Chapter Eighteen
Andrew hadn’t been to Morley House in years.
It was in an overly regal neighborhood, somewhere he’d never had a reason to be outside of his father’s work, and he’d been too young to realize it the last time his boots fell onto the stone steps.
A chill of terror ran through his body as he thought of that last time.
He’d been such a fool. It was a moment of desperation, and it had broken his heart.
Upended his entire life. His memories of this place were fond outside of that one ruining moment, but something about the grandeur of it all made him ill at ease.
He was sure it was beautiful, but all he could see was a place where Della wasn’t welcome, and that was nowhere he wanted to be.
The butler opened the tall, heavy door, and he and a footman bowed as Andrew approached.
He wanted to tell them such an action was wholly unnecessary, but he didn’t want to let on just how out of place he was here.
Though he was sure as experienced domestics in a home like this one, they could smell the commonness on him.
They could probably tell by his lack of finery and general disposition that he belonged with them more than he did with the viscount.
Truly, it was an act of boldness in and of itself to be standing in their front hall.
He had no right to, and he certainly hadn’t been invited.
He’d come here to give them the benefit of the doubt.
He remembered the Harrises as kind people.
They’d treated his father well, and they’d let Andrew spend most of his childhood roaming about the grounds of their estate.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Della, it was just that he had trouble reconciling the owners of the home he’d practically grown up in with the people who would do such a thing to their own daughter.
He was about to ask to see if the viscount was seeing visitors, but the man himself walked through the hall just then, seemingly headed for the grand staircase.
He stopped in his tracks at the sight of Andrew, and it seemed that neither man had any idea what to say.
Andrew braced himself to be swiftly thrown out by the aggrieved looking footman who stood in the corner.
The man seemed to be prepared for some kind of violence.
Instead, Viscount Morley’s face broke out into a wide smile.
Andrew barely recognized that face. It was staggering for a moment, how much older Morley looked.
Andrew realized he’d been robbed of the opportunity to see his own father age in the same way.
“My God, Andrew Lockhart, that must be you.” Morley stood in front of Andrew, vigorously shaking his hand. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were your father. I haven’t seen you in an age, my boy.”
At that very moment, Andrew regretted even coming here.
He was still shaking his hand, and Andrew was growing more and more uncomfortable by the second.
It wasn’t just that he didn’t belong there, though the gilded wallpaper and marble flooring were clues that led him to that conclusion, it was the overly familiar greeting.
Despite his words, Morley acted as if they’d just spoken last week.
As if they often played whist together at a club somewhere in the city.
How could the man in front of him greet the son of an old business associate with such demonstrative familiarity when he didn’t even care to see his own daughter more than once a year?
Andrew withdrew his hand as swiftly as he could. Something about being so close to the man made bile rise up in his throat.
“Yes, well . . .” Andrew started to respond, once he realized that was what was expected of him. Of course, if you called upon someone at their home, you would be presumed to speak. “I’ve been abroad for many years.”
Practically since the last time he’d walked these halls.
Much had changed since then, Andrew noticed as he looked around.
He wasn’t surprised. Della had always lamented her mother’s constantly changing the furniture and the paint and the carpets.
Della had always preferred to be outside because the landscape didn’t change nearly as much as the interior of the home, only once a season.
Andrew was amazed he could still recall memories like that, happy ones, as he stood in the place where his world had been shattered.
That was the power of Della, and that was something he should never doubt.
“Come and sit, we’ll catch up.” Morley smiled, and Andrew felt himself grin in response. He hoped the discomfort he felt wasn’t showing through his face. It was a relief to be invited in, and he hadn’t even needed to ask.
As he walked further into the home, relief turned to dread.
Andrew’s stomach turned as they headed for Morley’s study.
He still knew where it was, because it was where he’d always been able to find his father if he needed him.
Andrew felt as if he needed him now, and there was a pinch of grief in the hollows of his chest at the thought that he wouldn’t be there this time.
“I had heard you left for the Continent some years ago, just after your father went to his rewards, but I hadn’t realized you were back.” The viscount sat behind his large oak desk and fixed Andrew with a gaze that made him squirm.
For a moment, Andrew just looked around.
He was taken back in time. Nothing in this room had changed, it seemed it had been spared from the viscountess’s garish taste.
In fact, the room reminded him of the study at Westfield Manor.
Sitting here with Morley was nothing like sitting across the desk from Della, though.
It was night and day. Harsh cold and searing warmth.
“I am,” Andrew answered, because he was. He found he didn’t have much else to say.
“And how is your mother?” Morley asked. He picked up his spectacles off the desk and began to sort through a slurry of papers strewn about the surface.
“She’s well,” Andrew answered. He wasn’t making eye contact. He was focused on those papers. He might be a bit of a mess in other aspects of his life, but he was ruthless in the organization of his work. The sloppy bookkeeping he saw before him was maddening.
They fell into silence, and something about it made Andrew bold. Everything had been so easy so far, he decided to test the waters. See how far Morley could be pushed before he fell.
“And how is your daughter?” Andrew asked. He was almost proud of the way he feigned nonchalance. As if his daughter was an old acquaintance, or she was just the subject of a natural progression of polite conversation. As if she weren’t the fulcrum Andrew wanted to balance his entire life on.
The last time he’d been in this house, the last time he asked anyone about Della, it wasn’t her father.
Andrew hadn’t even made it that far. Now, he didn’t know how much Morley knew about what had happened between them.
About what Andrew had wanted to happen, anyway. It was a risk to even mention her name.
The viscount put down his papers, somehow leaving them in more of a tangle than when he’d started. He must be trying to bait Andrew into anger at this point, the disorder was so deliberate. He took off his spectacles, leaned his elbows on the desk and intertwined his fingers as if in prayer.
