Oh? Onlyoh? “Mother—”
“Do you know,” she said quietly. “It is…almost a relief, in a way.”
“Arelief?”
She grimaced. “I mean to say, Henry, that I have lived in fear of this day for thirty years. When one has got such a secret, one is always fearful that it will one day come out, no matter how careful one has been. And thirty years is quite a long time to dread something happening, you know, and now that it has—well, I suppose it doesn’t feel quite like I thought it would.”
“How had you thought it would feel?”
“Like the end of the world,” Mother said. “Like I had brought about the end ofyourworld, and Eliza’s. Will we be very poor?”
Henry winced. “I don’t know,” he said. “I will have to meet with our solicitor to review Father’s will.” Possibly there had been some clever wording that would still allow him to inherit something just by virtue of being the named inheritor. He’d losethe earldom, of course, and anything which was an asset thereof, anything outright entailed. But perhaps they wouldn’t quite be left penniless. “It’s possible,” Henry added, “that Uncle Nigel intends to call the validity of your marriage into question. And if he does, then Eliza…” He hesitated, his voice lowering. “Eliza will be illegitimate; just the same as me. And there won’t—there won’t be anything I can do for it.”
Mother took a deep, steadying breath. Her shoulders straightened and firmed into that regal poise that had become so rare after Father’s death. It was like watching her be reborn, stepping out of the shadows in which she had swathed herself at last. “Regardless,” she said, “she will always be the daughter of an earl. Both of you will always be your father’s children, and mine. And we—we shall just have to teach her how to hold her head high, won’t we?”
“Lead by example?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes,” Mother said, and her voice was so much firmer, so much more resolute than he had heard of her in recent memory. “Leading by example. Starting, I think, with tea.”
Chapter Twenty One
Want me to toss ‘is lordship’s misbegotten arse into the Thames?”
Grace snickered despite herself. “Thank you,” she said to Uncle Chris, “but no.” Though it was sweet of him to offer—in a way. Mostly sweet, anyway. There was no sense in asking where or when he’d heard of her falling out with Henry; there wasn’t a single member of her family who wasn’t nose-deep in everyone else’s business at all times.
“The Severn, then,” he said, as he handed off his coat and hat to Redding, who had likely become so inured to casual talk of murder or maiming that it could no longer elicit even the faintest twitch of his mustache. “A bit out o’ the way, mind ye, but I’d do it.”
Of course he would. Without question. “Sometimes,” she said, “the best revenge is a life well-lived.”
“Brutal,” Uncle Chris said, with a low whistle and a shake of his head. “Might be worse than death fer ‘im, ‘avin’ to watch ye be happy.”
Grace pursed her lips together to suppress the laugh that threatened. Naturally he would take it thus, instead of the intended statement that she meant to move on with her liferegardless.
“Ye’re too good fer ‘im anyway, Gracie.”
“Yes. I am.” And if Henry couldn’t see it, well, then, that was his loss and none of her own. “Is Aunt Phoebe not coming to tea?”
“She is. We crossed paths with Marcus and Lydia outside and she stopped fer a bit of a chat. Thought I’d sneak in whilst she was occupied; fersomefool reason, she don’t take well to me issuing death threats.”
Forsomereason, indeed. “I’ll be coming to tea, too, today.” Since she had nothing better to do at the moment, given that she would not be seeing Henry even if he did happen to come calling.
A sharp rap upon the front door. “That’ll be Phoebe,” Uncle Chris said as he strode toward it, as Redding had gone off to hang up his things.
But it wasn’t.
Grace stilled, dumbstruck, as the door swung open to reveal two figures waiting upon the steps. An older woman dressed in a lovely gown of soft lavender, and a young lady of perhaps fifteen years of age.
Both of them had the look of Henry about them, the features softened but still bearing a distinct familial resemblance. It had been over a year since she’d last seen the countess out in society, and Grace’s fleeting memories of her had faded in the interim, but the girl—the girl was undoubtedly Henry’s younger sister, Eliza.
Uncle Chris made a sound deep within his throat; a low sort of growl that suggested that if they had dared to venture ontohisproperty, he’d have promptly snapped the door shut in their faces. But they hadn’t, and so he turned his head toward her and asked, “Gracie?”
Oh. She was meant to do something.Saysomething. Anything but to stand there staring mutely, as if she hadn’t athought left in her head. “My lady,” she said at last, hearing the strange, strangled sound of her own voice. “If you have come on your son’s behalf—”
“I haven’t,” the countess interjected, a hint of a blush climbing into her cheeks. “That is to say, I have been explicitly prohibited from it.”
“Have you?” Grace asked. “Why?”
“Because sending one’s mother to make apologies on one’s behalf is the behavior of a coward, and my Henry is not such a coward as that.” The countess reached for her daughter’s hand, clasping it in her own. “I make no excuses for my son’s behavior, Miss Seymour.”
