Chapter Thirty-Three
Lord Oliver, Duke of Hayesford
My meeting with the Turkish ambassador had run longer than I wished. My temples throbbed from a dull headache, and I was glad to be home at last. After inquiring about my grandmother’s health from the housekeeper, I entered my suite and found Amelia staring into the barren fireplace.
“Hello, my love,” I said, moving to her side. She looked at me, her eyes red from crying.
“Did you fight with your mother again?” When she said she was going to visit the children, I was leery. Nobody ruined Amelia’s mood like the countess. I had been hopeful that things might change between them now that Amelia was married and out of the house. Those hopes were dashed.
“My mother, and Noah, and Father are furious with me. Oh, Oliver, I made a mess out of everything.” She buried her face in her hands, sobs racking her entire body. “If I had just left well enough alone, none of this would have happened.”
“Come now, it can’t be that bad.” Amelia had been through many changes in her life, and like me, I was certain the strain of the past week had some bearing on her mood. I knelt next to her chair and slipped my arms around her waist.
“It is worse than bad,” she said, her arms moving around my shoulders. I lifted her in my arms and sat down, settling her on my lap. “Noah overheard Mother and me arguing about Sally, and now he knows the truth.”
“The truth about what? Please start from the beginning, Amelia. Perhaps it’s not as bad as you think.” I rubbed her back. Sally’s death had been tragic and an all too common occurrence for women after giving birth.
“Believe me, it is worse. Sally kept a diary, and I found it in the trunk with Mother’s wedding dress. I thought at first she’d hidden it there, Sally, not Mother. Unlike me, Sally loved that dress, and she used to lament that she was the happiest she’d ever been on her wedding day.”
I nodded. “Thus it made sense for her to hide the diary in the trunk.” Sally had been lively while growing up and often took Amelia under her wing, guarding her from Lady Ellen. I never quite understood Lady Ellen’s animosity. I was biased since I loved Amelia, faults and all.
“Precisely, however, tonight, Mother admitted she was the one who hid it in the trunk.”
“Why hide it at all?” I asked.
She rubbed at her temple and withdrew from my embrace.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Lower lip quivering, she inhaled, her charcoal jacket straining at her breasts.
“On the day of the anniversary of Sally’s death, I overheard my parents talking.
It would seem Sally... Oh, God.” Sobs racked her body, and I held her tight once more. Sally’s death still haunted all of us.
“My sweet Amelia,” I said, not knowing what else to do to soothe her loss. The death of my parents had been sudden. I’d barely been out of the schoolroom and had my sisters to lean on during our grief.
“Sally committed a cardinal sin and will burn in hell for all eternity because of it.”
A knot formed in my stomach, and I tried to make sense of her cryptic explanation. “Surely not.”
“According to her diary, Mother had been doling out laudanum to Sally to aid with her hysteria, only Sally had been hiding a full laudanum bottle from Mother and...and the night she died, she drank the entire bottle.”
The implications hit me full force, and I said a silent prayer. “You mean she took her own life. Was it on purpose?”
“I don’t know, she didn’t indicate that she had any specific plans to, but she was miserable.
She was locked in her room while I made my debut in society.
She was suffering while I was worried about my dance card being full.
I should have known, Oliver. I should have known.
” Abject misery was reflected in her expressive face, the tears falling nonstop.
Bottom lip quivering, her breath came out in pants.
My heart ached for her. I hadn’t seen Amelia this distraught since the first days after Sally’s death. “You couldn’t have known, Amelia. Do not blame yourself for her actions.”
“Mother told me melancholy was normal, and I trusted her word.”
I began to rock her, needing to comfort my wife while I absorbed the full implications of what she alluded to. “You said she hid the diary. Did she tell you why?”
She released a derisive snort. “She claims she didn’t want to shame our family. Sally died, and Mother’s worried about our reputation. I knew she was cold-hearted, but this is beyond the pale.”
“Where does Noah come into this?” I hadn’t seen him in a week, and he was never far from my mind. I missed him with every bit of my soul. Like Amelia, he was an integral part of my life. He was my first lover, and if I could have it both ways, I would meld my two worlds together.
“As far as I know, he had no idea the full extent of Sally’s illness. What I overheard was damning enough. The diary filled in most of the holes.” A glazed look of despair hardened her features, and my heart ached for her.
“And yet you hid it from him. He has the right to know.” I was outraged on his behalf.
