His almost smile went away. “But I promise I was a bad father. I treated my sons as my father treated me, rather like mindless soldiers who needed to be trained to do their father’s bidding. I did not see them as their own persons. Their mother was affectionate, and I knew children need their mother, so they were with her mostly, but I brought them here now and again so they might come to know this place.”
“And know you.”
“I never let them know me.”
“You must, you must. Charles must know you,” she cried out, wanting to hammer sense into his head.
He did not meet her emotion with any of his own. “He doesn’t want to know me. Because there came a time when I took both of them away from their mother. I forbade them from seeing her unless she removed someone from her life, a man who committed atrocities . . .”
He covered his eyes for a moment, but when he removed his hand, his eyes were still dry.
“Pardon, I cannot speak of it. I wanted my boys safe. And they were not safe with their mother.”
Susannah wished more than anything she could put her arms around him, hold him.
Instead, she asked, “Did you tell your sons your reason?”
Henry shook his head. “They were already against me. To them, I was a monster. And I did not want to tell them that their mother was, in her own way, a monster by association. Then what would they have? An unfeeling father and a selfish mother who would not sacrifice her own gratification to protect them.”
How could he be so calm? She wanted to scream to the heavens at the injustice of it all.
Thousands of bullets whizzed over his head, a horizontal deluge of lead. A man screamed.
Henry strolled in a rose garden with an enchantress.
He had never spoken of his sons this way, not to anyone. Some part of him believed Susannah had charmed him, used a spell to make him speak of the unspeakable. The other part knew that was ridiculous, and the only magic at work here washer. Her interest in him, her kindness, the way she moved through the world, leaving motes of sunshine in her wake. He feared clouding that sunshine the way he feared a rain of bullets. And he feared how Susannah might see him once she knew his history, but, once started, he could not stop talking. He was a river, and the words would not stop flowing.
“Both boys tried to run away several times. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. They saw Bledsoe Park as their prison, and I was their prison keeper. In time, they went to school, and Diana would travel to see them there and bring them presents, but the school was careful, and as long as she never removed them, never brought that man,” he could not hold back his shudder, “and they came here for their holidays,I was satisfied. They had a little piece of their mother, but I had kept them safe.”
“You did well,” she said, her eyes brimming. “You did as you should. You’re an honorable man.”
He could not hear her praise. “Then their mother became ill, and, in a matter of a few days, she was near death. Word was sent to me here, and I sent a message to the school to have the boys come to London to see her. And I went to London myself.”
Where he had drawn a pistol on the so-called poet who had been Diana’s primary lover for years, living off of Diana’s money and fucking her just enough to keep her happy while still indulging in vices that involved children. Henry had forced the fiend from Diana’s house at the point of that pistol. His sons would never be near that evil. Never again.
His boys were coming to see their mother before she died. This last meeting was for them. Henry cared nothing for Diana’s comfort. She had chosen a devil over her sons, and once Henry had taken Hal and Charles away again, the poet and Diana could go to hell together.
When his sons arrived by post-chaise, eighteen-year-old Hal stiff with either fear or anger and fourteen-year-old Charles in tears, they gone together into Diana’s bedchamber. There, she had used some of her last breaths to bring up all the old insults and accusations again. Mean, priggish, a tyrant, a thief, stealing her money and her youth. Spiteful not to give her the divorce she wanted. Cruel to keep her boys from her.
“He’ll use you,” she croaked to their sons. “As he used me.”
Henry said not a word. He moved not a muscle. He willed himself to be a rock, to withstand.
Diana died the next day after Henry had already taken Hal and Charles back to Bledsoe Park. The boys stayed together inone room and would not come out until their mother’s funeral.
They returned to school, and Henry never saw them again. Hal left school, took up life in London as a Corinthian. Henry was told by a solicitor when and where to send money, and he did.
Charles went to London to see his brother on his school holidays, and Henry never again forced either of them to come to Bledsoe Park. He paid all the bills that came to him, responded to every solicitor’s request. A month after Charles had left school for the Continent and his grand tour, Hal died, and Charles did not come home for the funeral and interment as Henry had hoped.
It had been three years now, and Charles was still abroad.
But Mina, the most precious gift of his life, had helped Henry forget some of his grief and his own sins. He looked at her now, racing ahead to meet a nursemaid who had come out of the house to meet her.
He turned to Susannah. “Their mother died, and my sons chose not to see me again.”
“You.” Susannah faltered. “You say you protected them. That is just as it should be. You did what was right. But Charles is no longer a boy, and your wife is dead. You must tell him why you did what you did. You must justify yourself to your son.”
He shook his head. “I do not have the words.”
