by Balogh, Mary
Mrs. Summoner, who had been widowed about the same time as Charles had, had signaled on several occasions that she would not mind indulging in a discreet affair with him. She must be all of twenty years his junior. He held up a staying hand.
“If I must bring someone,” he said, “I will choose for myself. I shall ask Lady Matilda Westcott.”
He did not quite know what made him say it—and he certainly did not know if she would accept—except that he had been trying to pluck up the courage to talk to his daughters about something they needed to know, and this would make it somewhat imperative that he say it now.
“Lady Matilda Westcott?” Jane frowned. “Do you mean Abigail Westcott, Papa? But she is no longer Lady Abigail, is she? She lost the title several years ago. Besides, she is too young for you.”
“And she has recently married, I have heard,” Barbara added.
“I said Lady Matilda Westcott,” Charles told them. “She is Abigail Westcott’s aunt—Abigail Bennington now. She recently married Lieutenant Colonel Gil Bennington. My son.”
They stared at him blankly.
“Did you say ‘my son’?” Jane asked, and laughed.
“I did,” he said. “Gil Bennington is my natural son. He was born thirty-four years ago, before I even met your mother. His mother was the daughter of a village blacksmith. She raised him without my assistance, though assistance was offered. The only help I ever gave him came after her passing, when I purchased a commission for him in the foot regiment in which he was a sergeant. He refused any further help not long after that. I saw him for the first time a few weeks ago after he arrived in London with his new wife. They came to appear before a judge who was to decide who would have custody of his daughter. She was living with her maternal grandparents at the time. Now she is with Gil and his wife. I was at the hearing. I spoke up in Gil’s defense. He has since taken his family to their home in Gloucestershire.”
It all came out in a rush.
Jane’s smile had disappeared. Both daughters were staring blankly at him.
“You have a son?” Jane asked. “Apart from Adrian?”
“Does Adrian know?” Barbara asked. “Dear God, it will kill him.”
“He knows,” Charles said. “He came with me last week to a dinner given by the Earl of Riverdale and his wife. A number of the other members of the Westcott family were there too. It occurred to me when I was invited that the truth was almost bound to leak out at last and that it would be better that you all hear it from me than from ton gossip.”
His daughters were looking identically stunned, rather as Adrian had looked when Charles told him.
“And you are going to invite Abigail Bennington’s aunt, one of the Westcotts, to Barbara’s birthday party?” Jane said.
“Unless Barbara objects,” Charles told her. “Obviously I have not asked her yet. She may say no even if I do.”
“Lady Estelle Lamarr has some connection with the Westcott family too, does she not?” Barbara said, frowning in thought. “Her father married the former Countess of Riverdale a few years ago? Abigail Westcott’s mother?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And Adrian is bringing her to Vauxhall,” Barbara said. “Yet he knows.”
“Yes,” Charles said again.
“Oh goodness.” Barbara sat back in her chair and placed her palms against her cheeks. “I feel as though I were in the middle of some bizarre dream. We have a half brother, Jane.”
“If you happen to have a feather about your person,” Jane said, “someone could easily knock me over with it. How is it possible we never knew of this? And how could you, Papa? Oh, of all the dreadful things. Whatever will Wallace say when I tell him? What is he like, Papa? Though I am not at all sure I want to know.”
They were none too happy, Charles realized. It was unsurprising. He was not himself. He had kept the secret for so long that it felt disconcerting to have the truth out in the open to upset his children. His wife had never known.
“I believe he is a good man,” he said.
He proceeded to tell them some facts about his son. And he wondered as he did so whether he ought to ask Matilda to go to Vauxhall with him and thus keep alive the connection between her family and his. Perhaps his children would resent it. Though Adrian did not seem to do so. Quite the contrary, in fact.
How would she answer if he did ask her? Would she accept? And what would it mean if she did? It was to be an intimate event with his family. Would anyone get the idea that he was courting her?
And would he be?
When Matilda received a written invitation to join Mrs. Barbara Dewhurst and her family for an evening at Vauxhall Gardens in celebration of her birthday, she thought at first that the lady must have mistaken her for someone else. But only for a second.
“You look as if someone had just died, Matilda,” her mother said from across the breakfast table. “Whatever has happened?”
Matilda looked up blankly. She would have loved to take the card upstairs to digest its contents in the privacy of her room, but it was too late for that. Apparently her face had betrayed her.
“Who is Mrs. Dewhurst?” her mother asked after Matilda had read the invitation aloud.
Matilda knew. She had known when Charles married and whom he married and where. She had known when each of his children were born—and married. She knew when his wife had died. For someone who had obliterated him entirely from her mind and memory over thirty years ago, she knew a lot about him. And she had suffered a great deal over each milestone in his life while denying every pang.
“She is Viscount Dirkson’s elder daughter,” she explained.
“But why would she be inviting you to join a family party?” her mother asked. But she did not wait for an answer. She set down her half-eaten slice of toast, dabbed at her mouth with her linen napkin, and sat back in her chair, regarding her daughter the whole while. “Do you have the viscount himself to thank for this?”
