Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
It took Sebastian weeks to realise Lady Pemberthy was nursing him.
She’d softened since his visit to her house. Probably because he’d broken down and cried and thereby become an object pathetic enough to overcome her dislike of him.
He hadn’t meant to cry, of course. He hadn’t cried since he was fifteen, in pain and humiliated at the hands of his uncle, and he’d sworn never to be so weak again.
But his reason had deserted him at Lady Pemberthy’s pronouncement, along with his strength.
He’d turned blindly towards the wall, braced his forearm there to stop himself from falling, and dropped his forehead against that, breathing in the scent of his own sleeve, ruining the fabric of his own coat, leaning and sobbing against a wall plastered with caricatures of fat Regents and gross politicians.
Lady Pemberthy had come over, clucking and hushing, her hand tentative on his shoulder.
She might have called him duckie, and said, there, there, don’t you cry now, it’ll be all right.
He had no experience of mothers, could barely remember his own, but he supposed this might be what it was like to be a snot-nosed child and have a maternal cloud of softness and sympathy sweep over you.
Only the desire to turn and be bundled into her arms had frightened him enough to pull himself together. He’d taken a shuddering breath, and another, fist clenched tight against the wall as he recovered the ability to talk.
“I beg your pardon, madam.”
“Oh, no, sir.” She hushed him a little more, stroking his back. “No, sir, don’t you be saying sorry. There, there. It’s all right.”
It wasn’t remotely all right. It was horrifying and humiliating. He couldn’t even blame the brandy. It was hours since he’d last taken a drink. Or perhaps he could blame the brandy. When had he ever lost his control like this? He swore there and then to stop drinking entirely.
He’d taken another deep breath, gripped his self-control like a drowning man and straightened from the wall.
Lady Pemberthy had stepped away. He heard her about to speak and bowed before she could, not meeting her eyes, not even looking anywhere near her, but already reaching behind him for the door.
“Excuse the interruption. I will leave you to your work.” Another blind bow, and he’d gone, fleeing that house yet again.
And for the last time.
Anger had been the wings that carried him home.
She’d left, had she? Pronounced she’d never see him again so long as she lived?
He’d see about that. He’d drive to Sussex that afternoon.
It would be midnight by the time he got there, but he’d find his way to the parsonage, he’d ring the bell, he’d get her brought to him in her nightdress, her hair around her shoulders, and then she’d…
Hate him.
What a ridiculous scenario he’d conjured.
A raving madman, dragging the vicar from his bed, harassing his daughter…
? God help him. He stepped into his hallway and stood motionless under the marble dome, hat in his hand, and realised he was in no fit state to see anyone, least of all Madelaine Ardingly.
Tomorrow then.
But tomorrow came and he did not leave.
“I plead, on your honour as a gentleman, that you respect my niece’s wishes. She does not want to see you ever again.”
Those words had him pinned. He could not write. He could not visit. And as he imagined the scene over and over again, the letter he’d send, the speech he’d make, the scene became more and more hollow.
What would he say? What could he possibly say?
And what right did he have to try? Him, be husband to a woman who’d known the tenderest of childhood darlings, who was grieving and sore and tired, and needed—deserved—the kindest and gentlest and most generous of loves…?
So he did not call for his horse. He did not sit at his desk, pen in hand.
He sat on the sofa, staring at his clasped hands.
And eventually, some iron-dark and impossible time having passed, he went about a simulacrum of his old life.
He went out and around town. He exchanged words with friends.
He played cards with his father and Tom and Lady Pemberthy.
And as whole afternoons went by with that woman silently sitting in the same silent room as him, he gradually came to realise she was worried about him.
They all were.
It was July when he looked up at where she sat knitting, deep in concentration on the task.
They were at Woodhaven, his house in Kent, having left London before the end of the season.
His father’s divorce case was in progress, London gossip was sharp and rife, and his father was… struggling. His curse had deep claws.
He watched Lady Pemberthy turn the heel on a dark green stocking.
She’d hired a cottage on the edge of the village, propriety making it impossible for her to stay in the house with them.
But she came every day. Just as she’d come every day while they were still in town, talking of the weather, of the news, of this and that, trying to coax him back into life. Though God knew he didn’t deserve it.
“Thank you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “My lord?”
“You might as well call me Sebastian. I’m to be your son, after all.”
Lady Pemberthy blushed, dropping a stitch. She picked the loop of yarn up again. “And what might you be thanking me for, eh? These stockings aren’t for you, I’m afraid to say.”
He smiled at that. It would be impolite to admit he was relieved. It looked like very scratchy wool.
Probably the stockings were for another of her charity cases.
For a prisoner, a murderer. She was good enough to care for them all.
She’d loved Tom on sight. She’d loved his father soon after.
She didn’t love him, he had no right to expect that, but whatever her feelings, it didn’t stop her being good.
His faint smile faded as he got up and walked to the window. The sun was shining and the garden outside was beautiful, but it was the sky he looked at, over the top of the distant trees.
“They should be back by now.”
