“That’s terrible,” Lady Hargreaves said, as her husband moved on to the ribbon at her neckline.
“It is worse than terrible. If Percy does not find a way to restore his wealth, he will lose Weavingshaw. He will die before he allows that to happen.”
“What about those boys Lord Avon was speaking of? The ones thatHis Gracewanted?”
Her husband paused, the white ribbon caught between his thumb and index finger. Once more, his voice turned mild. “A Duke has offered Percy a few coins to find him some suitable servants,that is all.” He leaned toward her when he saw the worried notch on her brow, tucking her neckline lower. “Come, let us forget all of this. Percy already has a wife to content himself with. Let me content myself with my own wife tonight.”
—
The boy was motherless.
Lady Hargreaves held the babe in her arms, fascinated by the dark wisps of hair that fell over his brow. She hummed to him, the young master Bramwell Avon, relishing the way his tiny fist held her finger.
“He grows well.” Her husband had paused at the threshold, watching as she rocked the sleeping baby back and forth. “He’s a handsome lad.”
“Takes after his father.” Lord Avon was steps behind him, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Lady Hargreaves watched him covertly beneath her lashes. There was no grief on Lord Avon’s face, no remnant of feeling from his wife’s passing only a few months prior, during childbirth. Not a single mention of her name. Even the black he wore did not resemble mourning attire, cut impeccably in the latest fashion.
She gripped the baby tighter to her chest. “I think he takes after his mother.”
She didn’t miss the narrowing of Lord Avon’s blue eyes, nor the way he took the boy from her, anchoring him to his own chest, his hand possessively snaking over the sleeping infant.
“He is an Avon through and through,” was His Lordship’s only reply, as if the boy had been born in isolation, from a single line. A motherless child even before birth.
—
Lady Hargreaves’s delight expanded the more she watched Bram grow.
He was a quick learner, and he understood the world in different ways from the adults around him. He would notice small details that escaped everyone else’s attention—that the tonic Lady Hargreaves had each morning to calm her nerves made her drowsy and dazed, or that the parade of men who entered Hythe House always left with a brand on their forearm:The Wake.
Bram was only seven when he asked her about the Wake, and when he saw Lady Hargreaves freeze, her eyes wild with fright thanks to all the things she’d seen and heard over the years, he learned not to ask again. Her husband and Lord Avon had begun to take the young master into their meetings, excluding Lady Hargreaves on the other side of the closed door, and she knew that they were molding him to one day inherit it all.
She watched with growing dread the way Lord Avon treated the child. He was not a neglectful father, nor even a cruel one, but he was forgetful. It was obvious he loved the boy, taking great pride in both his intellect and handsome features. But Lord Avon was prone to taking long trips, leaving the boy either with Mrs. Van, the governess, or at Hythe House with Lady Hargreaves.
When he returned, he’d whisk the boy back to Weavingshaw, and Lady Hargreaves felt the gap in her chest grow wider at Bram’s absence. Sometimes, her husband would accompany Lord Avon on those trips north, and every time he returned from Weavingshaw, Lady Hargreaves sensed a change in him. Something dark had rooted itself in her husband’s chest and he barricaded himself for longer in his study.
Bram also returned changed.
Childhood seemed to fall off him quicker, leaving behind something ancient and cold. He still knew how to smile at her in that boyish way that had always charmed her, but she’d seen the way that smile dropped the moment she turned her head. All the unease Lady Hargreaves felt seemed to build and build with each passing hour until she felt smothered beneath the weight ofit.
But…her husband still visited her at night. Lady Hargreaves told herself that she could live with the disquiet she felt during the day if it meant she could have those nights with him.
—
Just before Bram’s twelfth year, her husband took her to spend the summer at Weavingshaw.
It was her first time at the estate, and Lady Hargreaves longed to see the land that had captivated the child she’d grown to love with her entire being.
The estate was beautiful.
But it seemed tohateLady Hargreaves beyond compare.
She felt suffocated within the house. Sometimes, she imagined the walls were closing in on her, depriving her of breath. During the nights, even though she could see her husband’s sleeping form beside her, she felt cut off. Isolated. Without shelter.
She pretended happiness for Bram’s sake. She could clearly see that the boy’s soul was embedded within Weavingshaw, spellbound by it. From the window, she’d once watched as Bram and his father walked the lands with holy reverence, cutting through the Deathgrips that grew in a tangle around the estate, both reaching down to grasp a piece of earth in their cupped hands. It was clear in their movements, the broadness of their shoulders, the angle of their jaws, even the slant of their brows, that they were father and son. Lady Hargreaves wondered how she had ever thought that Bram would inherit his looks solely from his mother; it became unmistakably clearer with every year that he had the Avon bearing in spite of the darkness of his hair and eyes.
During those sweltering days, she and Bram left notes for each other in a postbox they had nailed to a tree beside the wild beach. She would hum to him the same lullaby she’d sung to him as a babe.
Bram was always a quick child, sharp and observant, and she knew that he’d also started to notice the odd changes of behavior that had begun to unsettle his father that summer.
