Chapter 26 #3
It had been Rand Morgan, with his myriad sources, and his curiosities, and his own much less overt philanthropy, who had heard the old scandal from Devon and decided, because the frail underside of the seemingly pious had always interested him, that Cathcart’s investigations had been criminally lax and if it were ever convenient, he might look into the matter himself.
And Morgan’s looking into the matter had produced Cat, and the documentation that the boy had been born in a month that placed his conception during the only period in Cathcart’s marriage when it would have been impossible for his wife to be unfaithful.
Four years ago Lord Cathcart had been introduced to the existence of his child by Devon, who had met him in an inn fronting the Thames.
“Brian, you have a son,” Devon had said gently and began the careful, compassionate explanation of Cat’s life in a narrative that avoided judgments but could do nothing to buffer the horror of the full truth.
The horror had been crushing. Morgan had brought the boy in, and Cathcart, searching beneath the surface for a child, could see only a braid, and an earring, and the eyes, old eyes, and an existence he could barely imagine.
Trying to reach through those things, he had found in Cat (dear heaven, that name—he couldn’t bring himself to use it) a hard-willed and intelligent adolescent who was bored, impatient, saw no significance in their relationship, and who, it was clear, was here only because Morgan had commanded it and it was his habit to obey Morgan.
No, there was more than habit in his obedience to Morgan; there was something deeper.
How intimate had their relationship become?
Discipline and the need to preserve his own sanity had kept Cathcart from following that thought to its conclusion.
Twice, at Cathcart’s insistence and with Morgan’s bland consent, there had been experiments in which Cat came to stay with him in London. Both occasions had been failures. What would a third failure do to them both?
Lord Cathcart watched the boy put down the book and stand, candle-glow irradiating like a phasm from the smooth coils of his braid.
“I’m here,” the boy said, his expression remote, his tone polite. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. I’m pleased.” Cathcart had learned to keep his phrases simple.
In the past anything more had sounded surprisingly insincere, even when it was meant from the heart.
It was harder for him than it was for the boy; because love for a son was ingrained in Cathcart while Cat had no need for a father.
And on the Joke he’d had a whole shipload of potential fathers, if he’d wanted one, and all of them less alien than an English marquis. “I appreciated your letters.”
There had been two, delivered at odd times of the night by disreputable-looking scoundrels four months after they were dated.
The first, eighteen months ago, had said, “Alive. On the Atlantic. Cat.” The second, in March, had said, “Devon gave me your letter. I don’t understand why you say you need to see me.
I’ve never noticed that my presence does anything beyond distress you.
If you call my relationship with Morgan ‘an infatuation’ once more, it’s unlikely that you’ll hear from me again.
Cat.” The words may not have been friendly, but they were the closest Cathcart had ever come to an exchange of substance with his son.
Cat acknowledged his father’s appreciation with a slight wary nod. Then, coming right to the point, he said, “Has Devon been here?”
“Yes. Last night.”
Urgently, “Was there a girl with him?”
“Yes. Merry Wilding. He married her this morning.”
“Jesus! He married her?”
Recoiling inside, unfamiliar as he was with the workings of his son’s mind, Lord Cathcart misinterpreted his wonder.
The surprise in Cat’s gently sardonic inflection sounded like callous incredulity, as though he could hardly imagine why Devon would marry her, when women were to be used and discarded.
It took so much of Cat’s concentration to absorb that change in Merry’s situation that it was a moment before he realized Cathcart was watching him in rigid silence.
I’ve said something wrong, Cat thought. Already.
Was it the “Jesus”? He was trying to figure out whether it would make things better or worse if he apologized when Cathcart said, “You knew her on the Joke?”
That tone. Accustomed as Cat was to thinking of himself as Merry’s…
almost her foster parent, it required some abrupt mental gymnastics to recognize that this stranger whose only claim on him was that they had both spent a minute or two between the thighs of the same woman—under entirely different circumstances—this self-righteous stranger saw him as one of her captors.
And of course, in a way, he had been. Before, all of this had been only irritation.
Having to spend time with this gentle, balding scholar at Morgan’s insistence—irritation; having the man’s gawky, gossiping servants stare at him as though he were about to run off with the silver—irritation; being introduced to Cathcart’s noble friends with their slack-jawed fascination—well, all right, that had been a little more than irritating.
But this—prior to now only Rand Morgan had been able to make Cat feel this kind of vivid hot and cold anger.
The feeling he usually had with Cathcart, the feeling that he wanted to retreat and retreat, switched with shattering speed to attack.
“Did I know her in the biblical sense, do you mean?” he snapped, his eyes wide and brighter than he knew.
The last thing Cathcart desired was to strike his son on an open nerve. Truthfully he had never thought the boy had one. Could Merry Wilding have touched him as she had Devon?
“No,” Cathcart said. God help me to say the right thing, he thought. “Devon assured me that she was protected from that. We don’t have to discuss it.”
“Why not? Because you can’t stand to hear the truth about the way I live?
Because you don’t want to know that I brought her on the Joke against her will, that I held her down so Morgan could feed her opium, that I left her in Devon’s bed, knowing that he might—” Cat broke off, hardly recognizing his own voice.
Odd quick catches separated words and syllables.
The vowels had soft slurs. His throat ached.
What was this? Guilt. Guilt for every time she had needed him and he had turned away.
Guilt for the rough words he had spoken to her on those first days when he could have been comforting and kind.
Now she was married. And safe. And as he had done once before, when he had realized she was going to survive the nearly fatal attack of malaria, he was crying.
Of all times, of all places for this to happen—he thrust his face into one callused palm with a sound somewhere between a gasp and a groan.
In a moment he felt himself being drawn into the warm oval of his father’s arms. He would have cast off the hug because he usually hated being touched, but this clasp was startling in its strength and tenderness; and the darkness around him began to recede though the sobs came harder, painfully racking contractions in his esophagus.
He murmured, “This is so bloody embarrassing.”
Cathcart remembered asking Devon once if Cat ever smiled.
Devon had said, “He has a sense of humor, but no, he doesn’t smile.
When you know him better, it won’t matter.
” Devon was right. It didn’t matter. As warm as a smile was this disarming ability the boy had to express with such candor that his tears embarrassed him.
Absorbing the precious weight of his son’s body, gazing down at the neat pale hair, Cathcart saw that it was not tintless, as his mother’s had been, but held the delicate sunny ivory shades of a pear blossom.
“Did you come to care for her a great deal?” Cathcart said thoughtfully.
“Someone had to. At first she was so helpless—” Cat heard Cathcart chuckle, not as Morgan would have done. This sound was sympathetic, gently interested.
“She’s not helpless anymore. Last night she landed a wallop on the underside of Devon’s jaw that almost knocked him out of his waistcoat,” Cathcart said, watching his son lift his head, the pale lashes webbed with blue glittering tears.
“Did she? Poor midget, his jaw’s the only part of him she can reach, unless he leans over,” Cat said shakily, blinking. “He’s been acting like an ass lately. I hope she knocked some sense into him.”
“I think she did,” Cathcart smiled. “He seemed more reasonable afterward.” He felt the slight gather of tension in his son’s well-muscled shoulders, and he stepped back, gently releasing the boy, not with regret but with grateful wonder that he had had this brief first chance to hold his unchildlike child.
“Can you stay? We should give them a few days alone, and then, if you like, we could visit them.”
Cat nodded. As he took the comfortable chair Cathcart offered and settled into its velvet upholstery, it occurred to him that there was one thing Cathcart offered the people around him that Morgan never gave to anyone. Peace.