“They’d be the last to judge,” he said softly. “I know it has been difficult for you since Father passed. I know you’ve lost friends. That you’ve spent far more time within the house than outside of it. Grace’s family—well, it’s true that they’re not the most reputable, that they’re mostly on the fringes of social acceptance. But theyarekind. Generous.” More so than he had had any right to expect of near-perfect strangers.
Mother offered a meek smile. “I’ll consider it,” she said, and it was…not quite agreement, and yet still the closest she’d come to it just lately. “It is so hard, you know, Henry, without your father. He was my rock.”
“Yes.” Father had been the cornerstone of their family. “It’s still difficult, even now, to hear myself addressed by his title. Sometimes I’m still tempted to turn around and look for him.”
“It’s like missing a limb,” Mother said, and she stretched her hand across the table toward his. “We have all lost a great deal, haven’t we, Henry?”
And they stood to lose more still, if he failed to rout Uncle Nigel. “Yes,” he said. “We have. So it is all the more important to treasure what we have got remaining to us.” In his mind, he contrasted Grace’s large, loud, gregarious family with his own small, quiet one. He did not doubt that they had also experienced grief and loss, that there had been difficult times interspersed with the good. But he had the sense that they would not fracture beneath the weight of them as his own had done. That when one stumbled, there the rest would be, ready to heave their fallen to their feet once again and soldier on.
Father’s death had left them all adrift; absent the foundationupon which they had all relied. And Henry didn’t yet know how to be the sort of man, the sort of earl that Father had been.
“It has been…lonely, hasn’t it?” Mother said softly. For once, her voice carried a weight to it, a sort of introspection she hadn’t seemed capable of just recently. “I don’t know who I am without your father. I don’t know how to go on alone.”
One day at a time, he supposed, just as with everything else. “You’re not alone,” he said, and his fingers twitched upon the table, just short of hers. “We still need you,” he confessed, with a heavy sigh. “Eliza and me. And—if all goes to plan—Aunt Alicia will need you as well.”
Mother’s face crumpled, her eyes glistening in the dim glow of the moon. “I have missed her dreadfully,” she admitted. “But what she must think of me.”
“I think she has only missed your company as well,” he said. “So suppose you should meet again. On neutral ground. Say, Grace’s home, for tea.” Something, some small thing, which might lift the weight of the grief in which she had shrouded herself. Some small step into the future which would go on, with or without her. “Father wouldn’t want this for you,” he said gently, “a life unlived. A life devoid of joy. Would he?”
“I—I—” Mother stammered over the words.
“He would want a full life for you,” Henry said. “With your children, and eventually your grandchildren.”
Mother gave a stifled sob, swiped once more at her eyes.
“When you meet again,” Henry said carefully, “he would want most to know that you were happy. To know that you didn’t let fear or grief keep you from the most important things. Your daughter’s debut, or her wedding.” Perhaps even her son’s? “He would want to know that you loved, and were loved. That you honored his life in his absence, and lived your own until you were reunited. Don’t you think?”
Mother sucked back the ragged sob that tore at her throat. “Isuppose he would,” she said in a quavering little voice. “Oh, Henry, I have been so weak without him.”
And theTon, like a pack of rabid wolves, often delighted in exploiting weakness. Tearing to bits those without the will or the fortitude to defend themselves. Father had protected Mother from it in life; it was not a mystery why she had elected to seclude herself away when she would now have to face it alone.
“How am I to do it?” she asked. “How do I venture out into society once more, when there are so many who would cast my mistakes in my face?”
Mistakes. The flinch was instinctive at this point, but Henry drew a deep breath and answered honestly. “You hold your head high despite it,” he said. As he had often done, beneath similar circumstances. “You give a withering stare, or a blistering set-down. And you remember that you are loved.” He touched his fingers to her. “And perhaps you make that first outing one in which you will not find judgment.”
Mother sniffled. “Miss Seymour’s family?”
“Yes,” he said. “Or you might invite Aunt Alicia for tea.”
“I’ve refused so many of her calls and invitations,” Mother said guiltily. “I don’t know that she would accept.”
Of course she would, because that was simply the sort of woman that Aunt Alicia was. But it wasn’t a point worth belaboring at the moment. “Then Grace’s family, certainly.” And if she were lucky, she might find Aunt Alicia there, too. “But don’t play cards with them,” he warned.
A reluctant, watery chuckle. “She cheats, so I’ve heard you say.”
“Only amongst family, she assures me. It’s a game of sorts, I’m given to understand, for them to try to catch her at it.”
“A peculiar family,” Mother said. “But I suppose… if they are ever good enough to extend such an invitation, I might as well accept.” Her fingers curled. Hesitantly, she said, “But, Nigel—”
“Don’t concern yourself with him,” he said. “I expect the situation to resolve itself in due course. I’ve already left instructions that he is to be refused at the door should he come calling.”
Mother breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Henry,” she said. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Another wince, which Mother likely mistook for pain, as Tansy had begun to gnaw upon his fingers. He had never doubted that she loved him, of course. But it would always be an incontrovertible truth that if not for him, she would not now be in her present position.
∞∞∞
“What was it like in jail?”