“Not for another half hour, I’d say,” replied Lady Pemberthy. “Tom wanted to show him that old mill pond, remember? So if they’ve walked all that way, and at your father’s pace…”
“Mm.” The garden looked south. Beyond the rose beds and the lawn and the shivering elms, white clouds sailed softly over the blue sky.
The weather had been pleasant for weeks, not too hot, but bright every day.
His father went for walks which exhausted him far more than they should, but which, he claimed, helped him sleep.
As for Sebastian… When he wasn’t accompanying his father, he rode. He rode out almost every day. Or he helped Tom with his lessons, or he taught him cricket, or taught him to ride. The boy wanted to learn to shoot but was far too keen on the idea for it to be sensible.
And when he wasn’t doing any of that, Sebastian ate when he was supposed to, replied when he was spoken to, and got himself shaved and dressed and went to church on Sundays.
He visited the tenants on his estate; he arranged dinners with the local squires and the baron five miles away. But mostly…he rode.
He rode further each day, and he rode south. The coast was that way…over thirty miles away. This Kentish estate of his, just outside Tonbridge, was almost exactly halfway between London and a small hilltop town on the Sussex coast.
He looked at the sky, trying futilely to see the sea. Perhaps this was what she’d always been trying to do, every time she walked from him and went to the window…
“Perhaps sea bathing would do your father good.”
Sebastian froze. Lady Pemberthy’s needles kept clacking. Their rhythm might have been steady, but her words made his heart lurch.
“We’ve tried the wells here,” she went on as he turned cautiously towards her, “and I don’t see that they’ve been much help.
Have you tasted the waters?” She shuddered.
“Awful. But sea bathing…” She looked up from her stitches, innocent enough, but she had no genius for subtly, couldn’t play a hand of cards without giving her game away.
“The coast isn’t so far from here, you know. ”
His chest tightened until it hurt. “I know exactly how far the coast is from here.”
“I thought you might.”
“Lady Pemberthy…” He moved from the window, but not to sit down.
He didn’t know where he was going. Perhaps appropriately, he stopped by a side table and toyed with the globe there.
They were trying to teach the boy geography.
His first glimpse of the countryside outside London had been exotic enough.
“It’s so green…there ain’t a chimney in sight! ”
“Call me Mary,” she said, appropriating his earlier words with a smile. “If I’m to be your mother.”
“I’d rather you were my aunt.”
The words came out as his words so often did, clipped and hard. But he heard the accidental insult in them. “Not that I mean… Of course, I wish for you and my father…”
Her smile was strangely sad. “I know what you mean.”
She put down her knitting. Sebastian fought the urge to flee.
“If you love her as these last few months have convinced me you do, then…then perhaps you should go to her.”
“You said—she said—”
“I know.” She sighed, her smile sad again. “You hurt her, Sebastian. You treated her so wretchedly, as though…as though she was disposable. You used her husband—”
“No.” He could defend himself from that, at least. “No. Not like she thought.”
Because he’d meant it when he said her husband, so full of life, would surely have wanted her to keep on living. He’d meant every word of that.
Lady Pemberthy’s—Mary’s—lips pressed together as she considered him. Whether she believed him or not, he wasn’t sure. She probably didn’t. And yet still…still she thought he might have a chance? Still she’d risk her beloved niece to him?
He felt hot all over, glancing towards the window again as though for a drink of fresh air, as though to dive through it and run… It was impossible to stay still. She was a day’s ride away, barely even that…
“Do I have your blessing?” The words were hoarse, as though he’d swallowed fire. He oughtn’t to be staring at Madelaine’s aunt like this, like a madman, savage with hope.
He took a breath. Loosened his fingers and went to sit down.
“Mary, Mother, do I have your blessing?”
Her eyes shimmered at being addressed so.
But… “I don’t know.” She said it like a cracked vase; something ready to fall apart in his hands.
“I don’t know, Sebastian… I don’t know if I do the right thing sending you to her.
But her letters… She tries to write as though she is cheerful, but I—” She picked at her knitting, wrapping a thread of yarn around her finger, winding it tight.
“She won’t come to you, whatever she might feel.
She is so scared of being hurt. If you had any idea what she went through when… when…”
“When Alfred died.”
She nodded, letting out a breath as she unspooled the yarn from her finger. But she held the thread tight. A lifeline. One word, one cut from the Fates, would untether his soul. If she said no…
“To be hurt again… It is life and death for her. Whatever you do, don’t—don’t hurt her.”
Could he promise that?
Just seeing him again would cause her pain. He knew that.
But he was a cruel man, wasn’t he? He was a hard man; he was cruel enough to hurt her while there was hope…
While there was hope, he would make demands. He would get the truth. Because if she loved him… Despite all her words, her rejections, he hadn’t yet abandoned hope.
Yes…he admitted it…he was vain enough to hope; he’d seen secrets in her eyes; he lay awake and tortured himself sifting through memories for the faintest shards, a word, a look, a breath…
“I will go to her tomorrow.”
One last throw of the dice. One last gamble. This was the only victory he cared for.
His mother-to-be listened, wretched, saying nothing.
“I will go to her tomorrow. And then I will know.”
His hope, his life, hung in the balance.
He left the house before dawn.