by Kelly Boyce
Not that everyone knew Alexander had promised her this dance. That was something, at least, leaving her humiliation confined to just her. Still, she couldn’t help but feel as if a banner flew above her announcing his rejection. Or that anyone who glanced her way could see the hurt and disappointment written in the false smile she had plastered across her face.
Why had he bothered making such a display out of requesting a dance if he had no intention of going through with it? She lifted her hand to touch upon the scars at her neck. Should she have left them covered? Had the idea of being in such close proximity to her scars repelled him to such a degree that he had changed his mind? He had always treated her scars as if they were of no importance and she had begun to think that way as well—that they were just a part of her story. Her history. But not who she was.
Her hand fell away and she blinked back the tears that threatened. She had thought Alexander different from all the others. Damaged, in his own way, yes, though such was not readily visible to everyone. Still, the scars were there. Hen could sense them. It was as her friend, Judith, had once said—not everyone wore their scars on the outside.
Both she and Alex had suffered grievous losses. They both bore the damage of such and somewhere in that she thought she had found a kindred spirit, a man who saw her for whom she was, not what was on her. Who understood her pain and shared it. Had she been wrong in this?
Perhaps that was the part that saddened her the most. She turned her dance card over once more and read Alexander’s name aloud in her mind. He was not coming.
“My dear girl, there you are.”
Hen looked up to find the Duke of Franklyn standing before her, a warm smile on his wrinkled face. “Your Grace.”
She curtsied and when she straightened saw that he had held out a hand toward her. She took it without thinking. Something about Lord Franklyn had a way of drawing you in, beyond the rank, beyond the reputation as a man of strong character. He had such an inviting warmth about him and a twinkle in his eyes that suggested that once upon a time he had been a bit of a rascal.
“I have been sent to deliver a message from my son. I’m afraid he has been temporarily indisposed.”
“Oh.” The disappointment from a few moments ago rushed back upon Lord Franklyn’s confirmation that Alexander would not arrive after all, dashing the last bit of hope she’d held onto. “Nothing serious, I hope?”
“On the contrary. It appears we’ve had an escapee from the nursery which he must return.” Lord Franklyn smiled and pulled her hand beneath his arm. “And as such, he has tasked me with delivering the news to you and to take his place, if you don’t mind dancing with an old man.”
Hen returned his smile. “I can think of nothing I would like more.”
Lord Franklyn led her out onto the dance floor. Heads turned, surprised expressions riddled on the faces she passed as if the idea of the great Lord Franklyn and the scarred little monster sharing a dance was a monumental event worthy of their attention. But if the duke noticed the attention, he gave it no consideration as he turned toward her and they began to dance. He was quite light on his feet for a man of over sixty years, though, now that she was closer, she noted he looked a bit older than she had imagined he would, having only seen him briefly in the receiving line and only from afar before that.
“I hope Lord Rothbury wasn’t too upset with Lady Margaret for her escape. I suspect she wished to see the spectacle below. I recall doing the same many times when I was her age.”
“He did not seem upset in the least, beyond missing his dance with you. To which I have reaped the benefits of.”
“You are too kind, sir.”
They made idle chitchat as the waltz spun them about the room and Hen took a strong liking to the man. For all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the prestige of his title, he struck her as a man of deep principle, his feet firmly planted on solid ground.
But without warning, the ground shifted. Lord Franklyn stumbled. But no, that wasn’t right. It was Hen who had stumbled when Lord Franklyn stopped moving. She pulled him toward her to avoid a collision from the couple behind him but he moved slowly as if his feet had grown roots that did not want to give up the ground.
“Lord Franklyn?”
His expression had changed to a blank slate and his eyes blinked rapidly. “I think…” but his words trailed off and his skin paled.
Hen’s heart picked up speed. Something was dreadfully wrong. She searched for assistance, her gaze finding Lord Blackbourne who stood near the edge of the dance floor next to his wife. He tilted his head and his eyes narrowed then he moved swiftly toward her as Lord Franklyn’s knees buckled and he fell against her. Lord Blackbourne caught Lord Franklyn from behind. Lady Blackbourne had jumped from her seat and entered the crowd, stopping the dancers so that they did not get trampled. By the time Lord Blackbourne had the duke laid out on the floor, a ripple had shot through the throng and everyone had come to a standstill.
Hen heard the moment the news reached Lady Franklyn. A guttural scream carried across the heads of everyone present and the sea of guests parted to allow her past. She dropped to her knees and Hen moved to allow her access to her husband. Her hands hovered over him for a moment, as if she feared touching him. Feared to accept the fact something awful had happened. If anyone had ever doubted her love for the man she married, those doubts were erased in that moment.
“Edmund!” She turned to Lady Blackbourne. “I need my son! Someone find Lord Rothbury, please!”
“I will,” Hen said. Likely, she was the only one who knew he would be found in the nursery. She stood and picked up her skirts, running from the ballroom while Lord Blackbourne barked orders to send for the duke’s doctor with all due haste.
