“Can I ask you a question?” Henrietta said, before he could complete the action. His mind reeled, worrying she would ask more about Catherine.
“Anything. Of course.”
As he said these words, he felt the heaviness of his responsibility to her. He was all she had. He knew that he had to be prepared to counsel her on a range of subjects, but he felt at sea. The vastness of the danger before his sister unsteadied him.
“Do you miss Father?”
It wasn’t the question that he had expected, but once she said it, he realized he had already failed as her guardian. Of course, she missed their father. He hadn’t been dead a month. He had been so consumed in the aftermath of the will—and then with Catherine—that he had barely had time to think about how his father’s death had affected his sister. He tried to summon, however, for Henrietta’s sake, his feelings from before he knew the contents of the will, on that long ride home, when he had been overtaken by something much like grief.
“It is hard to imagine that I will never speak to him again. I keep expecting to see him walking the halls. Or, when I was away, to receive a letter from him summoning me home.”
Henrietta gave a little sad smile. “Did he send many letters summoning you home?”
John felt a rush of guilt. “Not often. And he didn’t summon me exactly. But he made it known that he wanted me home anyhow.”
“We both did.”
“I’m sorry, Retta. I should have come home more. It was just—” He shook his head. He couldn’t explain when she didn’t know about the scandal.
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t help growing up,” she said, tracing a pattern on the coverlet with her fingers. “It’s just that I keep expecting to miss him. But mostly I feel sad, because, when I try, I realize how much of him was already gone. It’s like I grew up my whole life missing him already. It always seemed that so much of him died with Mother.”
John winced. He had no idea how his sister could come so close to the truth when she knew so little about the past. In some ways, he had always thought his sister was lucky. She never knew his father before the scandal, so—he had reasoned—she would never have to know how diminished he had been. Now, he considered that it might have been better to have known him in his prime, to know the scale of the loss, instead of wondering at it.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “He loved you. That I know.”
He felt bitter guilt as he said the words, because part of him thought,did he? Had his father loved Henrietta? His will didn’t make it seem that way. And, yet, he had seen his father’s love for his sister with his own eyes. Over the past seventeen years, she had been the one thing binding them together. She was the one thing that they had always agreed on.
“And I loved him. He was always very kind to me. It’s just—even when he was here, it didn’t feel like he was, or not all the time.” She looked down. “That’s why I think we both always wanted you here. It made this place feel less like it was filled with ghosts.”
“Retta, I promise I will make it up to you.”
His little sister’s eyes flashed up at him again and then she cracked a wide smile. “By giving me the most glorious season a recently orphaned girl has ever had?”
He laughed and tried to push down the rising terror in his throat. “Yes,” he said, forcing himself to smile and look lighthearted, even with the panic beating hard against his skull. “No expense spared.”
Chapter Eighteen
Catherine rose anddressed, lacing her stays and stockings, and wondered where John might be in the truly gigantic Edington Hall. She resolved not to look for him when he was probably attending to Henrietta. Instead, she would reacquaint herself with the place alone.
And she would try not to think of what had happened yesterday in the carriage. Or feel too mortified. In the cold light of day, she felt exposed. She hadagainshown him so much of herself, of what she desired, and she could not shake the feeling that what she had revealed—what they had both revealed—had altered the shaky truce that they had found on the road.
She exited the bedchamber and walked down the grand stairs, marveling at the size and grandiosity of the place, which she remembered hazily from her childhood. A few times, she had come to Edington Hall with her aunt Mary to call on the family and had observed its grandness. She had listened to her aunt discuss issues in the parish with the duke on those occasions, the only times she had seen them in the same room together.
Forster House was older, but Edington Hall was much larger. It had made an impression on her then and she felt disloyal to her own family to admit that it still impressed her now. The wide windows looking out over the meticulous park, the expansive stone floors, and the bustling of the enormous staff, who moved about the house in the morning sun taking no notice of her, awed her. She felt a bit like an imposter, stalking around uninvited and unnoticed.
She happened upon the gallery and gazed upon the solemn faces of the former Dukes of Edington and their wives. She found the large portrait of John’s father, done when he was still young, and noted how much he looked like John, except for his dark brown eyes.
And then she looked up and saw John himself in the doorway.
“How is she?” She could hear the dread in her own voice. From this distance, his face was inscrutable.
“Henrietta is through the worst of it. Her fever broke last night. I had to force her to rest for today but she has made a remarkable recovery.”
“Thank God.”
“She’s fine.”
She looked him in the eyes. “I am very, very glad to hear it.”
