He would return to Redmond Park.
Not in six weeks when the Season concluded. Not with careful planning and appropriate preparation.
Now. Today.
Enough time had passed. He missed his home, he excused himself. Missed his… new life?
“Morrison!” His voice carried through the sleeping house. “Morrison, I require the travelling carriage prepared. Immediately.”
Footsteps hurried in the corridor. His valet appeared, hair dishevelled and eyes bleary, attempting to knot his dressing gown.
“My lord? It’s barely five o’clock?—”
“I’m aware of the hour. I’m returning to Kent. Today. Now.” Tobias was already pulling clothes from his wardrobe with no regard for their condition. “Have the trunks brought down. Pack only essentials. Everything else can follow later.”
“But my lord, you have Lady Rutledge’s ball this evening, and Lord Waverly’s dinner tomorrow, and?—”
“Cancel them. All of them.” He turned to face his bewildered valet. “I’m going home, Morrison. I should have gone months ago.”
The older man nodded. “Very good, my lord. I’ll have everything ready within the hour.”
The hour stretched with agonizing slowness. Tobias paced his study, unable to remain still, his mind racing ahead to Redmond Park. Would she be in the morning room with her ledgers? Would Henry still carry the wooden horse everywhere? Would she smile when she saw him, or would her expression shutter with disappointment that he’d returned at all?
“My lord?” Morrison appeared in the doorway. “The carriage is ready.”
Tobias grabbed his greatcoat and strode toward the entrance hall, pausing only to retrieve something from his desk drawer. The letters. All of them—every brief, carefully worded note she’d sent these past months. He tucked them into his coat pocket opposite Henry’s sock.
He was going home. At last.
CHAPTER 15
“Mama, look! Look what I did!”
The voice—bright, demanding, utterly delighted with itself—arrested Tobias before he’d even crossed the threshold of Redmond Park. He stood motionless in the entrance hall, his travelling coat still damp from the journey, and felt something in his chest twist painfully tight.
Henry’s voice. Not the uncertain babbling of the infant he’d left behind, but proper words, full of personality and life.
Six months. He’d been gone six whole months.
“I see it, darling,” came Amelia’s reply, warm and indulgent. “Very clever indeed. Shall we build it even taller?”
Tobias’s feet moved before his mind could catch up, drawn toward that laughter like a man dying of thirst toward water. He climbed the stairs two at a time, heedless of Pemberton’s startledcall behind him, heedless of propriety or protocol or the travel dust still clinging to his clothes.
The nursery door stood ajar, and he paused there, one hand braced against the frame, simply staring.
Sunlight streamed through uncovered windows—when had the mourning drapes been removed?—painting everything in shades of gold. The room itself had been transformed. Gone were the dark, oppressive furnishings Edward had preferred. In their place: cream-coloured walls, cheerful paintings of animals, a rocking horse in the corner that Tobias didn’t recognize. Even the air smelled different—lighter somehow, carrying the faint scent of lavender and something else. Something that made his throat constrict with an emotion he dared not name.
Happiness. The room smelled of happiness.
And there, in the centre of it all, Henry.
The boy had grown impossibly. He could not believe that anyone could change this much in a mere six months, the thought as he perceived Henry’s fierce concentration as he stacked wooden blocks with the dedication of an architect planning Westminster Abbey. His dark curls—Edward’s curls, though Tobias tried not to think of that—fell across his forehead as he worked, and his tongue peeked out between his lips in a gesture of such pure, unconscious determination that Tobias found himself smiling despite everything.
A maid sat in the corner doing needlework, but Henry paid her no mind. His entire world had narrowed to those blocks, to the tower he was building with such single-minded purpose?—
The tower collapsed with a clatter that made Tobias wince. But Henry, rather than crying, simply laughed and clapped his hands.
“Again!” he announced to no one in particular. “Build it again!”