Chapter Fifteen
Alex stared down at his father’s sleeping form. The lines around his eyes and the grooves around his mouth were both more deeply imbedded than before. His skin fell looser on the bones, making him appear thinner, less robust than the image Alex carried in his head of the strong, stalwart man who had, save for the period following his mother’s death, been Alex’s rock.
He had thought the old man dead when he’d reached him, collapsed on the dance floor with Laura hovering over him, begging him to wake up. Alex had to forcibly pry her fingers away from his father’s hand. His stepmother did not want to let go, as if by clasping him tightly she could tether her husband to this world and keep him from slipping into the great beyond. But Alex’s father hadn’t been dead, not yet, at least, though even now the doctor made no promises that such would not happen sooner rather than later.
Such proclamation left a pit of fear roiling in the center of Alex’s heart, competing with the regret that was his constant companion. He had stayed away too long. Spent too many years mourning Edward, as if by doing so with such intensity it would somehow bring his son back. It didn’t, of course, and seeing his father like this brought home the fact he had failed in his duty to provide an heir, as eight generations of St. John’s had done before him. His father brought up the matter each and every time they met, stressing its importance, but Alex had waved it off, unable to put himself in the position of losing another child.
Now his father wavered on the precipice of life and Alex experienced a different kind of failure. He was the only son his father had. The responsibility of producing an heir to the duchy, to keep the family line intact, rested on his shoulders. And to date, he’d been a royal disappointment in that regard.
“You must wish you’d fathered a second son,” Alex muttered as the lamp next to the bed flicked shadows across his father’s sleeping visage.
“On the contrary.”
Alex sat up straighter; his father’s roughened voice surprising him from his maudlin reverie. “You’re awake?”
“And alive. Or so I assume given you are here looming over me with that worried expression you like to wear.”
“I do not wear a worried expression. I wear a surly one. I have it o
n good authority.”
Father smiled and the tightness in Alex’s chest eased a fraction. “Hm. Have they spoken to you about me then? Laura and the doctor?”
“They have.” His father had suffered a serious fever six months previous that had weakened his heart. “Why did you not tell me?”
His father lifted a hand and patted Alex’s where it rested over the covers next to him. “To what end? To cause you more worry? There was no need nor was there—or is there—anything to be done about it.”
“Do the doctors offer no hope?” His voice caught on an edge.
“They tell me not to overtax myself, which your stepmother has been horribly diligent in enforcing. I had been napping when I ran into you and Margaret in the hallway. Napping at my own party in celebration of my son’s return! Such nonsense. I don’t know how they expect me to strengthen my heart if all I do is sit about like a lump of flesh while everyone does everything for me. A heart needs a reason to beat, don’t you agree?”
The question settled around him and within it, he found a rather appalling truth. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer that question.”
His father raised one bushy gray eyebrow. “I think you are the one person who needs to answer that question the most.”
Shame filled Alex. “I have let you down. I know this.”
“You have let yourself down, son. I have never been anything but proud of you. Though such pride does not discount my concern. It is as if when young Edward died, you buried yourself along side of him. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t lose both my grandson and my son on that day.”
“Sometimes I wonder the same thing,” Alex whispered.
“You cannot reside in a grave that has been dug before its time, my son. Edward is gone and that is a tragedy that will live in our hearts for the rest of our days. But it is incumbent upon you to live in his place. To breathe the air for him, to feel the sun on your face where he can no longer, to accept love into your heart once more so that little Edward will not be the only one who resides there.” His father pointed at Alex’s chest and his words hit home with startling accuracy, reinforcing the realizations that had slowly begun to dawn on him of late.
He had stopped living the day Edward died. He’d shut himself off from everything and everyone and boarded up his heart so that only he and his son had access. Everyone else he pushed away, avoided, hid from. His parents, his friends, Margaret. Only James had remained immune, refusing to leave no matter how many times Alex demanded he do so. Although, he’d taken care of that now, hadn’t he?
“Forgive me, Father.”
“There is nothing to forgive, Alexander. You lost a child. No deeper wound can ever be inflicted and there is no book written that can instruct you on how to navigate through such pain. But you have another child who still needs you, do you not?”
“I suppose I do.”
His father shook his head, as if the answer did not satisfy. “There is no supposing about it. She is your daughter and she needs you. Blood matters not when it is trumped by the right thing to do. Regardless of who sired her, you are her father. That isn’t a burden, it is a gift.”
Alex nodded and dropped his head to his hands, rubbing his palms against his face to ward off the exhaustion creeping in around him. There was much wisdom in his father’s words. Holding Margaret this evening had stirred something deep within him, something primal he couldn’t name or fully understand. For the longest time, he had resented her—not for the reasons that led to her birth, but because she was here and Edward was not. Her presence was a constant reminder to him of what he’d lost. But her smile when he suggested they do something together, her quick acceptance of his affection, the trust she put in him by falling asleep in his arms, it had struck him with such force, he could no longer ignore the truth that she was, in fact, his daughter. And somewhere, in the corner of his heart that hadn’t gone quiescent, this had always been true.
