She had admitted only that one lapse to him at the time. He had learned differently from other people, but he had never confronted her with his knowledge. She had been quite broken up, and he had been distraught. Good God, she was hismother.
“Lady Grantham doubtless knew about the affair,” he said, “but all her lady’s education had taught her to turn a blind eye. Heaven knows what suffering and what humiliation she bore in silence. Bertha certainly knew even before I was fool enough to blurt out to her what I had just discovered. But she had been trained by her mother and had accepted her father’s infidelity long before I told her about it.”
Worse, Bertha had gazed at him uncomprehendingly as he spoke and had then asked him if all men were not like her father. When he had assured her thathewas not, thathewould be faithful to her until death, she had actually recoiled from him and told him what a child he was—though he was two years her senior. She had no intention, she had told him, of tying herself to him for life once she had performed the duty of presenting him with a son, perhaps two. He surely could not be so naïve as to ask it of her.
“And my uncles knew,” he said, “and were only chagrined that you had neglected to lock your door.”
They had told him in no uncertain terms that it was time he accepted some of the realities of life. And yettheywere the ones who had sheltered and educated him all through his boyhood. He was a naïve child, they had told him—the same words Bertha had used—and had better keep his mouth shut about what he had seen and get ready to announce his engagement the following day, as planned. It was time he grew up.
Instead he had summoned every member of the house party to the drawing room within the hour and announced that there was to be no engagement and that they would all kindly leave Sidley before noon the next day. He had told his uncles that they were absolved of all future obligations toward him since he was now an adult and was no longer in need of either their guardianship or their advice.
His mother he had left to her tears—and to Sidley. He had bolted only one day after his guests.
He had not excused her. He had not even believed her lie—he had accepted that her affair with Grantham was of long standing. But he had believed that she had loved Grantham. Now he wondered if that had been so, or if it had mattered anyway. Grantham had been amarried man—and the two of them had been prepared to arrange a marriage between their offspring.
She was clinging tightly to the arms of her chair now, gazing at him with wide-eyed indignation.
“But it is not about Grantham that I wish to speak,” he said. “It is about Mr. Osbourne. Youdidhave an affair with him, did you not? But something happened to end the liaison. My guess is thatheended it. Had he told you about his past before then? Or did you find it out some other way? However it was, you threatened to go to Sir Charles with your knowledge.”
He had no proof of any of this, it struck him suddenly. It would be terrible indeed if he were wrong and had made such accusations against his own mother. And yet he longed to be proved wrong.
“Peter,” she said, “ifthisis what that woman has been telling you, I will do all in my power to free you from her evil clutches. You have always been—”
“Susanna didnottell me,” he said. “She told me about the contents of the letter her father had written her and the one he had written Sir Charles, but she did not name his blackmailer.”
“William wrote a letter toher?” his mother asked.
He stared bleakly at her.
“Just before he shot himself,” he said. “He felt that suicide was the only protection he could offer her. If he had lived, she would have been exposed to all the ugly consequences he would have faced from the charge of rape.”
She recoiled.
“How can you use that word in your own mother’s hearing?” she asked him. But then she sank back in her chair again, looking suddenly smaller and older. “I said only that he had harassed and molested me, not that…And it was true. I told Sir Charles so after William’s death. I would never have…Peter, you must believe me.”
He felt his shoulders slump. Hehadbeen hoping, despite everything, that perhaps he had been wrong, that perhaps it had been someone else. But he had remembered during the ride back to Sidley from Fincham that it was about the time of Osbourne’s death that the coolness had developed in the relations between his mother and the Markhams.
“I did not know he wouldkillhimself,” she said. “How could I have known that? How could he punish me so?”
“But you would have taken away his reputation, his character, his freedom, Mama,” he said. “Whatever he had done in the past he had surely lived down. He had achildto support.”
“I condescended,” she said, her voice jerky and rather breathless. “Icondescendedto his level. And then, when I went to London on one occasion becausehewas there, he let me know that he was not pleased. And then he started avoiding me even at Fincham and finally told me it was all over between us. The presumption, Peter. The humiliation! You must understand. I loved your papa, but my life was very empty without him. I was willing to allow that man…”
Ah, just the explanation she had given five years ago when he had confronted her.
“You drove him to his death,” he said quietly. He felt physically sick.
“He was foolish!” she cried. “He must haveknownthat I was just upset with him, that I would not really have ruined him.”
“And yet,” he said, “after he had been to Sir Charles and confessed about his past, you were very ready with new threats.”
“I would not have—” she began.
“Wouldn’t you?” he asked her. “He obviously thought you would. He staked his life on it.”
She spread her hands over her face, and he sat staring at her, appalled at what he had learned today, at what he had guessed, at what she had now confirmed. And at the knowledge that she had twice been prepared to wreak havoc with other people’s lives because of her sexual needs and her loneliness.
He hated to think of his own mother in such a way.
