Eoin’s voice—raw with hope and pain—filled the sudden silence with a single, hoarse word. “Mother?”
Chapter Fifteen
Eoin sat across from his mother in the private sitting room located above the amphitheater. She had immediately ushered him to her living quarters when he’d blurted out their relationship on the crowded stairs. He doubted anyone had heard other than Hannah and Lord Percy. Still, he shouldn’t have been so careless.
He had no idea if his mother even wanted to form a relationship with him—public or private. After all, she was the proprietress of one of London’s premier entertainment facilities. She most certainly had heard about his grandfather’s death, and she’d known exactly where to find him.
But she hadn’t visited, hadn’t even sent a missive.
It was highly likely that she didn’t want Eoin intruding upon the life that she’d so carefully built. If he’d been thinking logically, he would have taken the proper precautions and not shouted out “Mother” like a lost six-year-old.
But in that moment, he’d felt like the child that he’d been—the boy who’d wept every night into his pillow, wanting his mama and his dear papa and even his treat-stealing older sister. Eoin had taken one look at his mother’s face, and his hazy memories emerged from the fog to form into images with brilliantly sharp edges. Her hair was now threaded with silver and lines crinkled around her eyes, but Eoin had no troublerecognizing her as the woman who’d hovered just out of reach in his dreams.
But now she was before him, her face blank, her body stiff. Eoin supposed he’d inherited his stoicism from her. And like him, there were small tells attesting to her inner nervousness—the way she rubbed her thumb and her forefinger against each other, the slight unevenness to her breathing, and even the storminess deep within her eyes.
“Your sister should be here soon.” Mama’s voice wasn’t as he’d remembered. Back then, she possessed an Irish lilt… or at least he thought she had. Perhaps his recollection was faulty or maybe she’d purposely hid her accent when she’d become Mrs. Quick.
Eoin gave a curt nod, afraid what his voice would do if he tried to speak. It might sound hoarse or high or maybe a combination of both. He had so much to say, yet he was afraid to speak any of it.
At least his mother had sent a servant to fetch his sister, Elizabeth. It meant she wasn’t trying to obscure their blood connection—at least that’s what Eoin hoped. He yearned to read her as well as he could others, but he was too nervous. His mind wouldn’t focus, and it hurt to study her facial features.
He wished he’d brought Hannah with him to this sitting room. He longed for her support. But he hadn’t wanted his mother to feel ill at ease or cornered. Instead, Hannah and Lord Percy were downstairs watching the match.
“I am sure you have many questions.” His mother’s words were clipped, officious even. Did he sound like that? No wonder people called him unfeeling.
“Are you doing well?” Eoin glanced around him. Her salon was not as luxurious as those at his Mayfair residence,but not many could afford a separate room for entertaining. There were two comfortable-looking chairs by the fire, and he wondered if his mother and his sister sat there during the winter. There was a single figurine of a small boy on the mantel, but otherwise the place contained little ornamentation. A few books with half-broken spines lay on a simply carved side table, which was entirely functional. Except for a few samplers that Eoin assumed his sister had completed in her youth, there was no artwork. The walls, however, were painted a pleasing blue and decorated with a plain white trim. Someone, his sister most likely, had embroidered flowers on a fire screen.
The room was a snug, wholesome space—a family domain. And Eoin sorely wished this had been his home instead of a townhouse stuffed with formidable furniture from a long-ago era.
“That is the first question that you ask me?” His mother’s voice no longer sounded steady.
At the hitch in her tone, Eoin jerked his attention back to his mother. Her green-blue eyes seemed shinier than before, and Eoin’s heart ached. Were those unshed tears? And were they for him?
“It is why I looked for you and Elizabeth as soon as I inherited the title.” Eoin thought that his own voice sounded shaky, but at least it wasn’t cracking like a green lad’s. “I wanted to ensure that you both had good lives.”
His mother swallowed, and the sheen in her gaze only intensified. “As your parent, I should be the one asking about your well-being. I—I never wanted to allow your grandfather to take you, but the law was on his side.”
“I remember you arguing and pleading with him,” Eoin toldher, somehow managing to speak despite the tightness of his throat. “Many other details faded from my memory but not that one.”
But why hadn’t she written to him after his grandfather’s death? That haunted him, yet he could not bring himself to ask the question. He was too afraid of her reasoning.
“I didn’t know if you would want to hear from Lizzie and me.” His mother blurted out the answer to his unspoken inquiry. “I feared I would disrupt your life. I knew your grandfather would have tried to poison you against us.”
A bitter relief poured through Eoin along with a sharp ire toward the late duke. Rage had festered inside himself for years, but to survive, he’d had to ignore the burning animosity.
“He did attempt to sever any connection that I felt toward you and Lizzie,” Eoin said cautiously as he realized what he was admitting and how it made him vulnerable. But Hannah had been teaching Eoin to open up, and he didn’t want to stay estranged from his mother and his sister. Eoin sucked in his breath and continued. “However, Foxglen never succeeded. But I… I am not demanding anything of you or of Elizabeth.”
“You’re not demanding anything of me?” There was a hollowness to the way his mother repeated his words, and her naturally red cheeks paled.
Eoin couldn’t decipher precisely why his phrasing had upset her. Had she interpreted his statement to be an oblique threat?
“I know that my grandfather cast you aside with nothing.” Eoin spoke tentatively at first, realizing that everything he was saying was an understatement. The old sot had tried to destroy any evidence that his son had sympathized with the Jacobite cause, and Eoin knew that the peer’s purge had extended to Eoin’s mother and sister.
Yet after Eoin’s first cautious statement, the words that he was normally so judicious about flowed freely. “I was worried about the life that you may have been forced to lead. I am willing to give you and Elizabeth a generous allowance. I was going to offer to set you up with a house if you desired, although it is clear to me now that you are not in need of shelter. You have, quite remarkably, built your own empire. There is no obligation for you to have a relationship with me or to assume the duties of a duke’s mother. But I am willing to welcome you both into my life and home if that is what you desire. If Elizabeth wants to reclaim her birthright as a noblewoman—”
“Me? A bloody nob?” A new voice rang through the room, and Eoin turned to see a younger version of his mother standing between the open pocket doors.
Elizabeth. He had a vague memory of a little girl with wildly curly hair; an impish, dimpled smile; and eyes as blue-green as his and his mother’s.
