Tomorrow then.
But tomorrow came and he did not leave.
“I plead, on your honour as a gentleman, that you respect my niece’s wishes. She does not want to see you ever again.”
Those words had him pinned. He could not write. He could not visit. And as he imagined the scene over and over again, the letter he’d send, the speech he’d make, the scene became more and more hollow.
What would he say? What could he possibly say?
And what right did he have to try? Him, be husband to a woman who’d known the tenderest of childhood darlings, who was grieving and sore and tired, and needed—deserved—the kindest and gentlest and most generous of loves…?
So he did not call for his horse. He did not sit at his desk, pen in hand. He sat on the sofa, staring at his clasped hands. And eventually, some iron-dark and impossible time having passed, he went about a simulacrum of his old life. He went out and around town. He exchanged words with friends. He played cards with his father and Tom and Lady Pemberthy. And as whole afternoons went by with that woman silently sitting in the same silent room as him, he gradually came to realise she was worried about him.
They all were.
It was July when he looked up at where she sat knitting, deep in concentration on the task. They were at Woodhaven, his house in Kent, having left London before the end of the season. His father’s divorce case was in progress, London gossip wassharp and rife, and his father was…struggling. His curse had deep claws.
He watched Lady Pemberthy turn the heel on a dark green stocking. She’d hired a cottage on the edge of the village, propriety making it impossible for her to stay in the house with them. But she came every day. Just as she’d come every day while they were still in town, talking of the weather, of the news, of this and that, trying to coax him back into life. Though God knew he didn’t deserve it.
“Thank you.”
She looked at him in surprise. “My lord?”
“You might as well call me Sebastian. I’m to be your son, after all.”
Lady Pemberthy blushed, dropping a stitch. She picked the loop of yarn up again. “And what might you be thanking me for, eh? These stockings aren’t for you, I’m afraid to say.”
He smiled at that. It would be impolite to admit he was relieved. It looked like very scratchy wool.
Probably the stockings were for another of her charity cases. For a prisoner, a murderer. She was good enough to care for them all. She’d loved Tom on sight. She’d loved his father soon after. She didn’t lovehim,he had no right to expect that, but whatever her feelings, it didn’t stop her being good.
His faint smile faded as he got up and walked to the window. The sun was shining and the garden outside was beautiful, but it was the sky he looked at, over the top of the distant trees.
“They should be back by now.”
“Not for another half hour, I’d say,” replied Lady Pemberthy. “Tom wanted to show him that old mill pond, remember? So if they’ve walked all that way, and at your father’s pace…”
“Mm.” The garden looked south. Beyond the rose beds and the lawn and the shivering elms, white clouds sailed softly over the blue sky. The weather had been pleasant for weeks, not too hot,but bright every day. His father went for walks which exhausted him far more than they should, but which, he claimed, helped him sleep.
As for Sebastian… When he wasn’t accompanying his father, he rode. He rode out almost every day. Or he helped Tom with his lessons, or he taught him cricket, or taught him to ride. The boy wanted to learn to shoot but was far too keen on the idea for it to be sensible.
And when he wasn’t doing any of that, Sebastian ate when he was supposed to, replied when he was spoken to, and got himself shaved and dressed and went to church on Sundays. He visited the tenants on his estate; he arranged dinners with the local squires and the baron five miles away. But mostly…he rode.
He rode further each day, and he rode south. The coast was that way…over thirty miles away. This Kentish estate of his, just outside Tonbridge, was almost exactly halfway between London and a small hilltop town on the Sussex coast.
He looked at the sky, trying futilely to see the sea. Perhaps this was what she’d always been trying to do, every time she walked from him and went to the window…
“Perhaps sea bathing would do your father good.”
Sebastian froze. Lady Pemberthy’s needles kept clacking. Their rhythm might have been steady, but her words made his heart lurch.
“We’ve tried the wells here,” she went on as he turned cautiously towards her, “and I don’t see that they’ve been much help. Haveyoutasted the waters?” She shuddered. “Awful. But sea bathing…” She looked up from her stitches, innocent enough, but she had no genius for subtly, couldn’t play a hand of cards without giving her game away. “The coast isn’t so far from here, you know.”
His chest tightened until it hurt. “I know exactly how far the coast is from here.”
“I thought you might.”
“Lady Pemberthy…” He moved from the window, but not to sit down. He didn’t know where he was going. Perhaps appropriately, he stopped by a side table and toyed with the globe there. They were trying to teach the boy geography. His first glimpse of the countryside outside London had been exotic enough.“It’s so green…there ain’t a chimney in sight!”
