It came to him that life was so unutterably precarious; the most essential, important things in every life turned on the thinnest edge of chance.
Change one decision, one choice, one outcome—and he might never have met Elizabeth Pickford at all.
Shaken to the bone, Nathaniel barely registered the rest of Henrietta’s recitation of how glad she was that they’d been forced out of their home with not a penny to their names. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten the relentless sunshine of her disposition, but somehow, he had.
“You are very kind, madame,” he murmured. “Kinder than I deserve, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, my dear, dear boy.” A tear slipped unheeded down her barely lined cheek. “I have not always been kind enough to you.”
He stiffened, his fingers tightening on his empty glass. “Not at all.”
“No, please. I beg you, dear Nathaniel, please let me say this. I have been uneasy in my mind over you for many years now, and I would not wish to waste this chance of telling you, face to face?—”
She paused, gulping a little. Nathaniel’s thighs flexed. He nearly stood and left the room, but as if she sensed his desire to flee, Henrietta reached out a soft hand and took a surprisingly firm grip on his arm.
“I’m sorry for how it was, at Ashbourn House,” she said painfully. Her eyes burned into his. “After your mother died.”
Nathaniel pulled his arm away, but he didn’t leave the table. Indeed, he felt rooted to the spot. “That is far in the past, Your Grace.”
“Perhaps. Yet I feel the shame and remorse of it as keenly now as I did then,” she said quietly. “Your father and I, we should not have sent you away. I have always been sorry for it—sorry that I did not try harder to change your father’s mind. Oh, it was such a difficult time, everyone being so dreadfully unkind about our whirlwind romance, and you so terribly unhappy.”
Nathaniel sat stock still. He felt as though he observed the scene from a distance.
His jaw was so tight, it hurt to speak. “I was eight years old. My mother had just died. I confess, I don’t remember how I behaved. Sullen and disagreeable, I’m sure.”
Henrietta’s lips firmed, though her eyes remained soft and wet. “You were a child. And you were in pain. I allowed myself to be convinced that you would be happier away from us, at school, where there was nothing to remind you of your loss. But I felt then, and I know now as a parent myself, I should never have allowed you to be sent away from us. It was very wrong, and I have regretted it ever since.”
A yawning chasm had opened up where Nathaniel’s chest should be. He glanced down at it, almost surprised to find the smooth, unblemished expanse of his white shirt and black waistcoat and evening jacket. “I suppose my father insisted.”
It came to him, suddenly, that Henrietta could not have been much older than Lucy was now, when she married his father and became a duchess and a stepmother all at once.
“I loved your father dearly,” she said. “But I was not blind to his flaws. He did not know what to do with you, with your grief, and it was so early in our marriage; I didn’t yet understand how best to speak to him, to help him find the right course. But, Nathaniel, he did love you. I hope you know that.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it, though he wished he could call it back as soon as it escaped him, broken and jagged at the edges, sharp enough to slash his throat and leave it aching. “No. He didn’t. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Nathaniel—”
He shook his head. “My father disliked me. I was never able to deceive myself on that score. By contrast, my mother loved me, though she did not show it in a way others might recognize—but I always knew. That didn’t matter either. When it came down to it, my father, who had no love for me, was unable to cut me out of his life entirely. And my mother, who loved me, left me. Love doesn’t matter.”
“Oh dear,” she said, wringing her hands in distress. “I fear I’ve only made things worse. That’s not at all what I meant to say!”
“Have no fear, madame. Henrietta.” Nathaniel said her name and watched her face clear of unhappiness.
He stood and bowed to her, the angle judged perfectly to convey his respect for what she was trying to do. “You said it perfectly. I do appreciate your perspective. It was a difficult situation, as you say, but it was all so long ago. Let us leave the past where it belongs.”
Henrietta had loomed so large in his childhood—first as his main source of physical affection, generous with her hugs and cuddles as his parents were not. And then, as the person he’d blamed for usurping his mother’s rightful place—a convenient repository for all his anger at his father. For all his anger and betrayal at everything that had happened.
But he could see, looking at her still-pretty face and her large, extraordinarily blue and expressive eyes, the shadow of the very young woman she’d been when she’d married his father.
His father. Who had been a duke, and her employer, and the only living parent of the boy in question.
It was folly to imagine she ought to have been able to go against his father in anything, much less in the matter of how to dispose of his son and heir.
Nathaniel could forgive her, he found, now that he saw there was really nothing to forgive. He felt lighter, as though he’d set down a heavy burden he hadn’t realized he was carrying.
Now he had only to be ashamed of his own actions, his petty reprisals and unworthy revenge.
But it was not too late to change course. He’d made a start with Lucy, and he would do better by her. He would try again with Gemma, in all sincerity and humility this time. And he would see about refurbishing the dower house to offer to Henrietta.
