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“You were good enough to forgive me,” his father said. “But I have always been aware that the pain ran bone deep. I suppose it would be hard for you to believe how much you were loved during those long years when I was away from you. Every so often I would pluck up the courage to go home to you, hoping that this time you would show some sign, however slight, of wanting me. Instead, you were always mute and miserable, and it was clear that Jane and Charles had become your parents in all but name. And damned good parents they seemed to be too, though I could have bashed out their brains every time I set eyes upon them. Immature idiot that I was, it never occurred to me to gather the two of you tight in my arms as I did every day and every night of the first year of your lives and tell you how much I loved you. It never occurred to me to bring you silly gifts or to play silly games with you and show you openly how much I adored you. I was terrified of you. I was a stupid, selfish being, Bertrand, and did not deserve your forgiveness.”

“It is probably best not to revisit the past,” Bertrand said. “It cannot be changed. And Estelle and I would not be as we are now if we had grown up differently. Ultimately, I like us as we are. Estelle has found a happiness I believe will be lasting. You would not be who you are now, and I like you as you are.”

“Here I am, mute again,” his father said after several moments of silence. “I will be forever grateful to Jane and Charles for parenting you as they did.”

“You and Mama were our parents,” Bertrand said. “Did you love her?”

“I adored her,” the marquess said, “though we had a tumultuous relationship. She loved you, but she did not have the stamina to do nights with you. It infuriated her that I did though we employed a perfectly competent nurse.”

“That night,” Bertrand said. “You had been up with us.”

“A severe case of teething,” his father said. “I never did see—” He broke off suddenly and pressed his head against the chair back, eyes tightly closed. “I never did see the first tooth one of you must have popped very soon after. I do not even know which one of you.”

He set his half-empty glass down on the table beside him.

“I want to come home,” Bertrand said. “Here, I mean. To stay.”

His father gazed at him in silence again.

“This is home,” Bertrand said. “The people living about here are my friends and neighbors. The portraits in the gallery are of my family. You are my family. This is where I want to bring a wife and where I want to raise my own children and set down roots and build a family history that is fully recorded for posterity. I— Will I be in your way? Or Viola’s? I know you value your time alone together.”

He thought for a while his father would never break the silence.

“I think twenty returning sons could rattle around at Redcliffe without crossing paths with one another or me for days at a time,” the marquess said then. “But I have only one son. And soon, it is to be hoped, a daughter-in-law. And soon after that some grandchildren in addition to David and any more with which Estelle and Justin will bless me. Tiptoeing about each other has become something of a habit with you and me, Bertrand. I would want you back home even if we all had to live in a two-room hovel. It is here I want you.”

He tapped a closed fist over his heart.

Bertrand nodded and wondered if this was a decision he was making too hastily. He loved Elm Court. He had determinedly clung to the conviction that it was where he belonged, where he was most happy. That had been true for a few years, until Estelle married. And for a while after that. Then the loneliness, the essential emptiness, had started niggling at the edges of his consciousness.

Coming here a few weeks ago had felt like returning home. He wanted to stay. He wanted at last to rest here. To build that cabin out in the hills, though why that particular madness popped into his head more than anything else, he did not know.

“I will be utterly selfish and speak my mind,” his father said. “Come home, Bertrand. There is nothing I would love more. There is nothing Viola would love more. She knows my heart, and she loves me, you see. As I love her. Come home to me.”

“Thank you.” Bertrand set down his empty glass and got to his feet. “We are neglecting your guests.”

“Our guests, yes.” His father stood too. “The wife you are hoping to bring here is Stephanie?”

“Yes,” Bertrand said.

His father nodded and led the way to the door.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The good weather held through the day of the assembly. No one was going to have to worry about muddy hems and ruffled hair, and anyone who needed a break from the crowd and the noise and the inevitable stuffiness of the assembly rooms as the evening wore on would be able to stand outside for a while, chatting and gossiping in groups and watching the comings and goings.

The crowd at this particular assembly was expected to be more than usually dense, swollen as the numbers would be by the guests from Redcliffe, six of them young, single persons, two ladies and four gentlemen. Personable young people.

Time was running short, Bertrand thought as he dressed for the evening. Most of the visitors would be leaving in the next few days, including the Ravenswood contingent. He found himself hopeful about the outcome of his deliberately measured courtship of Stephanie, but it was by no means assured. For more than eight years she had been skittish with him at best, downright hostile at worst, until at Vauxhall he had discovered the cause of her hostility and set about overcoming it. He believed he had done that, that she now actually liked him and perhaps more than that. She had trusted him a few days ago with her deepest, darkest self. And she had kissed him with open desire. She had even been reluctant to return to the house afterward but had wished she could build a cabin in which they could stay together, away from the world and reality.

So why was he nervous?

“Yes, perfect,” he said to his valet, who had taken a step back to look critically at the elaborate folds of the neckcloth over which he had labored for the past ten minutes.

“And the diamond pin, my lord?” his valet said.

“Yes,” Bertrand said, and stood still while his man positioned the gem just so.

There was not a speck of lint or any stray hair on his black tailed evening coat, and not the slightest suggestion of a crease in his silk breeches and white stockings, but his man had to inspect him carefully from head to foot even so, a frown creasing his brow, to be absolutely sure.