It didn’t matter. He couldn’t allow it to matter. Still he owed his parents for his very life. He owed Eliza the security she would lose if Uncle Nigel succeeded in his aim. He might have been an accident, a mistake—but still he owed a duty of care to those beneath his protection.
“Henry!”
Eliza’s abruptly-shrill voice pierced the fog of his thoughts at last. “Hmm?”
Her lips pursed into a truculent pout, Eliza said, “I was saying how charming Augusta Coombs’ new bonnet is. I wouldsolike to have one like it. Might I?”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” Henry swallowed down the guilt thatwelled up from the pit of his stomach with another bite of roasted potato. There was always the possibility that in some not too distant future, there would be no money for the purchase of such things. Best, then, to let Eliza have those things which pleased her so while there was yet the opportunity.
Eliza gave a muted squeal of glee, wriggling in her seat with excitement. “Oh, thank you! You are just thebestof brothers,” she enthused.
Was he, though? Would she still think the same if he failed to rescue them from the calamity he’d brought down upon their heads? That Sword of Damocles might swing at any moment.
“May I be excused?” Eliza asked sweetly as she laid down her silverware and patted at her mouth with a corner of her napkin. “I must write a note to Augusta for the name of her hat shop so that I may send it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“If you’ve finished with your supper, by all means.”
“And you will take me shopping tomorrow?” Eliza inquired eagerly. “Once Augusta has written back?”
The tines of his fork pierced the tender flesh of the filet of turbot upon his plate a bit too deeply. “Mother would be better suited—”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Mother demurred, her voice quavering over the syllables. “Not—not tomorrow, certainly.”
Notever, he thought she meant to say. Not if it meant leaving the house and risking an encounter with anyone she knew. Not without her husband by her side to protect her from the worst of society’s censure.
Not even for her daughter.
Henry swiped one hand across his face in an effort to relieve the scowl that had settled there. “I’ll take you,” he said to Eliza. “Go on, then. Write your note.”
With a joyous little screech, Eliza bounced out of her chair, pausing only briefly to plant a loud smack of a kiss upon hischeek before she scampered from the room. And then Henry was left alone with his mother, at an oppressively silent table.
The candles upon the table sputtered, flickering flames ill-equipped to hold back the veil of darkness that seemed to collect between them. Like a funerary shroud had been draped across the table.
Henry’s cravat felt unnaturally tight against his throat, and he resisted the urge to tug the knot loose. “She’s just fifteen,” he said into that all-encompassing silence. “We’ve been out of mourning for—what, two months?”
“Henry.” Mother’s voice, pitched to a pleading tone, warbled in the air between them.
“She wants to wear pretty clothes again,” he said. “To visit with her friends and laugh and play. She ought to be allowed those things. And she needs—she needs—”
She needed her mother.Heneeded his mother. One didn’t stop needing one’s parents only because one had grown up. And now, Father was well beyond their reach. There was only Mother, and Mother—
Mother couldn’t bring herself to do it. She could not pluck herself from the depths of grief and guilt and shame, even long enough for a short outing with the daughter who still needed her. Or to speak to the son who still loved her, who still wanted nothing more than to make her proud.
Would she ever be able to bring herself to meet his gaze again? Or had he become unworthy of even that much respect the very moment the secret she’d harbored for so many long years had at last been revealed?
What little appetite Henry had had vanished as his stomach knotted anew. Silently he laid his napkin upon the table and rose to his feet. “I beg you to remember,” he said softly, striving to keep his tone even and bland, “we havealllost Father. But Eliza oughtn’t lose her mother, too.”
Henry left her alone, to the silence which she preferred, to the darkness in which she had enshrouded herself. And her anguished sob followed him from the room.
Chapter Seven
Your father wishes me to take you to task,” Grace said as she settled into a position against the wall beside Danny, just out of earshot of the rest of the family, and offered him a glass of lemonade which she had fetched only moments before. “And I have been granted permission to pinch your ear, should you prove obstinate.”
Danny glowered just briefly at her over the rim of his glass, though his eyes strayed inevitably back to Hannah, who was presently engaged in a dance. “Couldn’t just mind your own business, could you, Gracie?”
“Why ought I, when minding yours is so much more fun?” Though the droll response failed to amuse him, she still enjoyed the chiding glance he sent her.
“Could at least have brought me something stronger than lemonade,” Danny groused as he discarded the glass he’d drained on the tray of a passing servant. He eased at once back into his position against the wall, folding his arms over his chest.
