“He did, and somehow Tye got him to undevise it where Fee is concerned.”
Tye. She’d slipped more than once, using the earl’s name and even his nickname.
“This is interesting, Miss Daniels.” Deirdre took a leisurely sip of her tea, which had lost much of its heat. “I’d heard rumors Gordie had left us an afterthought, and I pleaded with my husband to follow up, but he was adamant it would be a waste of time.”
Waste of time, indeed. The wrath she’d directed at Hale previously was going to be nothing, nothing, compared to the peal she’d ring over his head now.
“I wish you would not be too hard on his lordship, Lady Quinworth. If he has been high-handed in his dealings regarding Fiona, I believe his course was set in part because of the way you have dealt with him.”
Deirdre’s teacup nigh crashed to its saucer. “Explain yourself, Miss Daniels.”
Little Miss Daniels got up and went to the window, turning her back to her hostess. It was a slim back, but straight. Strong. “He keeps all the letters you send back to him—Quinworth does. He has them in a drawer, and they look as if he’s read them time and again.”
Inside her body where she thought she’d long stopped feeling anything of note, Deirdre experienced small tremors of emotion. “What has this to do with me, Miss Daniels?”
“They are love letters, my lady. I read perhaps two sentences of his most recent epistle, and I know a love letter when I’m reading one, though I’ve never received any myself.”
“Love letters? Listing all the things I’ve left behind me in a vain attempt to gain that man’s notice? Those are taunts, Miss Daniels. When you’ve been married to an arrogant, domineering Englishman for thirty years, you’ll know the difference.”
She tried to pick up her teacup, but her grip was too unsteady, and her speech had acquired more than a hint of a burr.
“He’s taken to stealing children in an effort to entice you to return to his side.”
“He has not.”
Miss Daniels turned to face her hostess. “The Earl of Balfour has sent regular reports to Quinworth regarding Fiona’s well-being, my lady. It’s been years, and Quinworth has never acknowledged the child until now. Fiona is legitimate under Scottish law, and she is a wonderful child. Quinworth sent his son to bring her south, and I am convinced this is all in aid of luring you back to the family seat.”
“He never admitted to me we had a grandchild.” Deirdre’s voice, the melodious, cultured voice she’d been complimented on since she’d put up her hair, came out broken and empty. “That man… I told him there had been a child, and he ignored me and railed at me and told me not to hang onto dreams that could never be. We fought and fought until I could not fight anymore.”
“Your husband compromised his relationship with his only remaining son to get his hands on Fiona.” Miss Daniels had moved again to resume her seat across from Deirdre. “He lied, he sacrificed control of his daughters’ futures, he moved heaven and earth to gain custody of Fiona, and I am certain in my bones it was the only way he could bring himself once again to your notice.”
“He has my notice. He has always had my notice. I am tempted to order my traveling coach and take my notice to Quinworth in person this very moment, but I will not pass up the opportunity to spend even a moment with my granddaughter.”
Miss Daniels said nothing. She fixed Deirdre a fresh cup of tea, as if that would help with the mess Deirdre’s marriage had become. As if anything would help.
When Deirdre began to cry, Miss Daniels took the place beside her, tucked a serviette into Deirdre’s hand, and put her arm around Deirdre’s shoulder.
All of which only made the marchioness cry harder.
***
“She’s not coming.” Quinworth spoke quietly, though there was nobody to hear him who’d repeat his words. “The child left more than two weeks ago—the child who might have finally lured your mother home—and still, there is no word from Edinburgh. Not a scathing letter, not a request for a formal separation, nothing.”
He swatted at the grass with his riding crop. “Each day, my boy, I envy you your repose a little more. Your mother would say I’m being petulant and dramatic.”
Quinworth eyed the headstone to which he addressed himself. “I’m being pathetic, but when you are all the family left to me, at least I can indulge myself privately in this regard.” The alternatives did not bear thinking about. Her ladyship was probably halfway to Vienna by now, and if fetching her home from Edinburgh had been a daunting prospect, the Continent was a patent impossibility.
“Your brother has gone off to the north again, though whether he’ll sort matters out with the little blond, or take up the latest family tradition of solitudinous brooding remains to be seen. You used to be able to jolly him out of his seriousness at least occasionally, but then, you did not lie to him about a material matter.”
The child had been good for Spathfoy, though. About that much, Quinworth was certain. The child and the little blond.
“Fiona has your chin, your eyes. You would love her—anybody would love her.” Which wasn’t something he’d bargained for, not at all.
“Hale.”
Quinworth blinked, wondering if he was finally to be granted the mercy of losing his reason. He was even hearing his wife’s voice on the slight summer breeze, a voice that had been silent except in his memory for two years.
Quinworth did not put any stock in summer breezes.
“I miss your mother,” he went on. “I miss her until I am ready to crawl on my knees to beg her forgiveness, but she won’t… she will not acknowledge my letters. She will not see me; she will not hear me; she will not speak to me. To her, I am as dead as you are, perhaps even more so. I fear her sentence in this regard to be irrevocable.”
The wrought iron gate creaked, a distinctive, rusty protest that was no part of Quinworth’s imagination. A curious shiver skipped down his spine and settled low in his belly.
“Hale, why are you sitting here all alone on the grass?”
Angels might have such a pretty, gentle voice. He closed his eyes and felt a hand pass softly over the back of his head. The scent of roses came to him.
