“Father, you’re wearing two spectacles at once,” Celine announced as she stepped into the study. “It’s no wonder your ledgers are a mess. Can you even see me through the fog?”
The Earl lifted his chin, his glasses perched one over the other on the bridge of his nose, and squinted at her. “If I can see you, my dear, I must be half-blind. Or dreaming.”
“You are awake. And I assure you, I am not a vision,” Celine said, not moving from the threshold. “Unless you count cautionary ghosts.”
He smiled—a real one, not the tired curve he reserved for tenants or creditors—and set his quill aside. “You sound just like your mother. Come here, Celine.”
She crossed the rug in four steps, her skirt brushing the battered sideboard as she went. “You have not redecorated in sixteenyears, you know. There is a whole colony of dust mites who remember my mother’s day dress.”
“I wouldn’t change a thing if I could,” he replied, watching her the whole time.
He looked older than she remembered. Gray had taken over his hair, and the line of his jaw sagged just enough to age him two decades beyond his sixty years. He wore the same battered velvet waistcoat and house slippers he used to wear when she was a child, as if refusing to let the years strip him of comfort.
She lowered herself into the chair opposite his desk, smoothing her skirts in a bid to stall. “You never listened to my suggestions, Father.”
“Never better, my dear,” he replied, using the old greeting from her schoolroom days. He peered at her with a sort of squinting affection. “I trust London didn’t eat you alive?”
“I escaped with only minor bruising.” Her smile was brittle. “And the wedding was… not as catastrophic as I thought.”
He snorted. “You must have worn them down, then. Your mother could clear a room with half a glance.”
The words dangled between them, a dare and a memory at once.
Celine set her reticule in her lap, twisting the cord between her fingers. “Father,” she said, and it came out much softer than she liked. “I need to know the truth.”
The Earl went very still, as if the next movement might shatter him. “About?”
She took a steadying breath. “Mother. The night she died. I’ve asked you before, but?—”
He shook his head, an abrupt, panicked motion. “Not here. Sit by the fire, please.”
He stood up, and his frame seemed smaller, more breakable than she remembered. He shuffled to the hearth, poured himself a brandy, and nearly sloshed it onto his cuff.
She followed, folding herself into the green wingback by the fireplace. She watched him with a tight, almost clinical interest, as if observing some rare bird who might take flight at any provocation.
The Earl drained half the glass in one go. “They told her not to try for another,” he began, his voice scratchy from disuse. “You know that, don’t you? After you, the doctors warned her—too much bleeding, too much strain. They said another pregnancy would be…” His mouth twisted. “A risk.”
She nodded, her jaw clenched.
“She wanted to give me a son. I think she cared about the title more than I did.” He snorted, the sound bitter. “Emma could be so damn stubborn. She wouldn’t hear of another heir in line.” He glanced at Celine. “She did it for me.”
Celine stared down at her hands. They were white-knuckled on the arms of her chair, and she forced herself to unclench them.
The Earl slumped, his shoulders folding inward. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“I remember the screaming,” she mumbled, each word a stone in her mouth. “I remember Mary locking me in the nursery and the midwife running for the physician. And I remember the silence after.”
He nodded, the glass trembling in his hand.
“She never told me she was sick,” he said. “She hid it. I thought the weakness was just… the way of things.” He managed a laugh, watery and useless. “She knew what would happen, but she wanted to please me. She thought—” He stopped, looking at the flames as if they might answer for him.
Celine swallowed. “What happened that night?”
The Earl set down his glass. “Your brother was stillborn. There was too much blood. By the time they called me in, she was already—already gone.” He squeezed his eyes shut, his hands shaking. “I killed her with my pride.”
The words hung in the air. Celine felt them settle in her chest, as dense as lead.
The Earl picked up his glass again and drained it fully, his fingers white on the cut crystal. “I’m sorry, Celine. I have never?—”
