Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“It’s Uncle Jonathan!”
The carriage arrived at half past two, announced by Freddie’s shout from the nursery window.
Alice set down her teacup. She had heard Kenneth mention Lord Nortley’s visit that morning in passing, a sentence delivered to the air above her head as he crossed the entrance hall on his way to the stables.
Freddie thundered down the staircase before Alice reached the corridor. Charlie followed at a measured pace, though the faint color in his cheeks betrayed an enthusiasm his dignity would not permit him to display.
The front door opened, and Lord Nortley stepped into the entrance hall carrying a leather satchel under one arm and a wrapped parcel under the other, his hat already off and his grin already in place.
He looked precisely as Alice remembered from the wedding: tall, fair-haired, and possessing the effortless ease of a man who had never met a room he could not charm.
“My little fellows!” He dropped to one knee on the marble and held the parcel at arm’s length. “I come bearing gifts and unimpeachable intentions. Who wants to open it?”
Freddie lunged at him. Charlie held back for approximately two seconds before stepping forward, his composure surrendering to curiosity.
The paper tore. Inside, nestled in straw, sat a brass telescope no longer than a man’s forearm, its barrel polished to a deep gold gleam. Freddie seized it and pressed his eye to the smaller end.
“I can see everything,” he breathed. “The stables. The south meadow. Charlie, there’s a fox at the tree line.”
Charlie took the telescope when Freddie shoved it at him and adjusted the focus ring carefully, his fingers precise on the brass.
“It’s a dog,” he said after a moment. “Mr. Briggs’s terrier.”
“It could be a fox.”
“It has a collar.”
Jonathan straightened and turned to Alice, his grin shifting into a warmth that felt genuine.
“Your Grace. We met at the wedding, though I believe you were understandably preoccupied.” He bowed.
“Jonathan Crawford, the Marquess of Nortley. Lifelong friend to your husband, though I believe he’s called me a nuisance every once in a while. ”
“Lord Nortley.” Alice offered her hand. “The Duke has mentioned you.”
“Disparagingly, no doubt.” He took her hand and bowed over it.
His grip was firm, his eyes bright. “And it’s Jonathan; I refuse to stand on ceremony in a castle where I have been personally responsible for at least two broken vases.
And perhaps one regrettable incident involving a billiard cue and a portrait of the third Duke. ”
“The third Duke deserved it,” Kenneth announced from the doorway.
Alice turned. Kenneth stood at the threshold, his riding coat still on, his boots carrying the faint smell of leather and grass. He must have come in through the side entrance. He glanced at the telescope in Charlie’s hand, and a smile flickered on his lips.
Right then, he saw Jonathan approaching.
“You’re early,” Kenneth remarked.
“I prefer punctual.” Jonathan clapped him on the back. “You look terrible, by the way. When did you last sleep past dawn?”
Kenneth smiled, his eyes twinkling with something akin to mischief. “Sleep is for men without estates.”
“Sleep is for men who wish to remain civil company. You are currently failing on that count.” Jonathan turned to Alice. “Is he always this grim, or does he save it for my visits?”
Alice glanced at Kenneth. The impulse to soften the truth pulled at her. She resisted. “He is remarkably consistent.”
Jonathan’s laugh filled the entrance hall, and Alice caught the faintest twitch at the corner of Kenneth’s mouth before he turned toward the drawing room.
“Dinner is at eight,” Kenneth called over his shoulder. “Try not to break anything before then.”
The afternoon passed quickly. Alice watched from the morning room window as Jonathan led the twins across the south lawn, the telescope passing between them.
At eight, the dining room felt strangely warm. Cook had prepared a treacle tart that Freddie spotted the instant he entered.
“Uncle Jonathan gets the small piece,” he announced, sliding into his chair. “Because he said my fox was a dog, and he was wrong.”
“It was a dog,” Charlie insisted, unfolding his napkin across his lap.
“You don’t know that.”
“It came when Mr. Briggs whistled.”
Jonathan dropped into the seat beside Alice and accepted a glass of wine from the footman. “I see the prosecution has prepared its case. I yield to the terrier.”
Kenneth carved the lamb. He placed slices on each plate without asking about preferences. Alice noticed that he gave Freddie the largest portion and Charlie the leanest, because Charlie disliked fat and Freddie would eat anything that held still long enough.
He knew them. He paid attention in ways he would never articulate, despite her accusation that he was absent. Heat rushed to her cheeks.
“Tell us a story,” Freddie demanded around a mouthful of lamb. He pointed his fork at Jonathan. “About when Papa was young. Did he ever get in trouble? I bet he never got in trouble.”
“Your father,” Jonathan said, leaning back in his chair, “once rode his horse through the east wing of this castle on a dare.”
Kenneth set down his knife. “That is not an appropriate dinner story.”
“It is an excellent dinner story,” Jonathan countered.
“He was sixteen. The horse was a grey mare called Vesper. She cleared the corridor but refused the turn at the gallery, and your father dismounted involuntarily into a suit of armor that had stood in that alcove since the reign of Henry the Eighth.” He sipped his wine.
“The armor survived. Your father’s dignity did not. ”
Freddie giggled. Charlie had stopped eating, his fork suspended above his plate, and a grin spread across his face that Alice had never seen before. It transformed him. He looked like a boy instead of a miniature diplomat.
“What happened to the horse?” he asked.
“Vesper lived to a grand old age and was buried on the estate. Your father wept at the funeral, though he will deny it.”
“I did not weep.”
“You were observed weeping by three stable hands and a gardener. The evidence is overwhelming.”
