Chapter 9
A Good Year For the Roses
When he had left her the previous day, Damian had instructed Cilly to be ready to leave at eight thirty, and to keep to her room and refuse any contact with her father in the meantime. He had arrived promptly and given no further explanation.
“Where are we going, Damian?” Cilly asked tentatively. Since their confrontation with her father yesterday and… and that kiss, the effects of which were even now vibrating beneath her skin, Damian had kept away.
Cilly glanced at Nichols, who chaperoned them. The woman said nothing, but her placid countenance soothed Cilly’s stomach churning anxiety, knowing there was little that would ruffle her loyal maid’s composure.
She turned her attention back to Damian, who still hadn’t answered her, only gazed out of the window, his expression bleak.
To say his mood was uncertain was to wildly understate things.
Cilly felt as though she stood atop a sheet of fine glass, which crazed and cracked beneath her feet.
One wrong step and she would plunge, cutting herself to ribbons.
Yet this was the crux of everything. She felt this instinctively. If she could navigate this… this storm, this approaching catastrophe, and find a way through it, a way for them both to survive it, then they would be all right. They might even be happy.
The odds seemed stacked against her, but for once, she felt she might have a chance of winning something precious.
“Damian?”
He looked around at her, his gaze unfocused for a moment, as if he were dragging himself from another place back to the here and now.
“Where are we going?” she repeated.
“To find the answers to your questions,” he replied gently.
Cilly swallowed, foreboding sweeping over her like a cold, wet fog, clinging to her skin and smothering hope.
Stubborn as ever, Cilly merely acknowledged his words with a slight nod.
Yet the sorrow in his eyes pierced her. What terrible secret was he going to reveal to her?
Whatever it was, he feared it. She saw it in his expression, heard it in his voice—resignation.
He believed that his actions today would put an end to her hopes for a real marriage, for love, for children.
For they both knew she would never give up on him, and she felt that knowledge scared him more than anything else.
If nothing else, she would be his friend.
She suspected she would never stop hoping for more, yet she must respect the choices he made, for what else was there to do when she had already taken so many choices away from him.
Whatever it was he would reveal this day, he believed she would fear it too.
After what felt like an eternity, the carriage drew up outside an elegant house.
Damian helped her down and Cilly opened her mouth to ask who lived here and closed it again. There was something about the place, something… unsettling.
“Come, my dear,” he said, his voice still oddly gentle. “Nichols, you may go with the coachman and groom, there is a decent pub a mile down the road. Make yourselves comfortable and order what you will, I will cover it.”
Nichols looked to Cilly, who nodded her agreement. Whatever lay behind the pretty facade of this house, she must face it.
Damian opened the gate and escorted her to the front door, where he rang the bell.
“What is this place?” Cilly asked, aware of her heart beating a little too fast.
“This is Hollywell House,” he said, watching for her reaction. “Perhaps you have heard of it.”
Cilly blinked. Great Aunt Mildred had been taken to Hollywell House. She swallowed, careful not to show shock or surprise. “It is an asylum,” she said calmly.
Damian nodded as the door opened. A woman who looked to be a nurse in a pristine white apron greeted them politely.
“Good morning, madam. Please inform Doctor Grantham that Lord Rivington is here to see his mother.”
Cilly’s heart leapt, and it took every shred of willpower she had not to throw her arms around him and hold on tight.
He would never allow such a show of affection or sympathy on his behalf.
Damian would disregard it as sentiment, overblown emotion.
She must think first before she acted, and so she showed no reaction, merely taking his arm as he led her inside and the nurse guided them to a pretty parlour where they might wait.
“It is a fine establishment,” she remarked, looking approvingly around at the care which had been taken to make it look like a home, not a hospital. “My Great Aunt Mildred lived here for a few years until her death. I believe she was happy here, or as happy as she could be.”
“Ah,” Damian nodded, smiling politely. “What was her affliction?”
Cilly blinked, wondering how to answer that. No one ever spoke of it. To tell the truth, she was not entirely sure. “She… She liked to set light to things. Fire fascinated her.”
“A dangerous fascination indeed,” Damian replied, his eyes glittering in a way she did not like. They looked febrile, his mood appearing to become increasingly precarious.
