Chapter 38
Annabelle
We sleep long and deeply.
And when we wake we eat in the breakfast room, unhurried and lazy.
At the breakfast table, we look at our erotic books. I hold his green one in my hands. I flip through, looking for the scene he described last night.
“I do not see a wedding night,” I frown at one point, flipping the pages.
“Oh,” he smiles. “Well, you will not find it.”
“You rogue! You invented it, did you?” I must admit that his deception surprises me.
“Yes.” He smiles. “We wrote something new together.”
“Perhaps we should write it down. I know places where people would pay good money to read such a work of imagination.”
Then I propose a walk in the gardens.
Alfred acquiesces, slipping his hand into mine.
I want to tell him about Trescott. Especially since one day it could become his.
I have shared with him so little of my childhood.
I do have affection for the estate itself. My youth here was not all bad.
As if sensing my thoughts, when we reach the willow tree, he turns to me.
“Annabelle, why did your father leave you the estate? You never explained why he had such a change of heart. And the estate—it was never entailed? He could leave it to whoever he wished?”
“No, it never has been entailed,” I say softly, looking up at the high branches and taking his hand again.
“He chose to leave it to me of his own free will. The de Laceys have always disdained entails. What other high families have done by legal means the de Laceys have insisted on doing through strength of character. My father’s will, of course, originally left me nothing.
But as I have told you, he died last—and so he knew my brothers were gone.
He altered the will then, right before his death.
I do not know who the estate would’ve gone to if he hadn’t.
Perhaps I would’ve inherited it anyway. Mr. Perry thinks I would have.
But there was no need to find out. Because my father altered the will to make me his sole heir. ”
“Did it surprise you?”
“Extremely.”
“Why do you think he did it?”
It is a question I have asked myself many times. And I’m still not sure.
“At first, I thought it was merely pride—pride of blood—and that it was better to have a disgraceful de Lacey than no de Lacey at Trescott Abbey. After all, our family has been here a long time, and I am not the first to bring shame to the family name, although I am the first woman to do so. Not that our family histories have ever paid much attention to the women.”
“So it was just pride then? Better a child of his than anyone else’s?”
I nod. “I suspect that was most of it. But—”
I break off. I am not sure what I even want to say.
“But?”
“It makes me feel sentimental to say such a thing. And I am probably wrong. But I also think—as much as he hated to admit it—of all of his children, my father saw himself most in me. He knew, of course, what I had done in London. The business I had built. He was appalled, and he raged, and he said I was no daughter of his. My brothers cowered and bent to him their entire lives, and he claimed that that was what he wanted from his children.”
“He admired you.”
“Maybe,” I say, my mind far away from the present, focused solely on the past.
“Perhaps he loved you.”
I shake my head.
“He didn’t love me. He loved my brothers—I do believe that.
But he respected me, I think, in a way that he couldn’t respect them.
In the way that he respected power and wealth and rank.
I think in his way he was a little proud of me, although I was, of course, a whore and a harlot and a disgrace.
If I was a son, he would have been proud of me, I am sure, and forgiven my transgressions.
He respected money and he respected people who could make it.
And when faced with no other alternative, when faced with the prospect of leaving Trescott Abbey to a nephew, he found he’d rather leave the place and all it stood for to me, the harlot daughter who he did not love, but who he had to respect. ”
A silence, companionable and easy, settles between us.
“I envy you,” he says finally.
I give a little laugh. “What about that tale could you possible envy?”
“That your father respected you. My father does not respect me. At least not very much. He values me, yes, as his son, as an image of himself that he can fashion and turn to his will, and he loves me—for my personal characteristics. But he does not respect me. I suppose he sees me as your father saw your brothers.”
I shake my head. “You are nothing like my brothers. They were not bad men, but they were narrow-minded and coarse and like dogs when it came to my father. And I disagree. It seemed to me that your father respects your goodness.”
“Perhaps. I am not sure he can truly respect one who has been so obedient to him and for far longer than I should have been.”
“He took advantage of your gentle nature. My brothers were obedient, but it was only out of self-interest. However, I can see why love without respect does seem a rather hollow gift from a parent. Although respect is something that can grow with time, whereas I’m not sure love can grow from respect.
At least the kind that a child wants from a parent.
And in my father’s case, by the time he respected me, all chance of real love between us had gone. ”
“Every child deserves to be loved. And of all people, you deserve love.”
I shake my head again and look away. He does not know all that I have done.
“I have wanted my father’s respect all my life,” he says. “I have tried very hard to earn it. And yet he has never given it to me.
“That fault is all his,” I say, my gaze returning to him. “Not yours.”
“Perhaps if I had been a more commanding man—and even more pious, ambitious, if I had been a better reflection of him, I would have earned it by now. But I never could live to his standard.”
“His standard was inhuman. Even he does not live by it. Have you written him? And told him we are married?”
He shakes his head.
“I will soon.”
“I hope he is happy,” I say, turning away from him. “As happy as he can be.”
He pulls me towards him and kisses me in the crisp autumn air.
I can feel his gratitude. And I am glad that I married him.