“The marquess was just leaving, my love.”
“No,” Giles whispered. “He’s not.”
Mama.He stared at his feet.
“Are you here to hurt me, Bromton?”
Bromton. Always Bromton. A sob escaped his throat. He shook his head no.
His mother and her husband spoke in tones he couldn’t understand. Then, the door closed. He did not know if either, or both, had left. He didn’t want to look.Ifshe had stayed, she’d curtsey. He could not bear if she curtseyed.
“Don’t curtsey,” he said.
“Very well,” his mother answered. “I curtseyed because it was correct. And, like your father, you always demanded I be correct.”
He exhaled and opened his eyes.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I—I don’t have anywhere else to go.” He looked at his feet. “Was coming here,” his voice cracked, “a mistake?”
“You are hurting.” She approached him slowly, as if he were an injured wild animal. “So, I’d like to think not.”
He glanced up. “I’ve made so many mistakes.” Mortifyingly, his eyes filled. “I do not know where to begin.”
She wrapped an arm around her waist and held her other hand over her mouth.
“I would have done anything,” he continued, “anything, to restore the Langley line.” He held his lip between his teeth until it ceased to quiver. “Can you forgive me?”
“Are you sure it ismyforgiveness you seek?” she asked. “Or is there someone else to whom you should be speaking?”
Again, he hung his head. After a long silence, he felt his mother’s hand against his arm. She guided him to a chair and, together, they sat.
“I should never have told you,” she said quietly. “It was just—you’d grown so remote. You refused permission for me to wed.” She inhaled. “Not that those things excuse the things I said.”
“I told you never to darken the halls of Bromton Castle. I did not mean—” He stopped. Hehadmeant those words the night he’d spoken them. He began again, this time, with a clearer truth. “I—I would take back my words, if I could.”
She placed her hand on his cheek. Her touch was enough to break him.
“Why are you here, Bromton?”
To say he was sorry. To ask forgiveness. To find out if there was anything inside him worth being redeemed.
“I love her,” he said, in an awkward summary of all of the above. “I love her and she hates me, just as you hate me. Justifiably. I’ve lost any chance I might have had to make things right with you both.” A tear dropped onto his cuff. “And I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh.” She leaned forward. “Oh, darling.”
He closed his eyes. “Mama,” he whispered.
For the first time since his fifth year, Giles Everhart Langley, third Marquess of Bromton, tenth Earl of Strathe, and twelfth Baron Langley, found himself enveloped in his mother’s arms.
“Hush,” she crooned into his hair.
“She isn’t going to forgive me. And I deserve that, because I did not forgive you.”
She held his cheeks as she looked into his eyes. “Do you forgive me, now?”
He nodded.
