Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Smythe came to Thomas the next day. Pardon, did not mean to bother his lordship, but her ladyship has not asked for her books.
Thomas turned from the window in the library to look at Smythe. The magistrate had been there that morning and had agreed any questioning of Harry could wait until she was stronger.
Smythe continued, “She’s sitting in the chair at one of the windows in her bedchamber. She walked to the chair herself and said she was only a little dizzy. She’s looking out the window, my lord.”
Thomas still did not understand.
“I showed her the keys the doctor gave me and said I would go upstairs and get her any books she liked. She just took the chain from me and put it around her neck. Thank you, she said. Thank you, but not now.”
Smythe’s voice was rising in pitch and volume.
“In London, even when she had had fever and delirium, my lord, she called out for her Gauss and Euler!”
“Calm yourself, Smythe. It is early days. She’ll ask for her books soon enough.”
But the days passed and she did not. Harry came downstairs for dinner for the first time since Phillip’s death.
“How was your trip to London, my lord?”
“London?”
“Yes. The day . . . the day your nephew died. Were you not in London?”
“No, I had walked over to the Dunbars. I had some business to discuss with them.”
Thomas had wanted to ask if Mr. Dunbar, with his previous experience in shipping, knew of some clever device maker who might make a telescope for Harry. Mr. Dunbar, of course, knew the very man. And Mr. Dunbar would be pleased to assist Lord Drake in making the commission of a telescope.
“Business?” Harry asked.
“Yes,” Thomas said.
“Was Miss Hope Dunbar there?”
Thomas remembered how Hope had looked at him with fear when he had mentioned Phillip’s name at the Dunbar dinner. When they had been dancing. Should he have realized something then?
“Miss Dunbar? Yes, she was,” he finally answered.
Perhaps he had missed clues all along about Phillip’s true nature.
Had Thomas been so desperate for a piece of his beloved lost sister that he had ignored how much Hugh Drake there was in Phillip?
He began to search his memory for other times when Phillip had lied or cheated or treated someone with contempt. There were so many instances.
So when Harry said, “Hope Dunbar is very beautiful, isn’t she? And she has lovely manners,” he replied in an abstracted, almost wistful, manner, “Certainly, certainly.”
“She would make a good wife, wouldn’t she?”
Another certainly from Thomas, who knew the safest course of action was always to agree with Harry.
But he wasn’t listening. He was lost in the past, grappling with his own blindness when it came to his nephew.
For so long, he had been worried he, Thomas, might become a Hugh Drake.
He had never bothered to worry Phillip might have his father’s cruel nature either due to blood or the eight years he was in his father’s care. How foolish Thomas had been.
“And a good mother?”
“Yes, I should think so. What was that, Harry?”
Although she had just come downstairs, Harry thought perhaps she might retire to her bedchamber now. Could Lord Drake ring for Smythe?
Thomas was coming back from the stables and headed towards the house when he saw Hope Dunbar walking down the drive, carrying a basket.
“Good afternoon, Miss Dunbar,” he said, taking off his hat and bowing.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” she said and curtsied. “I’ve brought some elderberry cordial I made last summer. It’s for Lady Drake.”
“That is most kind of you,” Thomas said.
“My father asked me to tell you your commission—the gift for Lady Drake—will be ready soon. And also to give his condolences on the death of your nephew.”
As she handed him the bottle of elderberry cordial, Thomas decided he must know.
“Miss Dunbar,” he said. “I am most apologetic. I know no proper way to ask this, but I feel it is imperative I understand. Did my nephew ever . . . importune you?”
Her face turned the same color as her hair. Her eyes began to fill with tears. Thomas took her hand.
“You need say nothing more, Miss Dunbar. I am most ashamed, and I beg your forgiveness.”
“You have done nothing that needs forgiveness, Lord Drake,” she said. Her lips trembled.
“May I have my carriage take you back to your house?”
“No, my lord. I prefer to take the air.”
Thomas bowed low over her hand.
She walked back down the drive with her shoulders back and her head held high.
Harry stood in her aerie. She paced. She sat. She looked at her notes. She looked at the spines of her books. She went so far as to sharpen a quill and open an inkpot and pull a blank piece of foolscap in front of her.
She knew she had to prove the conjecture for odd prime exponents since the case for four was proven by Fermat himself and all integers greater than two either had four or a prime odd integer as a factor. She knew it had something to do with modular arithmetic. Her notes made that clear.
She understood everything. But she couldn’t see anything. She put her head on her desk and willed herself to remember her grand plan. She couldn’t.
She raised her head to look out the window, the one above the drive.
Harry watched Miss Dunbar—how pretty she was—and Thomas speak. The window was closed, and she was quite high up, so, of course, she couldn’t hear anything.
But it was clear the exchange was charged with emotion for both Thomas and Miss Dunbar. Was the young woman crying? She was. But there. Thomas took her hand most tenderly. He bowed. She walked away. How sad it was they must be separated.
Hope Dunbar. What a good wife and mother she would make. Such a better Lady Drake than the current one.