Kenneth reached for his wine, and Alice caught the softening around his eyes, the loosening of his shoulders that Jonathan’s presence seemed to elicit against his will.
She had not seen him this close to relaxed since the night in the carriage.
Since the kiss that still burned at the edges of her sleep.
She looked down at her plate.
“Was Vesper here before Mama?” Freddie asked.
The table stilled. Alice felt the shift before she understood it, a tightening of the air itself, as though the room had drawn in a breath and held it.
Kenneth’s hand froze around the stem of his glass.
“Vesper was here before your mother, yes,” Jonathan said carefully.
“Did Mama like horses?” Freddie pressed. He was leaning forward, his lamb forgotten, his eyes fixed on Jonathan. “Papa never talks about her. Did she ride? Was she good at it? Did she ride Vesper?”
“She rode.” Jonathan glanced at Kenneth. “She preferred the garden, though. Your mother loved flowers. She redesigned the south border the year before you were born.”
“What kind of flowers?” Charlie’s voice was barely audible.
“Roses, mainly. She had a fondness for the climbing variety. White ones, if I recall correctly. She trained them along the wall beside the orangery.”
“There are no roses on that wall,” Charlie pointed out.
Silence fell over the dining room. Kenneth had gone rigid in his chair, his knuckles white around his glass.
“The roses were removed several years ago,” he said, his voice level and clipped. “They had become diseased.”
Alice looked at him. She was certain that there was not a speck of truth in that statement.
“Did she sing?” Freddie asked. His voice had lost its usual volume.
“Freddie.” Kenneth set his glass down. “That is enough.”
“But I want to know.”
“I said enough.”
The word fell across the table and smothered whatever Freddie had been about to say next.
Charlie’s hands tightened in his lap. His gaze dropped to his plate, and the grin from minutes ago vanished as though it had never existed.
Alice turned to Kenneth. She kept her voice low, pitched beneath the register of command. “They are asking about their mother. It is a reasonable question.”
Kenneth’s eyes met hers across the table. His face had gone pale.
“The boys have had a long day,” he said. “Perhaps we could discuss more cheerful subjects.”
“They have a right to—”
“Alice.” Her name in his mouth carried a warning so cold that she nearly flinched. “Not now.”
Jonathan cleared his throat. “Did I ever tell you about the time your father and I sailed a raft across the lake at Morleigh Park?” He turned to the boys.
“We were fifteen. The raft was fence posts and stolen rope, and its seaworthiness was approximately equal to that of a dining table. We launched at dawn because your father insisted on secrecy, though the only witnesses were a herd of extremely uninterested Herefords.”
Freddie looked at him. His curiosity was still there, dampened but not extinguished. Alice watched him decide whether to let the diversion carry him.
“Did it sink?” he asked.
“Magnificently. We were perhaps forty yards from shore when the rope dissolved and the fence posts began to drift apart beneath us. Your father, who was standing at the front pretending to be Admiral Nelson, went in first. I followed shortly after, though I maintain that my descent was more graceful.”
“Papa doesn’t swim,” Charlie said quietly.
“Your father can swim. He claims that it is undignified.” Jonathan grinned.
Though most of the tension dissipated, Alice was still overly aware of Kenneth’s pale countenance and the darkness in his eyes. She allowed the rest of dinner to pass in silence, sitting back and watching as the rest of the company enjoyed the treacle tart.
Jonathan retired to the guest chamber shortly after, squeezing Alice’s arm at the foot of the staircase and murmuring, “Give him time. He’s stubborn, not stupid.”
Alice waited breathlessly. When she turned, Kenneth was staring at her with those dark eyes.
“You undermined me.” His voice was as cold. “In front of my children. In front of Jonathan. You challenged my judgment on a subject you know nothing about.”
“I know that your sons asked about their mother, and you silenced them.”
He turned then, and in the warm light, he was whiter than a sheet. “Do not tell me how to speak to my sons about their mother.”
“They need to know her, Kenneth. They need stories. They need to hear her name spoken aloud without the room going silent, as though she is a secret too terrible to share.”
“She is not a secret.” His voice roughened. “She is dead. She died in this castle, in a room thirty feet from where they sleep, and there is nothing I can tell them about her that will not end in the same place. Nothing else matters.”
Alice took a step toward him. “You cannot protect them from grief. It exists, regardless of whether you acknowledge it or not.”
His eyes narrowed. “I am not—”
“You cannot shield them from sadness for the rest of their lives.” Her voice had softened. “If you keep trying, you will build a silence so large that they will fill it themselves. They will invent a mother from fragments, and she will never be as real as the one you could give them.”
Kenneth took a step toward her. She could feel the heat radiating from him.
“You saw their faces. Charlie looked as though someone had struck him. Freddie went quiet, and Freddie is never quiet. I cannot sit at my own dinner table and watch my sons grieve a woman they never knew.”
“They grieve her already. Every day. They grieve her in the questions you will not answer and the rooms you have closed and the name you will not say. The grief exists whether you permit it or not. All you are choosing is whether they carry it alone.”
He did not speak. The clock on the mantel ticked through ten seconds of silence, then twenty.
“My role,” he said eventually, “is to protect my children.”
“Your role is to be their father.”
He looked up, and their eyes met.
“I am,” he murmured, his voice soft. “I am doing my best, Alice.”
She took a step toward him, her eyes pleading. “I believe you. But sometimes… sometimes children need love more than they need protection.”
“I do. I do love them,” he said. “I don’t think anyone will ever know how very much.”
A sad smile tugged at his lips, and he nodded once before retreating down the hall, leaving her staring at his back until he disappeared.