“I suppose so, and… and your mother?”
Damian stood by the hearth, staring down at the leaping flames, but he looked up then and met her eyes.
“Mama? Oh, Mama murdered our father with a bread knife, and then she tried to murder Gideon. Ah, Doctor Grantham, how good of you to see us when we have no appointment.” Damian’s tone did not change a whit as he delivered the words that robbed Cilly of breath.
She nodded at the doctor, her mind reeling as Damian reached for her hand.
“Come, my dear. Let us discuss Mama with the good doctor before we go for a little visit with her.”
“You mean to see her? Oh, well, that is wonderful, my lord. She asks for you often, you know,” the doctor said as they followed him to his consulting room.
The ticking clock in the parlour seemed to follow them, the sound growing louder in Cilly’s head. Madness. His mother was mad. She had murdered his father, had tried to murder his brother too.
Oh God.
Oh, good Lord.
She glanced up at Damian, noticing the pallor of his skin, stark against the crisp white of his cravat.
Oh, my love.
Damian forced himself to keep his attention on the doctor, not on Cilly. Every fibre of his being wanted to turn to her, to gauge her reaction, the faint hope that he had not horrified her beyond mending warring with his very real need to do just that.
It was for the best.
Best for all concerned, but most of all, for Celia.
She still had time to choose elsewhere. Perhaps even the earl would be a preferable choice to what he could offer her. She’d get a family to love, at least.
He could offer her nothing but his name, such as it was.
A comfortable home, his friendship, if that still held any value for her.
His hold on her felt insubstantial, as frail as dandelion seeds, ready to be swept away at the first breath of wind.
Yet her hold on him seemed to grow with every second that ticked past, her grip tightening until he could not breathe.
“Your brother visited recently.”
“I know. It had the inevitable consequences, I hear,” Damian said dryly, holding the doctor’s gaze.
No doubt the man thought him callous. Grantham knew Deon had bled himself dry to keep the woman here in comfort.
He wondered if he knew that her eldest son had refused to help.
He certainly knew it was Damian who now paid the bills, as he had written telling the fellow to send them to him from now on.
Despite her animosity, it had been Deon who had taken on the responsibility all these years, though. Mama hated Deon. No, that was too slight a word for the passion that burned inside her, violent and raw-edged. She loathed him and feared him and blamed him for everything.
In the first months after his baby brother had arrived, Damian had known something was amiss, but not what. But then he’d been a child, looked after by a nanny, and the adults did not argue in front of him. He’d heard them sometimes, though, in his bed at night. The angry voices had frightened him.
After Deon’s arrival, his time with his mother had been allocated, whereas before she had always been by his side.
After that, he had only visited his mama for brief intervals, where he was told to be a good boy.
Then there had been the strange silences, and muffled arguments in distant parts of the house that seemed to last for hours or even days, but as the months turned to years, her behaviour became erratic, sometimes violent.
She would grab hold of his arm, whispering things that frightened him, telling him his brother was wicked, a demon, an incubus, come to punish them all.
Their father said Mama was sick, and they were not to see her anymore.
Damian wondered why he had never blamed his brother, for it had been Deon’s arrival that had destroyed their lives.
He had been the catalyst that had shattered his mother’s fragile peace of mind.
Yet it had never occurred to Damian to resent his arrival.
He’d rejoiced in his new sibling. Perhaps because Deon had been so little, so sweetly defenceless.
Damian had been the heir, the eldest. It had been his job to protect him.
He had been eight years old, and his mother had been so strong, so savage with fury.
How could he make them understand how he hated her, and hated himself for not saving her, for not saving their father?
Christ, it hadn’t even been him who had saved Gideon in the end, though he’d tried his damndest. If not for the servants, Deon would be lying cold beside their father, nothing more than dust and bones.
He shuddered, jolting himself back to the present, trying to remember what they’d been speaking of as he realised the doctor was talking to him.
“Sadly, yes, though it was necessary. I had to raise our prices as her needs have also increased.” The doctor’s voice was frank.
“Do not fear, Doctor Grantham. I gave you my word that I shall cover the costs from now on. I will not renege on the agreement.”