Her father sat in a corner near the bookshelf, a brace of candles perched somewhat precariously on a stack of old papers yellowing atop the cabinet at his side. His glasses were on the end of his nose. He pushed them up with his index finger every few minutes, never breaking his concentration on the text preoccupying him. The things he muttered to himself never made him pause either. He only looked up when Madelaine’s mother walked into the room, smiling absently as she came over to the fire and took her usual seat in the winged armchair opposite Madelaine’s by the hearth.
She picked up her bag of mending before she’d even settled into the seat, barely needing to look as she pulled out a mitten and began to darn it. How many hundreds of such holes had she mended over the years? Maybe it was thousands. A similar bag of mending waited, tucked at the side of Madelaine’s chair. But she sat cradling her cup of tea between her palms, staring at the flames. Despite the fire, she was cold.
She’d seen a ghost.
“It’ll be hard, but it’ll do them good,” said her mother, continuing a conversation the end of dinner had temporarilypaused. They’d been telling Madelaine all about her new neighbours. Her new cousins.
Their mother had been the youngest sister of Alfred’s mother. There had been four sisters in all, but the other two had houses already full of children, or even grandchildren, and little space or money to take on three more. The Ardinglys, of course, had no children at all. It made sense they would take the orphans in.
“They’re a little old now, especially to be running around after the youngest, William,” her mother continued, eyes on the rapid looping of her darning needle, “but we will help, of course. The whole town will help. As we always do.”
“Yes,” Madelaine agreed.
Her mother looked up, her sympathy deep but probing. They hadn’t spoken of why Madelaine had returned so abruptly. She didn’t know what her aunt had written of events in town, but surely in a month’s worth of correspondence there had been occasional mentions of a Lord Cotereigh this and a Lord Cotereigh that, so entangled had their lives been. A Lord Cotereigh who had perhaps been conspicuously absent from her own letters home. What had there been to say of him? Nothing she could write without it feeling half a lie.
Lord Cotereigh invited us to dinner…Lord Cotereigh danced with me at a ball…Lord Cotereigh has almost adopted the street boy, Tom…Lord Cotereigh haunts my dreams…Lord Cotereigh’s gaze is black as sin…Lord Cotereigh’s closeness makes it hard to breathe…Lord Cotereigh…Lord Cotereigh is the worst man alive.
The tea trembled in her cup.
“Sophie admitted the reservations she had,” her mother continued, talking of Alfred’s mother. “How much pain old memories would stir. It’s inevitable, having children in the house again, having to be a mother again, having to…having to find new space in the parts of her heart she’s long sinceshuttered…” She paused, her sigh heavy with sympathy. She was a brusque, practical woman, Madelaine’s mother. Still handsome and energetic though her hair was greying and her face worn by care as much as age. Her fingers, the skin shiny and a little wrinkled, her knuckles strong and knobbly, continued their work even as she paused her speech. “But I said…I said, Sophie, a heart is an infinite thing. There’s always new love to be found. Didn’t it amaze me with every new baby I held in my arms that I could love them all as much as the first? Seven of you I was blessed with, and I never ran out of room.”
“Mother…” Madelaine’s voice was unsteady.
Her mother smiled, amused by her own sentimentality. “Your brother George, now he’d tell you the heart is a muscle. Just a red lump in our chests. But muscles are flexible, aren’t they? They bend and stretch, and they get stronger the more you use them.” Her needle looped, the pull of the thread audible even over the fire and the scrape of Daniel’s knife, though he’d slowed his work, listening. “So, yes, she might be sore at first, but she’ll get used to it and be better for it. It’s past time they had something to do, the two of them in that house and him halfway retired. Those children will shake things up nicely. If there’s any silver lining to be found in the pain of what’s happened to them and their poor parents, then perhaps it’s that.”
Daniel met Madelaine’s eyes for a moment. He’d been five when she’d been widowed. He didn’t remember it, not really, and it was probably Grace Shilstone he was thinking of; it was the pretty smiling girl and her grief that caused the shadow in his eyes, but Madelaine shared a small smile with him. Their mother’s brisk optimism was a perpetual source of amusement for her children. If they scraped their knee, no matter how badly, she’d only tut and tell them to be glad they hadn’t lost the leg. Then she’d clean it, ignoring their cries of pain, and bind it withgentle hands, and somehow, no matter how much it still stung, they knew it’d be all right.
But that magic didn’t work when you grew up.
Twenty-Eight
It took Sebastian weeksto realise Lady Pemberthy was nursing him.
She’d softened since his visit to her house. Probably because he’d broken down and cried and thereby become an object pathetic enough to overcome her dislike of him.
He hadn’t meant to cry, of course. He hadn’t cried since he was fifteen, in pain and humiliated at the hands of his uncle, and he’d sworn never to be so weak again. But his reason had deserted him at Lady Pemberthy’s pronouncement, along with his strength. He’d turned blindly towards the wall, braced his forearm there to stop himself from falling, and dropped his forehead against that, breathing in the scent of his own sleeve, ruining the fabric of his own coat, leaning and sobbing against a wall plastered with caricatures of fat Regents and gross politicians.
Lady Pemberthy had come over, clucking and hushing, her hand tentative on his shoulder. She might have called himduckie, and said,there, there, don’t you cry now, it’ll be all right.He had no experience of mothers, could barely remember his own, but he supposed this might be what it was like to be a snot-nosed child and have a maternal cloud of softness and sympathy sweep over you.
Only the desire to turn and be bundled into her arms had frightened him enough to pull himself together. He’d taken a shuddering breath, and another, fist clenched tight against the wall as he recovered the ability to talk.
“I beg your pardon, madam.”
“Oh, no, sir.” She hushed him a little more, stroking his back. “No, sir, don’t you be saying sorry. There, there. It’s all right.”
It wasn’t remotely all right. It was horrifying and humiliating. He couldn’t even blame the brandy. It was hours since he’d last taken a drink. Or perhaps hecouldblame the brandy. When had he ever lost his control like this? He swore there and then to stop drinking entirely.
He’d taken another deep breath, gripped his self-control like a drowning man and straightened from the wall. Lady Pemberthy had stepped away. He heard her about to speak and bowed before she could, not meeting her eyes, not even looking anywhere near her, but already reaching behind him for the door.
“Excuse the interruption. I will leave you to your work.” Another blind bow, and he’d gone, fleeing that house yet again.
And for the last time.
Anger had been the wings that carried him home. She’d left, had she? Pronounced she’d never see him again so long as she lived? He’d see about that. He’d drive to Sussex that afternoon. It would be midnight by the time he got there, but he’d find his way to the parsonage, he’d ring the bell, he’d get her brought to him in her nightdress, her hair around her shoulders, and then she’d…
Hate him.
What a ridiculous scenario he’d conjured. A raving madman, dragging the vicar from his bed, harassing his daughter…? God help him. He stepped into his hallway and stood motionless under the marble dome, hat in his hand, and realised he was in no fit state to see anyone, least of all Madelaine Ardingly.
