Chapter 15 #2
“Yes.”
The word came quietly.
“She said your father spent hours with him. Talking to him. Listening when Algernon could manage to speak and waiting when he couldn't. He never hurried him. Never finished his sentences for him. Never treated him as though there were something shameful about struggling to get the words out.”
Rosalind's eyes glistened.
William continued more gently. “Apparently, your father was also the first person willing to confront mine over the way he treated Algernon.”
Her lips parted. “He confronted the duke?”
“Repeatedly, from what Mother told me.”
That, perhaps, had surprised William least of all.
“You remember what my mother told you before,” he continued. “About my father’s treatment of Algernon. And about yours attempting to intervene.”
Rosalind nodded slowly. “And you overheard us.”
“Enough of it.” William looked away. “At the time, I thought I understood what she meant. I knew father had been hard on Algernon and that Lord Eastmere had shown him kindness when he needed it. I did not understand the extent of either.”
Hearing it from Algernon had been something else entirely. There had been no gentle recollection of old family difficulties, no careful explanation intended to spare William more than necessary.
His brother had given him memories William had never possessed: the humiliation, the punishments, the constant fear of failing to force words from his mouth quickly enough.
And Edmund Carlisle had been woven through nearly all of it.
“Your father did more than comfort him,” William said.
“Mother believes he changed the course of Algernon’s life.
He was the first person willing to tell my father plainly that humiliating his son would never cure his stutter.
He encouraged patience instead of anger, and when Father could not manage that, your father gave Algernon the patience himself. ”
Rosalind looked away, blinking rapidly.
William allowed her the moment. “When your father’s name came up last night, Algernon changed.”
She looked back at him. “How?”
“He became quieter. Graver.” William frowned at the memory. “Until then, he had spoken about Father with anger. About his nightmares with embarrassment. But when he spoke of your father, there was something else entirely.”
“Gratitude?”
“Yes.”
William thought of his brother’s face across the library, stripped of the careful reserve he wore so naturally.
“Algernon said your father taught him that taking longer to speak did not mean his words had less worth.”
Rosalind’s breath caught.
“He helped him overcome the worst of the stutter. More than that, Mother believes your father helped change mine. By the time I was old enough to remember him, Father had become the man I knew partly because Edmund had forced him to see what he was doing to his own son.”
Rosalind said nothing.
All those evenings when Lord Eastmere had remained at Aldermere long after dinner suddenly looked different to William.
He remembered conversations about Byron that seemed to stretch endlessly, Algernon listening while the earl spoke, sometimes contributing little and sometimes remaining with him long after everyone else had retired.
William had always known they were close. Even after overhearing his mother’s conversation with Rosalind, he had understood only that Edmund had once been kind to a frightened boy.
He understood now that it had been far more than kindness.
Edmund had been someone Algernon trusted when trust had been extraordinarily difficult for him to give.
For the first time, William found himself wondering how many of those endless conversations had truly been about Byron at all.
Beside him, Rosalind slowed to a stop.
William stopped with her and turned, expecting a question. Instead, she slipped her hand from his arm and reached for both of his.
The gesture caught him entirely unprepared.
Her gloved fingers closed gently around his, warm despite the coolness of the morning, and something in William’s chest tightened.
After a night spent discovering how much had existed beneath the surface of the family he thought he understood, there was something unexpectedly comforting in the simple certainty of her touch.
“I am so sorry,” she said quietly. “For your brother, certainly, but for you as well. That is an extraordinary amount to learn in a single night.”
William swallowed. “I was not the one who suffered.”
“No.” Her hands tightened around his. “But that does not mean learning the truth cannot hurt you.”
There it was again.
That effortless understanding he had not known he needed until she offered it.
William looked at her and felt something inside him soften despite the exhaustion, despite the confusion that had followed him from the library.
“I do not know what to do with it yet,” he admitted. “I pity Algernon more than I can say. So many things about him make sense now that never did before. His dislike of society. The way he disappears whenever a room becomes too crowded. His need to control every detail of the estate.”
He gave a small shake of his head.
“I used to think he was simply cold. Difficult, perhaps. I thought becoming the duke had made him that way.”
“And now?”
“Now I wonder how much of it is simply how he learned to survive.”
Rosalind's expression softened.
William glanced down at their hands once more. “And then there is Father.”
That hurt differently.
He could still summon his father's face without effort. Still remember his laughter and the warmth of his hand upon William's shoulder. Nothing Algernon had told him could erase those memories.
Yet William could no longer look at them without seeing what had existed before.
“I loved him,” he said quietly. “I still do. I suppose that is the part I cannot reconcile. The man Algernon described bears almost no resemblance to the father I knew.”
“You do not have to reconcile it today.”
William looked at her.
Rosalind gave him a small, sad smile. “Perhaps both versions of him were real.”
The thought settled uneasily inside him.
He suspected she was right.
“My brother suffered because of him, and my family lied to me because they wanted me to remember only the man he became. I understand why they did it.” William exhaled slowly. “I simply wish understanding made me feel less betrayed.”
“I think you are allowed to understand someone and still be hurt by what they did.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “You have an irritating habit of making complicated things sound remarkably simple.”
“I consider it one of my better qualities.”
That drew the first genuine laugh from him all morning.
It was quiet and brief, but Rosalind smiled at the sound, and William found himself absurdly grateful for her.
Then guilt followed almost immediately.
“I should not have summoned you.”
Her smile disappeared. “What?”