“I worry what will happen if she shows signs of inheriting Phillip Fitzgerald’s madness,” he said, voicing a fear he had been unable to shake. A fear enhanced when her behavior went out of control.
“A need for attention does not equate to madness. Do you not recall all of the things you did to garner mine after I married Laura?”
Alex looked up. “You remember that?”
“Of course I do. And I remember that I did not pay you heed the way I should have. I became so wrapped up in saving my new wife from herself that I forgot you were suffering the loss of your mother as much as I. In retrospect, I suppose that was part and parcel of why I married Laura.”
“Because of Mother?”
His father nodded. “I could not save your mother, but I thought I might be able to save Laura from what Walkerton had done to her and from her self-destructive ways that followed.”
Alex smiled. “And how did that go?” His stepmother had been well known for her dalliances outside of their marriage, with a strong preference for younger men who would form no attachment. In the past year, that had changed, brought on by a series of events that culminated in the death of the late Lord Walkerton.
A deep rumbled echoed in his father’s chest. “Not so well. In the end, I think Laura saved herself. But all is well that ends well, hm?”
He and Father had never talked about Laura’s extramarital liaisons in any depth and his father’s acceptance of her behavior had eluded his understanding. But in the end, his stepmother’s devotion to the husband, who had stood by her side regardless of her failings, had become absolute.
Alex looked at his father. “And you are happy now?”
“Save for all the hovering, yes, I am a happy man. It is a wonderful state to be in, I must say. You should try it, son. I think you’ll find it to your liking. Now, off with you. I must rest or my dear wife will never let me hear the end of it.”
“Very well,” Alex said, standing. He reached down and squeezed his father’s hand. “Sleep well.”
By the time he released his hold, his father was snoring lightly and Laura hovered in the doorway, a sliver of light from the hall sconces slipping past her to cut a narrow swath across the floor.
She smiled at Alex. “He is doing well?”
“He is. Is there anything you need from me?”
Laura shook her head, the stress of the evening written across her still pretty features. “No. I need to go see to Lady Henrietta.”
“Lady Henrietta? She is still here?” The news surprised him. He had seen Lady Dalridge leave earlier and had assumed Henrietta was already in the carriage, waiting for her.
“When Lady Henrietta made to leave, Margaret begged her to stay. Seeing her grandfather in such a state has her quite upset and Lady Henrietta didn’t have the heart to desert her. I left them both curled up in the spare room next to the nursery with Merlin, but I should have Mrs. Babcock arrange a proper room for her.” Laura’s gaze drifted toward her husband’s sleeping figure.
“I will see to it,” Alex said and Laura did not put up a fight over it despite the impropriety that may be construed. Who would know? All of the prying eyes had gone on their way hours earlier. It was just family now. And Susan. But surely, even she wouldn’t use such an event as this to further torment Henrietta. Would she?
Alex shut the door to the bedchamber behind him and hurried up the stairs to the next floor. It had been a long and stressful night and he could think of nothing he needed more than to spend even a few moments with the woman who brought an unexpected light into his life.
And into his heart.
* * *
A creek brought Hen out of the deep sleep to a state of slow wakefulness, though her body struggled against such, preferring the comfort of the feather mattress and the warm body snuggled against her, pumping out enough heat to warm the entire room. But when the heat slipped away, its loss jolted her fully awake.
“Ssh.”
Hen blinked, staring up at Alexander who held a sleeping Lady Margaret over one shoulder w
hile pressing a finger to his lips.
“Alex—?”
“Stay here. I shall return.”
And with that, he disappeared through the door with swift, silent steps, leaving her alone, save for Merlin, whose furry gray body had curled up on the pillow previously occupied by his new little caretaker. It took Hen a few moments to fight through the fog of deep sleep to piece together the puzzle that had brought her here. She was still at Franklyn House and given the level of darkness, it was still somewhere in the middle of the night.
A night that had turned to madness.
When she had witnessed Lord Franklyn’s collapse, she feared the worst, rushing off to find Alexander, dreading that when she returned it would be too late for him to do anything. She’d found Alexander in the nursery, sitting in the rocking chair he’d pulled up next to Margaret’s bed. The room echoed with the quiet creak of the chair and the not so quiet snoring from the nanny on the far side of the room.
She swallowed the words that sat upon the tip of her tongue. She had never seen Alexander appear so calm before, as if he’d been carrying around a heavy weight and finally set it down. And here she was, about to put another upon him.
He turned, somehow sensing her presence. “Hen?” He whispered her nickname and the sound of it wrapped around her like a warm blanket on a cold night. How she hated that she must ruin this moment.
He gave her an odd look and pushed himself out of the rocking chair to walk toward her. He moved as if coming out of a dream. “What happened to the music?”
Trepidation edged around the corners of his voice and Hen reached out a hand to somehow soften the news she was about to give. “It is your father. He—”