Chapter Nine #3
The sudden connection, unexpected and unpredicted, seemed to tie a golden thread of understanding between the two of them as they sat on the bench. Montague’s hackles lowered, though he could not have said when they had first risen.
‘My uncle was a terrible man. Truly terrible.’ Montague cleared his throat.
Had he ever spoken of this? Had anyone ever asked him?
‘He was cruel and vindicative, full of the love of power and prestige. He made it perfectly clear he had accepted me as his ward only so he could control my lands and income until I came of age at one and twenty.’
‘Remember, boy, you are not welcome here. You eat at my table under protest and you will never be my son.’
Boy. How had he forgotten his uncle had spoken to him like that?
Montague blinked away the memories and filled the welcoming silence that Calliope left for him.
‘My cousin, his son and heir, was only a few months older than myself. I thought at first we would be friends—perhaps brothers. My own sister was so much older than me. She had already come out in Society and I…well.’
‘You were lonely.’
There she went again, looking deep into his soul.
Montague sighed. ‘I was. And my cousin knew that…but my uncle had the raising of him, and the cruelty of the father was magnified in the son.’
Calliope’s pencil halted, just for a moment. Then it started again, trailing a new line. Oak leaves, around the new squirrel. ‘You did not deserve to be so treated. So hated. No child does.’
Had he ever heard such words? Could he bring himself to believe them? ‘I thought for a while, if I was just good enough, kind enough, quiet enough…then they would—not love me, but suffer me, I suppose.’
A gentleman with a heavy cane stomped by them. Montague paused, his lungs somehow tight, as though the words he had been speaking had cost him far more breath than normal.
‘But he is dead now, is he not? I mean,’ Calliope added hastily, glancing at him through her eyelashes, ‘I am not one to celebrate another’s passing, but…well, if your uncle is dead and now your cousin—’
‘My cousin,’ Montague said grimly, ‘had a son.’
The boy. John. The child he had left in his house in the guest bedchamber, surrounded by all the toys his own uncle had never purchased him.
Dear God, was it that simple? Was he truly just trying to rectify the terrible past that he somehow could not escape?
‘Ah. A son. The new Earl of Trefusis, presumably,’ Calliope said lightly. Her pencil scratched against the page. ‘His mother must be grieving.’
‘His mother died bringing him to life,’ Montague said quietly. ‘He is…he is in my townhouse this very moment. In Brighton.’
Calliope’s pencil stopped. ‘Here?’
She was looking at him full in the face now, twisting in her seat.
Montague nodded, wishing to goodness he had the bravery to reach out, take her pencil and hold her hands. Why did he need that so desperately? Why did he need not just the touch of another, but her touch in this moment?
‘But—so he is your ward. You are his guardian,’ Calliope said quietly.
Montague nodded dully. ‘History repeats itself, twisting over upon itself like…like an oak tree, I suppose. I was raised by his grandfather. I now raise the next generation—and I’m responsible.
His whole happiness rests on me! What am I supposed to do?
What can I say to a child who has lost a father who I hated and it seems he feared? ’
His voice cracked at the last, his strength no longer sufficient to keep it together.
Dear God, what was he going to do?
For a glittering moment of sunshine pouring down onto the world, nothing moved.
Then Calliope reached out, took his hand in hers and intertwined her fingers with his.
‘You have a chance,’ she said quietly, ‘not to right the wrongs of the past, or undo them—but to start a new story. Paint a new picture of what life for your family, for sons of your line, could be.’
Montague stared at the woman whose expression was serious, and centred entirely on him. ‘I… I do?’
Calliope’s cheeks flushed—or perhaps it was the heat, he did not know. ‘Do you not want a different portrait for your family? To—to untwist the family tree, as you say? Surely you cannot do anything worse than what you have suffered.’
No, Montague thought privately. Probably not. ‘But the boy—’
‘What’s his name?’
Yes, that was right. He had to call the boy by his name. ‘John.’
‘John.’ Calliope smiled, squeezing his hand and releasing it before Montague could cling onto her and beg her never to leave him. ‘I like it. And I am sure you—irritating as you are—will be a fine guardian.’
Montague nodded, all speech now impossible thanks to the knot in his throat.
They sat there for some minutes, in silence. It was a silence he had not experienced before. It was not awkward, or tense, filled with unspoken rage or previously yelled disappointment.
No, it was…calm. Just quiet.
‘Do you want to stay and watch me sketch?’ Calliope asked quietly, picking up her pencil. ‘Rogue that you are, I mean.’
Montague blinked back tears definitely not prickling in the corners of his eyes. ‘Yes please.’