The thought curdled her stomach. She sank back down and slapped the cloth once more over her eyes, which had begun to water. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m not going to marry him.” But it broke her heart just a little more to say it out loud.
When had he become capable of shattering it? She had never let anyone else touch it. Even those cruel words which other people had often cast at her had been to no effect; she had not let them damage her heart, nor her self-confidence, nor even her self-esteem. She knew exactly how little their opinions mattered, knew precisely who she was, and had long since learned her own worth. It had just—
It had just hurt so deeply to learn that Henry had not.
Chapter Twenty
Henry turned the queen of hearts over and over again in his fingers, practicing that showy flourish of the fingers that Grace had once shown him, with which the card would vanish from sight. The glass of brandy near his elbow had run dry almost an hour before and he had had no inclination to fetch more. Absolution would not be found at the bottom of a bottle. It was doubtful he’d find it anywhere at all.
The queen of hearts vanished from his fingers; reappeared moments later in the cup of his palm. He wasn’t half so good at this as was Grace, but he’d managed a passing proficiency. Enough that probably only a trained card sharp would have spotted the manipulation.
She was supposed to be his good luck token, the queen of hearts—meant to bring him success. And yet, he didn’t have the sense that she’d failed him so much as thathehad failedher.
Grace. He’d failedGrace.
A shred of sound in the distance made his heart lurch in his chest and leap into a disjointed rhythm, half hopeful, half fearful.
“Why is it,” Mother said from the shadows as she stepped out into the night, “I find you most often out here?”
Henry’s heart sank once more to his toes. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, turning the card over in his fingers once more. Possibly because the house had begun to feel less like his every day. Possibly because he knew that inevitably he would have to make certain explanations which would cast his family into even more uncertainty.
“Somehow,” Mother said as she approached his small table and slid into the chair, “I have got the feeling I am not who you hoped to see. Miss Seymour?”
Henry shrugged one shoulder. “Or Tansy,” he said, and his voice grated on the words. Because either would have been a comfort, and Tansy, at least, might have led to Grace. He’d have had to return her to her home, eventually, and—
Who the hell did he mean to fool? He’d grown rather fond of the damned cat. She’d become more or less a fixture of his garden, lazily eyeing him as she rolled through the catmint in feline ecstasy. Occasionally leaping into his lap for a short nap and a scratch beneath her furry chin. He’d never imagined himself the sort of man to have a fondness for cats, but somehow he’d developed one. For this particular beast, at least.
“I came to dinner this evening,” Mother said softly. “But you did not. Have you been out here all this time?”
“Most of it,” he answered.
“And you had no evening engagement?”
“I sent my regrets,” he said. He hadn’t known, really, whether or not Grace had received an invitation to the same event he had been scheduled to attend, but he had surmised—from the duke’s description of her constitution earlier—that she would not be attending, even if she had been invited. And he had not cared to spend the entire evening watching the door, holding his breath in the faint hope that she would walk through it.
“Henry.” Mother reached across the table and touched his hand gently. “Is something amiss?”
He looked down at her fingers atop his hand and thought—she had made some small progress just lately, wading through the thick of her grief. Even if she had not yet braved the society she still feared, she had sought him out, even sought Eliza out. She had lost a bit of that reticence with which she had cloaked herself, showed signs of making her way back toward being the mother he remembered; the one who had patched up his wounds and comforted him when he had been very small.
He wished he deserved that comfort now. That he would not have to tell her how he had failed to save them. That he had proved himself a disappointment. That the shame he had always given her was justified.
But when he opened his mouth to admit to it, all that came out was, “Mother, I am going to marry Grace.”
“Ah,” she said. “I suppose I had begun to suspect as much.”
“If she will have me,” he pressed on. “And I hope you will not be disappointed—”
“Darling, why would I be disappointed?”
“—But I love her, and I—” Henry paused, his brows drawing. “You won’t?”
“Henry, of course not. Whatever has given you that impression?”
Just the whole of his life. Just the knowledge he’d held from childhood that he was always meant to be better, to not follow in his parents’ footsteps. To be of sterling character and unimpeachable honor; to be perfect in every regard.
To never makemistakes. Mistakes like himself. An odd, cold sweat broke out upon his brow, and Henry let the queen of hearts fall from his fingers to the surface of the table, where her face gazed up at him accusingly. He yanked at the knot of his cravat, tugging it away from his throat, which had gone too tight. “I know,” he said softly, in a bland monotone, “that I have often been the cause of shame for you.”
Mother jerked, her eyes going wide. “No,” she whispered. “Not ever. Not for one moment. Henry, why would you think such a terrible thing?”
