”
“If it helps, life at Fairfield and the London home is entirely peaceful the vast majority of the time,” Colm said.
“But those times when it isn’t are because my parents or our grandmother is here.”
Colm sighed and nodded.
“Once the dust has settled and I know what the landscape will look like, I can ask her if she’d be willing to share a future with me—assuming, of course, it hasn’t proven so awful that the question is rendered moot.”
Colm began making his way up the stairs once more, and Duke kept pace with him. “I will hold out hope that everything works out so well that I find myself with another cousin sooner rather than later.”
“You have hundreds of cousins on the Greenberry side.” Duke knew full well, as did most everyone in Society, that the Greenberrys of Cornwall were an enormous family.
“If you include second cousins in the count, I probably do.” Colm tossed him a smile. “But on the Seymour side, it’s only you and me now.”
“I miss Luke and Róisín.” Duke looked over at him as they continued past the first landing, aiming for the second, the floor on which all the bedchambers were located. “I can’t even imagine how much you miss them.”
“I sometimes feel as though I lost my entire family when my brother and sister died. My parents haven’t been the same since then.”
“You joined the army almost immediately afterward.”
“That is not a coincidence,” Colm said quietly.
“I never thought it was.”
They continued upward in silence, the sort that accompanied comfortable deep thought.
After a moment, Duke spoke again. “Thank you for volunteering to stay at Fairfield when your parents and I leave for London. Eve seems less worried knowing Nia will have time to recover.”
“I lost a lot of friends in the war, Duke. I don’t intend to lose any more.” Colm seldom spoke with any specificity of that time in his life. “And these friends you’ve allowed me to share with you have fast become like brothers and sisters. I’ve needed that.”
They reached the second-floor landing, where they were greeted by Grandmother’s shrill voice. “This is unacceptable, Penelope. I should no longer be surprised at how often you let your own pride undermine you. Shameful.”
Colm sighed. “I don’t know how my mother endures their treatment. Anytime Father attempts to intervene, she pleads with him not to, which frustrates him and confuses me.”
They stopped in the corridor, both looking warily ahead at the family gathering. Duke’s and Colm’s parents stood with Grandmother, no one looking happy about the arrangement.
They approached the combatants. Grandmother, Father, and Aunt Penelope stood nearest each other wearing expressions of distrust. Mother stood a bit apart, watching them anxiously. Uncle Niles paced in the open doorway of the bedchamber Grandmother was using, watching the group with equal parts concern and frustration.
“We have lost everything your father worked so hard to preserve,” Grandmother said to Aunt Penelope. “If not for your selfishness, we would have our land still.”
“If you cannot feel sorrowful for Liam’s loss,” Mother said, “I would think you could at least grieve for Duke’s. Writtlestone could never be Ballycar’s equal.”
“Of all the members of this family,” Aunt Penelope said, “Duke is the one my heart aches for most.”
Father folded his arms across his chest. “Are you going to lecture us now about how we don’t love our son? We had plenty of that last evening.”
“Yes, but did you actually listen to any of it?”
“You always were cruel,” Mother snipped.
“And selfish,” Grandmother added. “I hope Ballycar rests on your conscience, Penelope.”
Duke glanced at Colm, who was looking more like a war-hardened soldier the longer this confrontation dragged on.
“The family estate was lost the way most things are,” Aunt Penelope said firmly and calmly but with a tense edge to her voice. “Through bad luck and bad decisions, neither of which was mine.”
Father didn’t let that explanation go without comment. “That’s how things are lost, are they? Then, whose bad decisions are the reason Luke and Róisín were lost?”
Shock descended on the instant, with all eyes on Father.
“What the devil?” Duke whispered in disbelief.
Tears pooled in Aunt Penelope’s eyes, heartrending pain in her expression. Duke took a step toward her, the mediator in him sparking to life, his mind whirling, not having heard his father say anything so brutal to his sister before. Colm moved in the exact moment Duke did. But neither of them managed more than a single step before Uncle Niles’s authoritative voice cut into the tense moment.
“I have held my tongue from the moment you arrived, Liam, because my wife pleaded with me to. Repeatedly.” He moved with slow, menacing steps toward Father. In that moment, Duke could, for the first time, see in his usually sedate uncle the potently dangerous prizefighter he had once been. “She does that every time, you realize. She tries to save you from yourself. Tries to save Colm and me from you. But as you well know, I never manage to bite my tongue indefinitely. And after what you have just said, I don’t intend to do so ever again.”
Colm’s voice emerged as tense and menacing as his father’s. “My brother and sister will not be used as weapons against my mother.”
Father’s eyes met Duke’s for a fraction of a moment, before flitting to the angry Greenberry men once more. “I shouldn’t have said—”
“I have not the least interest in your excuses.” The white-hot anger that flashed through Uncle Niles’s eyes sent even Duke back a step. “If I ever hear you speak of my children again, I will do far more than toss you out of my house.”
Colm crossed to his mother’s side and put his arms around her.
“The subject of my son was thrown like a spear at me last evening,” Father said defiantly. “None of you came to my defense. No one comforted my wife.”
Duke at last found his voice. “Do not use me as justification for what you said. Mocking a mother’s grief? How could you be so cruel?”
Uncle Niles was still glaring at Father. “Your carriage will be leaving Fairfield in one hour, and you will be in it whether or not you have finished your packing.”
Grandmother never had been one to ignore a chance for abandoning a family member who didn’t currently hold the upper hand. “That really was badly done of you, Liam. You can hardly be surprised that you’re being asked to leave.”
