“What do you mean?”
Something was building in Nathaniel’s chest, something he had to strangle back before it burst forth and rampaged about the room. He gritted his teeth. “My father sent me to Eton when I was eight.”
She frowned. “I thought boys usually went off to school around the age of twelve.”
“Most do, but bear in mind, my father had just finally married the love of his life. And perhaps understandably, was tired of stumbling over an angry, miserable brat when he wished to be reveling in his newfound happiness.”
“You were—” Mrs. Pickford appeared to be struggling. “A child! A child grieving his mother. How could he?”
Nathaniel shrugged dismissively. “Many parents would have done the same.”
“Not good ones,” she snapped.
Uncomfortable with the intent way her gaze searched his face, Nathaniel continued. “I only mention it so that you may understand how pervasive the scandal was. I wasn’t in London, surrounded by adults who had known my mother and socialized with my father. I was away at school with a lot of young scions of the nobility who all, to a one, believed that my father ought to have his lands and titles stripped from him for what he had done.”
“But that’s…” Her brow furrowed. He didn’t want to notice that it was adorable. “That’s patently ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous or not, it was regarded as accepted fact that if the Duke of Ashbourn was so lost to propriety, so completely out of his senses as to marry a servant, then he should no longer be the Duke of Ashbourn.”
“As if the lot of them wouldn’t turn a blind eye to a duke doing whatever he liked with a servant girl, whether she liked it or not,” she pointed out hotly. “It’s only the fact that your father loved Henrietta, and married her, that they minded. The hypocrisy is sickening.”
Not having thought of it precisely in that light before, Nathaniel could only agree. “Yes. It was rank hypocrisy.”
“But he was a duke, so they obviously could not actually do anything to punish him for it,” she went on, voice taut. “And anyway, who cares what they thought? By all accounts, your father was extraordinarily happy with Henrietta. He must have loved her a great deal.”
“Love.” Nathaniel’s fingers clenched on the stem of his cut-crystal wine goblet. He forced them to release. “You’re correct, madame. My father was happy. Happy to ignore his responsibilities, happy to squander my inheritance, happy to rack up a mountain of debt?—”
He cut himself off, appalled at the words coming out of his own mouth. There was no excuse for such indiscretion. But, Nathaniel realized, he trusted on a deep level that Mrs. Pickford truly cared for Lucy’s well-being. She wouldn’t use any of this against the family.
And he’d had no one to talk to about any of this. Not since he assumed the title…and along with it, the full comprehension of the mess his father had created.
The only legacy he’d left his son and heir.
Across the table, she did not take her eyes off him for a moment. He felt the weight of her regard like a physical touch.
“My point,” he said, his voice gruff with restraint, “is that they could, and did, punish my father for marrying Henrietta. They punished me, as well.”
“Your time at school.” She bit her lip, her eyes brimming with an awful understanding. “It must have been terrible.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, more sharply than he intended. God, where was his control? “I meant that everyone in the Ton turned their backs on this family. Not only socially, but in the wider world of influence and political power, investments and delicate financial understandings that are the foundation of—look. I have the matter well in hand. You need not fear for Lucy’s dowry; I have restored our fortunes through my own investments and connections. My reputation is pristine, such that no one in the Ton would refuse to deal with me.”
“But you have learned how fragile a reputation can be.”
He sat back in his chair. She understood. “And how little can be accomplished without the good opinion of others.”
Nathaniel had goals far beyond the restoration of his family’s wealth and his interests in new ventures like railroads and modern farming techniques. For him to achieve his goals, he would need every ounce of power and prestige his title and his personal standing could deliver.
He certainly could not afford to stir up all the old doubts about the Duke of Ashbourn’s abilities.
Like father, like son, they’d sneered at him.
Does the widdle babykins miss his mummy? Wah wah wah, they’d taunted Nathaniel on the way to class, in the dormitories, after breakfast and in the halls. Lucky little grub, your new mama is a whore! When you go home for hols, maybe you can stick it in her, just like your mad father does. What a family!
He had not reacted with the flicker of an eyelash then, and he did not react to the memory now. “Perhaps you understand a little better why I must distance myself from a woman who stands so wholly outside my own sphere of society.”
The candles flickered; a shadow passed over her lovely face. “Yes,” she said distantly, carefully folding her napkin and placing it beside her still full plate. “I do understand you a little better, I think. I certainly see why you would never wish to spend time with anyone not of your own exalted social standing, as it’s so important to you. That being the case, I believe it is time for me to retire and check on Lucy. Good night, Your Grace.”
He sat frozen at the head of the empty table long after she left him, cursing himself and his sister and his thrice-damned stepmother…and her.