“I do not know any more than you do, Mama,” Matilda said. Except that he had kissed her, and she had had a hard time both eating and sleeping in the week since, poor pathetic creature that she was.
“You fancied yourself in love with him once,” her mother said.
“Oh goodness.” Matilda laughed and stirred her coffee, even though the cup was already half-empty. “That was a long age ago, Mama.” She looked up as she set the spoon in the saucer. “But I did not fancy myself in love with him. I loved him with my whole heart and soul.”
Her mother continued to regard her steadily, and Matilda waited for the tirade of anger and ridicule that was bound to be coming. Instead her mother set down her napkin beside her plate and sighed.
“I know,” she said.
Matilda lifted her cup, changed her mind, and set it back down on the saucer. She raised her eyes.
“I am not sure I knew about the ‘heart and soul’ part at the time,” her mother said. “Though I understood it later, when you would have nothing to do with any of the many perfectly eligible gentlemen who would have courted you in the years after. I told myself it was infatuation. I told myself you were merely in love, something girls fall in and out of a dozen times before they settle into a sensible marriage.”
“I fell only once,” Matilda said. Oh goodness, she and Mama never talked like this.
“Yes, I know,” her mother said again. “He ran wild with Humphrey, Matilda. Humphrey was my own son, but I was never blind to his many faults. Viscount Dirkson, or Charles Sawyer as he still was in those days, was a year older. I blamed him for leading Humphrey astray, or deluded myself into blaming him. My heart broke at the prospect of you marrying him and having to endure a wretched marriage for the rest of your life. I was not wrong about him. He grew worse than just wild as the years went on.”
“I know, Mama,” Matilda said.
“But,” her mother said, “I have always lived with the guilt of denying you that misery—or that happiness. For it is impossible to know if
his life would have proceeded differently if you had married him. Did he love you heart and soul too?”
“I believed so,” Matilda said. “Indeed, I knew so.”
“Being a parent is a hard job,” her mother told her. “One so very much wants one’s children to be happy. One wants to do all in one’s power to prevent their being miserable. But where does wise guidance end and blind interference begin?”
Matilda frowned across the table at her mother. “You and Papa did the right thing,” she said.
“Did we?” Her mother lifted her napkin again and proceeded to fold it neatly. “You were my firstborn, Matilda. I hesitate to say you were my favorite, for you were all my favorites at different times and in different circumstances. But you were special. You were my … my firstborn.”
Matilda found herself blinking back tears. Her mother never talked this way. And she had never been a demonstrative parent. She had never before said that she loved her eldest daughter, let alone that she had been the favorite.
“I must go and send an answer to Mrs. Dewhurst,” Matilda said, getting to her feet. “I will decline, of course.”
“Why?” her mother asked.
“I do not belong with that family,” Matilda said. “I would feel embarrassed and awkwardly out of place.”
“Why?” her mother asked again. “It is obvious that it was Mrs. Dewhurst’s father who suggested your name. Why else would she have thought to ask you? I daresay she does not even know you.”
Matilda could think of no answer. Why had he suggested her? He had said nothing during or after the journey home from Kew about seeing her again. There had been nothing from him since. She had assumed he was bitterly regretting some of the things he had said. Not to mention that kiss.
“Did you enjoy the day at Kew?” her mother asked.
“Yes, of course I did,” Matilda said. “The young people were delightful. I was touched when Mr. Sawyer came the following day with Boris and Bertrand and Estelle to thank me. It was thoughtful of them.”
“And was Viscount Dirkson delightful?” her mother asked.
Matilda sat back down. “He was pleasant company, Mama,” she said. “I believe all the young people liked him.”
“But did you, Matilda?” her mother asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. He kissed me. Me, a fifty-six-year-old spinster.
“Then you must go to Vauxhall with him and his family,” her mother told her.
“Mama,” Matilda began, but her mother held up a hand.
“Matilda,” she said, “you have driven me to the brink of insanity several times in the years since your papa died.”
“I know,” Matilda said. “I want to care for you, Mama, but I know you resent my every move.”
“You drive me insane with guilt,” her mother said. “Believe me when I tell you I did not understand just how much you loved him, Matilda. Perhaps the advice your father and I gave you was sound. It seemed so at the time. But I have looked upon you in all the years since as a millstone of regret and guilt about my neck. We ought to have advised you and then trusted you to make your own decision. We ought at least to have put a time limit on our refusal. We could have insisted that your young man wait a year before applying to your father again for permission to address you.”
“Mama!” Matilda cried, hearing only that she had been a millstone about her mother’s neck.
“Matilda,” her mother said, getting to her feet while her daughter shot to hers in order to rush to her assistance—an impulse she reined in before she had taken more than two steps. “Matilda, I love you. When I snap at you, it is because my heart hurts for you and I know I am to blame for everything you have become. Now, I am going to my sitting room to read the morning papers. I can get up the stairs with the assistance of the banister rail and my own feet. You are to go to the morning room to write to Mrs. Dewhurst. You are to thank her for the kind invitation and inform her that you will be delighted to make one of the party. Or you may write to refuse. The choice is yours.”
