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“Yes.” She bent down and picked up Wallace and returned him to her lap, threading her fingers through his fur.

Simon wondered if he’d gotten everything about Frances wrong. Perhaps she wasn’t fun and breezy, so much as she was covering up great anguish. Perhaps Wallace wasn’t so much a sudden charity case as he was something to do with her ever-wringing hands.

“So,” she said, “you can see why, although I miss you and I rather dislike living here with my parents, I cannot move back into your household.”

“I understand.”

“When James and Michael died, my first thought was that your mother would never get over it. Not that I would never get over it, though I felt myself plunged into the pits of grief. Just that she would become impossible.”

“To say I’m sorry feels entirely inadequate.”

“Be sorry for what I went through, but don’t be sorry for what she did.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that you are a fine man, empathetic and kind. You are not responsible for the behavior of your mother. You are not responsible for anyone besides yourself.”

If only that were true. Simon was responsible for so very many people. In some ways, as a member of the House of Lords, he was responsible for everyone in England. In a more concrete sense, he was responsible for the staff at his houses and his tenants at Galecroft. In an even more concrete sense, as the head of his family, he was responsible for certain individuals, namely, his mother.

The image of a woman in a black dress asking him for help intruded on his list.

“Besides,” Frances went on, “I don’t want to be a widow the rest of my life.” She gave a small chuckle, a bitter one, but it was nevertheless good to hear. “Of course, I shall always be a widow. But I don’t want it to be all that I am. Living in your household as the dowager countess—the second dowager countess—would remind me at every turn of my status. We women have it quite difficult, you know. We are wives, thus defined as appendages to our husbands. But then once they are gone and we are widows, we somehow remain appendages. Have you heard tell of soldiers returned from the wars with legs amputated who say they can still feel the pain of the missing limb?”

“I have.”

“It’s rather macabre, but I see myself as the reverse. The limb without the body. Here”—she gestured around the room—“I may at least be a daughter. Still an appendage, I suppose, but of a different sort.”

What she had said devastated Simon, though he could not argue with her logic. “You could marry again,” he suggested quietly. He would be happy to see it occur. He would attend and strew flowers at her and her chosen groom.

“Yes. Even in the depths of my initial grief, an awareness dwelled. I was still young, or young enough. I suppose I harbored a secret hope that I might marry again someday, and have children. Perhaps that was silly. Now that so many years have passed, it seems so.”

“I don’t think it’s silly, and it hasn’t been that many years.” Something caught in Simon’s throat. Frances would make a wonderful mother.

“Well, there would have been no chance had I’d remained at Galecroft. Can you imagine how your mother would have reacted if she’d seen me entertaining suitors—after a suitable period of mourning, of course.”

“No, indeed.” He smiled, but only because Frances was smiling. She had recovered her signature good humor. He didn’t know, anymore, though, if it was genuine or if it was a front, if it papered over other, less amiable sentiments. “The thing I can’t work out is that Mother was so devoted to James, to the idea of him as the heir. To Michael, too, but mostly to James. It should follow that she would want him to have a son. It should follow that she would be supportive of his marriage. Kind to his wife—the mother of the next heir. Or, failing that, at least anticipating the arrival of said heir.”

“You would think so.” Frances shrugged. “I suppose that’s partly why I never gave any thought to the tea. Even if it wasn’t an olive branch, it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be looking forward to a grandchild. A child who would have been, after all, half of her beloved James.”

“It could still happen, Frances,” Simon said quietly. “You could still have a family.”

“Oh, no, I am too old for that now. I would have been quite an old mother even back then. I recognize that initial impulse, after James’s death, as a kind of hysteria. But I have enjoyed a kind of freedom these past years, even living here with my parents, that I wouldn’t have had if I’d remained in your household.” She grinned, a big wide one signaling the end of the wrenching portion of their conversation. “Although, one never knows. Perhaps I am about to meet a charming widower with lovely children who won’t resent me at all.” She threw her head back and laughed, and Simon’s heart swelled with affection for her, but also with sadness for all that had befallen her. And with anger for the actions of his mother.

It was a great deal for one heart to contain.

“Are you quite all right?” She’d stopped laughing and was regarding him with concern. “I have overstepped. I am sorry.”

“You haven’t overstepped whatsoever. Or if you have, I’m sorry you didn’t do it sooner.”

Her brow furrowed.

He clarified. “I’m sorry it took my brothers’ deaths and the despicable actions of my mother for us to have this conversation.”

“I am, too. I can see so much of James in you, even as you are simultaneously your own person.”

“What was he like?”

“You’re asking me to tell you what your own brother was like?”