He swallowed and met his mother’s knowing gaze. “Aye.”
“My darling son.” His mother’s expression turned anguished. She had ever worn her heart on her sleeve. Neither the years nor the loss of his father had changed her. “Perhaps you ought to move past those old hurts. She loves you too. It’s plain as day on her countenance. More to the point, I do not believe she had anything to do with her father’s actions. When I spoke to her yesterday at dinner, she revealed she has not spoken with her father in years. She appeared to have no inkling what had happened to you.”
He sighed heavily, feeling every one of his one-and-thirty years. “She did not. We…had a discussion yesterday, and we both made some realizations that were rather damning. Her parents acted on their own to prevent her from marrying me. She came to meet me that day as we had planned, but I was already gone. She waited for hours.”
Bloody hell, the notion of Ara waiting for him, spending hours alone, thinking he had jilted her—that he cared so little for her he had not even bothered to appear—still made him long to tear her father limb from limb. The man had cost them eight years.
“Oh, Clayton.” His mother pressed a hand over her mouth. “From the moment I met her, I knew she could not have been capable of such a thing. She is a tenderhearted woman, and she is a good mother to your son.”
Your son.
The words still rattled him.
But they felt right. They felt good.
He nodded, and the warmth of the sun—unprecedented after so much spring chill and fog and damp—left him feeling flushed. Or mayhap that was merely thoughts of Ara.
“She is that,” he agreed, pausing, striving to find his words. Ordinarily, he was not a man given to sentiment, but this was different. This was Ara and their son, and everything he had ever wanted within his grasp. It rocked him to the core. “Damn it, Mother, I do not know what the hell to do about her.”
His mother’s lips pursed and she treated him to a raised brow and the stern expression he recalled from his wayward youth. “First, you need to curtail that language of yours. You ought to be ashamed, Clayton. Second, marry her.”
The proclamation did not alarm him. Rather, it imbued him with a vast, swelling tide of hope. But he didn’t wish to unburden his every intention to his mother. Not yet. “She is newly widowed, mother.”
“Months have passed, have they not?”
For all that his mother detested profanity, she remained a rebel in other ways.
Four months had gone by since Burghly’s murder. He had counted more than once, and it had never increased on any occasion.
“Not enough. Moreover, we scarcely know each other. The lad does not even know I am his father yet.”
“Have you told the Duchess how you feel?” his mother asked next, knowing him all too well.
“No,” he bit out. For he scarcely knew how he felt himself. Indeed, he had spent the better part of the morning engaged in bouts of fisticuffs so that he could distract himself from all such thoughts.
“Do you not think you ought to, Clayton?” His mother bestowed an arch look upon him, the sort that could only come from a mother who always thought she knew better than her offspring. He knew it well.
“No,” he denied, feeling stubborn as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I do not. I do, however, think you ought to muddle in Leo’s life a bit. He requires a mother’s guidance far more than I do.”
“Fear not.” His mother winked. “When the time comes for your brother, I shall guide him in every way possible. Until then, I have a grandson I dearly wish to know and a future daughter who must be wooed. Kisses would be quite estimable, I think. But nothing more, Clayton. Do be on your best behavior. I shall be watching—do not think I won’t. Take her for a drive. Bring her flowers. Sing to her. Your voice is so deep and lovely, and I just know she will love to hear it. Too much time has been taken from you already, and you must do this right.”
He sighed. Mother had always possessed a flair for the dramatic, God love her. “This is not a love sonnet, Mother. I do not have the liberty to court her. She is only here at Harlton Hall because she is in danger, and though I may harbor feelings for her, she does not necessarily feel the same.”
There was no question that she wanted him. Their bodies had found their old rhythm with ease, sparking up a blazing inferno from a small flame. But beyond the base need between them and a handful of allusions to tender sentiments, she had given him nothing to suggest his courtship of her would be welcome.
And he was…
Well, bloody hell.
He had spent so many years fearing no one and nothing—thanks to his immense size and his intensive training with the League—but he found himself terrified. Afraid to offer her his bruised and battered heart, his scarred face, his simple last name, the tumbledown estate he was rebuilding much as he had rebuilt his life. Afraid she did not love him in return. That she had merely been overcome by a rush of old feelings that had never quite dissipated.
That she would tell himno.
His mother gave him a searching look. “She cannot deny you if you do not ask her. But neither can she say yes.”
Why did his mother seem to possess the capacity to read his mind? He grunted, aware he was being a beast, but too overwhelmed to continue the conversation any further. “If you have finished admonishing me and ordering me to court the Duchess of Burghly, I will take my leave. I must see to my men.”
Without bothering to wait for her reply, he turned to flee.Bloody hell, he was a man fully grown, and he was retreating from his own mother. It was a hell of a day.