Noah was afraid to love again after his wife died.
He hadn’t been willing or able to admit to any greater affection than friendship.
He’d idolized Sally in his head, and nobody could measure up to her until he could acknowledge the truth.
“Ignorance is bliss, Oliver. In hindsight, I wish I had never known any of this. I want to remember my sister as the vibrant woman she was, not a mere shell of her former self.”
“Regardless, that was Noah’s decision to make, not yours.” I was torn between supporting Amelia and what would have been the right choice, telling Noah the truth.
“Noah has been through enough. Why is it bad to wish to shield him from even more pain?”
“Like your mother tried with you?” I asked.
She stiffened in my embrace and lifted her chin to look at me. “Mother was trying to save face and not have her family’s name soiled. I was trying to shield Noah from the awful truth. You know Noah, he will take what happened personally.”
“It is personal, Amelia.” I wished to spare him pain, but sometimes a man had to face things head-on, rather like I had with my marriage.
“It is personal for Sally, not for Noah.” Amelia scrambled off my lap, her color high.
She began to pace the drawing room, flexing her fingers in and out of fists.
“It was Sally’s journey, not Noah’s. He was at sea and had no idea because she chose to keep it from him.
She even put on a false smile for me. How self-centered I was at the time not to notice.
I dismissed her melancholy as normal because everyone told me it was normal. ”
“Ladies are kept na?ve for a reason. It wasn’t your fault.
” It was a familiar subject Amelia, and I discussed over the years.
She wasn’t shy about her desire for women to have more fundamental rights.
My peers would be appalled to learn I agreed with many things she’d said.
Having grown up around strong women, I had a healthy respect for their abilities.
My grandmother hadn’t been shy about voicing her opinion.
As a duchess, she was afforded leniency. Amelia would have the same platform.
“For a reason? Why, so we could be ignorant of the horrors of life, or when the horror happens to us, we are clueless as to why?”
“I understand your argument, but what you and your parents did to Noah wasn’t fair. He needs to know what happened so he can have a chance to heal.”
“In the diary, Sally said she hated the twins. She blamed them for stealing her joy and didn’t think she could ever love them. Once he reads the diary, he will know his children’s mother hated them.” She pressed her fist to her mouth, despair showing in her eyes.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it.” I prayed she hadn’t, but Amelia was right; that would be a devastating blow. At least, it would be for me.
“And Mother let it slip she had felt the same way after I was born. If so, it would explain her animosity toward me. My own mother hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you, Amelia.” Although I wasn’t certain if that were true or not. Lady Ellen never showed any affection toward Amelia like she had for her grandsons.
“She despises me, and I live with that fact every day. The twins were spared that burden by Sally’s death, and I’m not sure if she didn’t purposely take her life because she knew what years of resentment would do to a soul.
My mother is proof of that burden.” She leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling, her entire frame rigid.
I’d never seen Amelia cry with such vigor, not even after Sally died.
My stomach twisted in knots over my inability to help her. Or Noah, for that matter.
“Regardless, he deserves the truth. What he chooses to do with it will be his burden.” Noah loved his boys more than life itself. I trusted he would keep the information to himself and not tell his children.
“He has the diary. He will read it and will hate us, all of us for not being there for Sally. My brother Albert was always indifferent to anyone but himself. I was too wrapped up with the season, Mother locked her up, and Father let her. All of us are guilty. All of us let Sally down.” Agony twisted her lips, and she fell to her knees, the wrenching sobs coming in waves.
I knelt before her, my hand on her back. There wasn’t much I could do to help her. “Sally made her own decision, and nothing you or your family did could have changed that. You can’t blame yourself, Amelia. You didn’t know.”
“I know now, I know now.” She turned her tear-ravaged face toward me and in a harsh whisper, said, “It happened to Mother and Sally. When I have a child, will it happen to me? Will I hate my child?”
I shook my head and drew her close. “You will not because now we know what to look for. If it happens to you, you will tell me. Promise?”
“I promise,” she said on a hiccup. “Although I am not sure what you can do.”
“I will not shame you because of it. I will try my best to understand the same way you have been with my unusual desires.” The world was ruled by men like me.
I had money, power, and prestige. I also had a secret that would shame my family and cast darkness on the house of Hayesford.
I was fortunate that my wife accepted me for who I was.
I would be that person for Amelia. And for Noah.