Matilda, dumbfounded, watched her mother leave the room. For the first time in what must be years she did not rush after her to offer assistance that was not solicited. It took a great deal of resolution.
She accepted the invitation. Having placed it on the silver tray in the hall and drawn the attention of the butler to it, she went up to her room and lay down on her bed, something she never did in the daytime, and stared up at the canopy.
I love you.
Not in the voice of a man from years and years ago, but in her mother’s voice. For perhaps the first time ever. If her mother had said it before, Matilda had no memory of it. She had always chosen to believe it must be true anyway, though she had doubted of late. But oh, the craving to hear those words from one’s own mother. And now they had been spoken.
I love you.
Matilda rolled over onto her side, hid her face against the pillow, and wept.
I love you.
Why did he want her to go to Vauxhall with his family?
Did he regret that kiss at the top of the pagoda in Kew Gardens?
I love you.
He too had spoken those words to her once upon a time long, long ago.
Life, her dreary, endless life, had suddenly become too full of emotion to be borne. She was not accustomed to strong emotion. She did not know what to do with it.
Except weep.
Something she never did.
She wept.
As soon as he had heard from Barbara that Matilda had accepted the invitation to Vauxhall, Charles wrote to inform her that he would bring his carriage to her mother’s house and escort her there himself. He did not look forward to calling at the house, but it was the correct thing to do, and he was not really afraid of the dragon. Was he? But when he arrived on the appointed evening and was conducted to the drawing room, it was to find that the dowager countess was alone there.
His heart sank even as he girded his loins for battle.
“Ma’am,” he said, making her a bow.
She looked him up and down from her chair beside the fireplace, her expression stern, even hostile.
“Lord Dirkson,” she said. “Your daughter has a lovely evening for her party.”
“She is fortunate,” he said, “considering the fact that we have had nothing but drizzle and blustery winds for the last several days.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Did I make a mistake all those years ago?”
Her words took him completely by surprise. He did not know for a moment how to answer. “I understood,” he said, “that the Earl of Riverdale, your husband, rejected my suit because my wild ways made me an ineligible suitor for his daughter. I was twenty years old. I behaved as a large number of young men behave at that age. Wildly, that is. I was prepared to reform my ways after I had made the acquaintance of Lady Matilda. Whether I would have done so or not cannot be known for sure. I daresay you believed at the time that you were acting in the best interests of your daughter. Subsequent events would seem to have justified you in that opinion.”
“You loved her?” she asked.
“I did, ma’am,” he said. “Very dearly. I do not expect you to believe me.”
“Age does not necessarily strengthen a person or insulate her from pain,” she said. “My daughter is as fragile now as she was then, Viscount Dirkson, even though she may appear to be set in her ways and incapable of deep feeling.”
Matilda did not appear that way to him in either regard.
“Are you asking me my intentions, ma’am?” he asked.
She did not reply for a moment as she looked steadily at him. “I am,” she said then.
He felt like a young man again, being hauled up before suspicious parents as he pursued their daughters. It was a little bizarre. But one thing was clear. The old dragon cared after all. He did not like her, but she cared. At least he assumed she did. Perhaps she was only anxious at the possible loss of her longtime slave.
“They a
re honorable, ma’am,” he assured her. “I have no wish to hurt Lady Matilda. I will do all in my power not to do so. I never did hurt her, if you will remember. I am not the one who ended our connection.”
What the devil was he saying? Was he committing himself to something? Events of the past couple of weeks or so had left him with the uneasy feeling that he was being drawn into some sort of trap. But … a trap of whose making? Not Matilda’s, certainly. Not her mother’s either, or any of her family’s. Of his own, then? He was the one, after all, who had suggested first himself and then Matilda as chaperons for that youthful excursion to Kew. He was the one who had suggested her name to Barbara.
“Do you still love her?” the dowager asked him.
He raised his eyebrows. “I care for her, ma’am,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes and then nodded curtly. “Matilda is an adult,” she said. “She has been an adult for many years. It is time I learned not to interfere in her life. I am sure you would agree with that, Lord Dirkson.”
“I am sure, ma’am,” he said, “that your concern for her arises from love.”
He was sure of no such thing. But before she could reply, the door behind him opened and he turned in some relief to watch Matilda hurry into the room, her evening gown an icy, shimmery silver gray, a blue cashmere shawl over one arm, her hair styled with simple elegance, her posture more erect even than usual, her cheeks slightly flushed, her lips in a prim line.
And dash it all. He fell in love. Again.
Six
They crossed the river by boat instead of by the bridge, a convenience Matilda had always considered unromantic ever since it opened a few years previous. Charles took her shawl from over her arm just when she was starting to feel a bit chilly and wrapped it around her shoulders. For a moment he kept his arm about her, holding the shawl in place, but he soon removed it and sat more decorously beside her, making light conversation. It must be twenty-five or, more likely, thirty years since she had been anywhere escorted by a gentleman alone. She had been relieved that her mother had not suggested her maid accompany her. How humiliating it would have been if that had happened in his hearing.