It was that bit of surprise that twisted something in her chest. It reminded her that Hector did not have a family to love and be loved by in return.
“I do love them,” she said, forcing herself to pause in appreciation of that fact.
Maybe Hector realized that they were treading too close to something dangerous, because he cleared his throat.
“But you returned to Belgium anyway?” he inquired, a note of forced politeness in his words.
“Oh! Yes,” she said, grateful for the reprieve. “I’d grown quite accustomed to it by that point. And things are rather less … rigid there. People still gossip, of course; gossip is everywhere. But there’s something rather less … judgmental about it.”
“That sounds nice,” he said wryly. “I wonder what that is like.”
There was real hurt beneath his comment, and maybe she shouldn’t have pressed, but she couldn’t help it, she found.
“I’m sorry that your family sent you away,” she said. “It was bad enough for me when my brother did it, and I was grown. As a child … I can’t even imagine …”
His jaw moved, like he was tasting the words in his mouth before he spoke.
“It’s different,” he said, though there wasn’t any censure in the words. “Your brother … He might have been misguided, perhaps, but he sent you away out of love. He thought he was protecting you. My parents …” He let out a bitter huff of air. “They were only protecting themselves. They loathed me. They saw my leg as a sign of failure, and so they hated to even look at me.”
“An injury isn’t a failure,” she said, surprised at her own vehemence. “No matter if you were born with it or got it later on. My brother’s dearest friend is missing a hand, and he is agoodman, akindman. And you—” She didn’t know if she should say this, but didn’t know if she could live with herself if she didn’t.“You are good, too. And I’m sorry that your parents are dead because I can’t tell them that to their faces.”
He gave her a look that said that he didn’t quite believe her.
“They wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “To them, I was unworthy from the start. If they could have disinherited me, they would have. But instead, they sent me away—made me a true Hephaestus at the forge,” he said wryly.
“You know your myths,” she said, faintly surprised. Her grandfather, Cornelius, had been obsessed with the Ancient Greeks, and the family had three generations of mythology-inspired names to show for it.
Hector rolled his eyes at her astonishment, but it was teasing, familiar.
“You London toffs think you invented everything,” he said without any real heat. “Even stories that are thousands of years old. You little snob.”
“You stubborn lout,” she responded with the same lack of true censure.
He chuckled, a brief sound, and then the silence between them resumed. But it wasn’t as painful now as it had been before, and Clio almost dared to hope that something good had happened between them, something brave and tender that might make all the difference.
CHAPTER 19
Helen was utterly beside herself.
“Oh, Clio,” she said, pressing up on her toes to kiss Clio soundly on both cheeks as she and Hector were shown into the Godwin Estate drawing room. “We are so pleased to have you! I can’t blame you, of course, but you were far too busy at your wedding breakfast, and I feel that I hardly got to speak with you at all! And after you have so recently returned to England! Oh! And Letitia is adarling;thank you for sending her to us, we simply adore her?—"
“Helen,” Xander said, coming up behind her and laying a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “If you don’t take a breath, you’re going to swoon.”
Helen, a plump woman of hearty Northern stock, cast her husband a disgusted glance.
“I’ve never swooned a day in my life,” she said, appalled. But she did pause for air, which Clio thought likely for the best. “In any case, we’re very pleased to have you. And especially you,” she added to Hector, who looked rather taken aback by this show of familial effusiveness, “because it’s been far too long since I’ve heard a proper Northern accent. It sounds like home.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, Your Grace,” Hector said with a smile that came so easily that Clio might have been jealous—if not for the fact that Helen was one of the most happily married people that Clio knew.
Besides, Hector was standing at Clio’s shoulder just in the same way that Xander was standing beside Helen. It was hard not to enjoy such a thing.
“Are you dreadfully tired from your journey, or would you like to have something to eat before resting?” Helen asked, already bustling over to the bell to ring for refreshments.
Bustlingwas rather Helen’s default mode. She wasn’t the polished Society darling that everyone had expected to become duchess to the great Duke of Godwin, but Helen was, in Clio’s opinion, absolutely perfect for Xander.
They all agreed that refreshments would be just the thing, and Helen’s businesslike management was so effective that Clio had taken her first bite of a truly delicious scone before she realized that this had all been a ploy to extract gossip.
Goodness. Helen was a bloody mastermind.