Uncle Niles turned immediately to her, though he didn’t walk in her direction. “You are leaving as well.”
Clearly offended, Grandmother pressed her hand to her heart. “I am Penelope’s mother.”
“A mother who couldn’t be bothered to be here while Penelope buried her children. A mother who insults her more often than she comforts. You have hurt her long enough, and it will no longer be endured. It should not have been endured this long.”
“Penelope,” Grandmother said, “talk some sense into your husband.”
She swiped at a tear but faced her mother directly, Colm’s arm still tucked supportively around her. “You came from Ireland to visit Liam at Writtlestone. It’s time you finished your journey.”
Grandmother didn’t seem to believe what she was seeing and hearing. “But it is almost Christmas.”
Colm gave a single, crisp nod of his head. “You can consider your departure a Christmas gift to your remaining grandchildren.”
Mother turned to Duke. “Explain to your grandmother that Colm didn’t mean grand children. You would not side against your own parents and grandmother.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Father said. “Your aunt and uncle have tossed us all out, Dubhán. You had best gather your things.”
A month ago, he would have dived into the fray, searching for a means of smoothing the conflict between them all. He might even have left with his parents in the name of keeping the peace. Today, he said, “I am remaining at Fairfield.”
Father and Mother looked surprised, but that lasted only a moment.
“We cannot blame you for wishing to finish your little party,” Father said, “but after that—”
“No.” Duke shook his head. “After that, I am going to London.”
Uncle Niles led Aunt Penelope away. Colm walked alongside them. Before going too far, Uncle Niles said over his shoulder to Father, “One hour, Liam.”
“Dubhán.” For the first time in Duke’s life, his father seemed legitimately concerned that his behavior would bear consequences.
“I don’t know what it will take for you to finally let go of all this bitterness,” Duke said, “but I hope you find a way.” Retreating to his bedchamber was not his best option. They might follow him there.
“You truly aren’t leaving with us?” Mother asked, her worry appearing to lean more toward regret than it usually did.
“I am staying here.” He would have considered telling them then that Writtlestone would never be his home again, but he couldn’t be certain it wouldn’t put their backs up once more. They were leaving, which everyone at Fairfield needed them to do. And they appeared to at last be pondering the damage they had done, which he needed them to do.
It was too little and far too late for him to change course and consider making Writtlestone his home again. But it was some hope that the future might not be entirely filled with inescapable animosity.
He turned and walked back to the stairs, dragging himself downward. Would this confrontation, this moment of hard truths, truly change anything? His parents might be so angry that they’d choose never to see him again. Or they might be so determined to feel justified that they would hound his heels, demanding, as they’d done for years, that he take their part. Only time would tell. But for the moment, he had a bit of a respite and the possibility, however slim, that things might change for the better.
This had needed to happen. And he hated that it had. And it hurt so deeply.
I need Eve .
But he didn’t know where she was or how to find her. He wandered for more than a quarter hour before finally crossing her path.
“Duke.” She smiled at first, but her expression turned quickly worried. “What did your family do?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised that you could guess the source of my current discontent.”
She crossed to him. “You only ever wear this particular look of heartbreak when they have been wounding you.” Eve reached up and gently touched his face. “I wish I knew how to take that pain away.”
He truly breathed for the first time since hearing his father speak so hatefully to Aunt Penelope. “My parents and grandmother are being thrown from the house entirely.”
“It is about time.”
Duke sighed, releasing some of the tension he was carrying. “I don’t know if this moment marks a real change or a temporary reprieve.”
She slipped her hand from his cheek to his chest. “Temporary or not, it is much-deserved.”
He set a hand over hers, pressing their hands to his heart. “Until I know how they will behave, what my future interactions with them will look like, I can’t—I won’t know if—”
“You cannot begin fully planning your future until you know what role your parents, and to a lesser extent your grandmother, will play in that future,” she said.
“Precisely. And I will only have those answers after seeing how they move forward. That will take time.”
“You now have a peaceful home to live in and an occupation,” she said, “so you needn’t panic that you haven’t time for watching and waiting and deciding.”
“That’s true.” And it was reassuring.
“And I have Mater’s company to look forward to and will have income enough to help my family restore Nia’s health, so I’m not panicked about the future either.”
Hearing her speak of her future and his tied together in any way warmed him to his core. He was beaten down, but he wasn’t defeated.
“For now, we’ll trust that the future will sort itself,” she said. “What are you needing to sort things a bit in the present?”
“I think a hug would help.” He felt a little foolish making such a juvenile request. But it was what he needed.
Eve wrapped her arms around him. He held her in return, closing his eyes and enveloping himself in the comfort she offered and the tranquil happiness he felt when he was with her. And he didn’t think he would ever forget her fierce defense of him the night before, the succinct way she had declared that he didn’t deserve the treatment he had for so long endured from his family. He had sometimes struggled to believe that himself.
“I love you, Aoife,” he whispered. “I hope you know that.”
“I do.” She looked up at him without breaking the embrace. “And I think I know what else you love.” There was mischief in her silvery eyes.
“What is that?”
“Baking. And I know just the place where you could indulge in a bit of it today. ”
He smiled. Mere minutes after having to finally abandon hope of his parents changing or wanting to stop hurting him, he smiled. Bless the heavens for Aoife O’Doyle. “I think I would thoroughly enjoy that.”
“Excellent.” She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “And I hope you know that I love you, too, Dubhán.”