“She is ill,” he said, on a long-suffering sigh.
Andrew knew that, of course. Everyone knew that. Della was ill. She’d been ill for years. Andrew wondered if that’s all they’d been telling anyone who asked about her welfare. He wondered if that was truly all Morley knew about her.
“It’s quite a loss,” Morley continued. “She had such promise. Such prospects.” He shook his head, and then he was back to sifting through his work.
Andrew was astounded. So much so that he didn’t dare speak, lest he ruin this entire visit by letting the vitriol he felt fly from his mouth.
He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have doubted the level of callousness these people were capable of.
Even now, it felt as if the very air he breathed was contaminated with it.
Like he might be influenced by their evil just by sitting here.
He realized that an unusual amount of time had passed since anyone had last spoken, and he supposed he ought to fill the gap of silence with something.
A comment on the weather, or a compliment on the exquisite grounds they kept.
Something. Anything. He couldn’t, though.
There was no way for Andrew to continue conversing with someone who spoke of Della as if she were dead.
Describing vibrant, brilliant, perfect Della as a loss. He couldn’t even imagine it.
After a few more moments of interminable silence, Andrew had decided the only thing to do was excuse himself.
Before he could move, the study door flew open in a rather forceful manner.
He thought there must be some emergency.
There’d be no other reason to interrupt the man of the house from his work.
He didn’t see Morley taking too kindly to an intrusion like that.
To Andrew’s utter surprise, he watched as the viscount’s face softened.
His expression went from enraged to mildly irritated in an instant.
He couldn’t imagine what could cause such a spectrum of emotions so quickly.
Andrew turned his head. Oh. Well. That explained it, then.
Standing in the doorway was someone Andrew hadn’t even considered as he attempted this ill-fated trip to Morley House.
The future Viscount Morley. He’d be the third, if Andrew remembered correctly.
David. Andrew’s first friend, and someone he’d not spoken to in over eight years.
He appeared to have already overindulged in spirits, even though it was only the early afternoon.
His coat was hanging off one shoulder, and his cravat was askew, some of the buttons on his shirt were even undone.
There was no telling where he’d gotten that light-blond hair, when Della’s was so dark. Much like their father’s.
“Father,” David slurred. Andrew wondered if the other man had even noticed his presence in the room.
“David,” Morley acknowledged. The thinly veiled irritation was beginning to come to the surface. His face had turned a mottled red, and Andrew could see veins in his temples starting to bulge.
It seemed it wasn’t good for a man’s health to have an heir like David. What a pity.
“David,” Morley repeated, his tone as docile as if he were talking to a child or a lost dog. “You remember your friend Andrew, don’t you?”
Andrew wouldn’t have called them friends.
Not anymore at least. Friends rarely went eight years without speaking, and that, regrettably, was why Andrew didn’t have many.
Besides, in his adulthood, there was no reason for Andrew to befriend a future viscount.
They might have played around the same estate as young boys, but their paths couldn’t have diverged further.
David seemed to look him over, squinting his eyes in what Andrew assumed to be an attempt to ward off double vision. David approached, Andrew stood. David extended a hand, and Andrew met him halfway because his bleary eyes seemed to be severely lacking in depth perception at the moment.
“Been a while,” David said.
“So it has.” Andrew nodded. He let his hand go.
“I’ll be taking the carriage again this evening. After dinner.” David turned to speak to his father as if Andrew had simply vanished.
“And I suppose you’ll be needing more money,” Morley sighed.
Andrew wasn’t sure what he was watching, but it felt like he was trapped somewhere he shouldn’t be. Intruding on a private moment of a rich father spoiling his equally rich son. David simply nodded.
“You should join me at the club tonight, Lockhart. Enjoy yourself for once in your life.” David smacked Andrew on the shoulder. The invitation felt sincere, even if the words themselves were less than kind.
“I’d love to,” Andrew said, despite the fact that he’d most likely hate nothing more.
He didn’t belong in that club any more than he belonged in this palatial house, but it was an opportunity, he realized.
He’d come here today to find some proof that Della’s family wouldn’t do this to her.
This outing might just be his opportunity to find some proof that they actually had.
David left the room as abruptly as he’d entered, and Andrew was once again in a battle of silence with Morley.
“My apologies for his behavior,” the viscount said. It was so reflexive, Andrew got the hint that he made this particular speech often. “You know how young men are these days.”
Now that, Andrew didn’t understand. He and David were only a few years apart, and he was long past considering himself a young man.
He’d been a young man when he’d left England, thinking he’d never return.
Since then, he’d studied and worked and done enough around the world that he’d grown bored.
David was still clearly acting the part of a young man, though.
In a way Andrew had never been permitted to.
“You could join us for dinner, if you’d like.” Morley smiled in a way that set Andrew on edge. He was so polite. It was almost certainly artificial. It was a thin veneer that Andrew knew he had to break through. He feared there was something malignant lingering beneath.
“Thank you for the kind offer, but I have business to attend to this afternoon.” Andrew smiled at his own words. The power of Della, shining through once more.
“Very well then.” Morley stood up, shook his hand again. “It was good to see you, Andrew.”
He left the room without another word, striding down the halls with his head held high.
He nodded at the butler and the footman on his way out, waving off their still unnecessary bows.
Andrew would come back later. He’d go on this galivant through the night with David.
Enjoy himself for once, he’d said. The arrogant prig.
He wouldn’t enjoy himself, but maybe he’d find something useful.
Andrew headed toward home. He didn’t have business to attend to this afternoon. Not really.
He had a letter to write.