“Hale, please say something.”
His marchioness, his beautiful, passionate lady sounded sad and frightened. When he opened his eyes, she folded down from her majestic height to sit right there beside him on the grass.
“Dee Dee.” He did not dare touch her, though with his eyes he devoured her. She would always be lovely, but two years had made her dignity and self-possession a luminous complement to her beauty. “You came.”
Her gaze was solemn as she took a visual inventory of him. “Tiberius told me to have done with things, one way or another. He said he gave you the same speech.”
Quinworth could not stop looking at her for fear if he blinked she’d disappear. “Spathfoy had many choice sentiments to impart to me, in which the words happiness, compassion, forgiveness, and honesty figured prominently. The boy—the man—was not wrong.”
She rustled around to organize her skirts, sending another little whiff of roses into the air. “He lectured me about love and everybody erring occasionally, often with the best of intentions. The Lords will have a fine orator in him one day.”
And then silence, which had so often presaged verbal gunfire between them. “Dee Dee, have you come to ask for terms?”
He forced himself to put the question calmly, and she stopped fussing her skirts to stare at him. She’d more than hinted over the years that a formal separation would be appreciated.
“Yes, Hale.” Her voice was not so gentle now. “Yes, I have come to treat with you regarding our future. Why did you keep that child a secret?”
This was… good. This was a chance to explain, a chance to preserve the hope that whatever the legal posture of their marriage became, t
hey might be civil with each other, cordial even.
Provided he was honest now.
“When Gordie died, you went to pieces, Dee Dee. You grew quiet—you, who roar and laugh and bellow your way through life. I could not bear it.”
“I went to pieces? Did I limit my sustenance to hard liquor and my company to the hounds and hunters? Spathfoy says your drinking has moderated, but your horses still see more of you than your own daughters do. You became a stranger to me, Hale.” She looked away, giving him a fine view of her profile. “You no longer came to my bed, and when I came to yours, you were a stranger still.”
He heard in her voice not accusation—which might have permitted him a few words in his defense—but hurt.
“Dee Dee, sometimes a man can’t—”
“For God’s sake, Hale, we’re not children. Sometimes I couldn’t either. I hope you recall that much of our marriage.”
“It’s different for a lady, my dear.” And he stopped himself from pursuing this digression further, even in his own defense. “To answer your question, I did not learn of the child until the present earl took over the management of the estate, which was almost a year after…”
She swung her gaze back to him, concern in her eyes—and chagrin. “After our son died. I had to practice saying it, had to learn how to make the words audible while thinking of something else, of anything else.”
Before Quinworth’s eyes, she hunched in on herself. “I call him ‘our son.’ I do not speak his name in the same sentence as I mention his death.”
To see her so afflicted was… unbearable, and yet in a curious way, a relief too. He used one finger to tip her chin up, then dropped his hand and spoke very slowly. “I did not learn of the child’s existence until almost a year after… Gordie… died.”
While he watched, her gorgeous green eyes filled. She blinked furiously then dashed her knuckles against her cheeks. “Go on.”
“Dora was battling cholera, and you were a wraith, my dear. I feared to lose you and her both, more than I’d lost you already. Balfour sent only a short letter, saying the child thrived, and condoling me on the loss of my son. I burned the letter, and forgive me, Wife, I almost hoped the child would die. Why should some scheming Scottish girl get to keep a part of Gordie, when I was left with nothing but guilt, regret, and a family unable to put itself to rights?”
She did not fly into a rage; she did not start on one of her scathing lectures in the low, relentless tones of a woman intent on delivering thirty-nine verbal lashes.
Quinworth’s wife spoke softly. “You were a good father, Hale. You knew when to set limits and when to wink. You have only to look at Spathfoy to see how Gordie would have turned out, given time.”
“Dee Dee, how can you say this? I arranged for Gordie to have his colors, knowing full well military life was not going to bring out his best traits. The drinking and wenching and travel…”
She cocked her head as his words trailed off. “Why did you do it, Hale? I’ve often wondered.”
And now he could not look her in the eye. “I’ve wondered myself, and often wished I hadn’t, but I’ve had years to consider it, and all I can come up with is: I did not know what else to do for him. In his brother’s shadow, he was bored and becoming…”
“Troubled.” She finished the thought for him, and to his consternation, reached out to lace her fingers through his. “Gordie might have stood for a pocket borough in a few years, but not right out of university. I thought a few years of service might give him the maturity Tye seemed born with.”
“You thought?”
“I encouraged him to ask you to arrange his commission. I never foresaw him getting into trouble in Scotland and taking a transfer to Canada in disgrace.”
“And I did not want you to know.” He studied their joined hands. “He compromised the girl, Dee Dee. I learned this when the child was a little older, and I could not see how to tell you of our granddaughter without also admitting Gordie had behaved dishonorably toward the mother.”
“So you told me nothing at all.”
She wasn’t wrong. He could let matters stand and be grateful they’d been able to clear the air this much.
But he’d missed his wife, missed his best friend, the mother of his children, the woman who’d seen him drunk, ranting, and insensate with what he now realized was loss and guilt. “I cannot undo the harm I’ve done, Dee Dee, but I have never stopped loving you. That is all I’ve wanted to tell you for more years than I can count. I am sorry for the decisions I’ve made, sorry I could not be the husband you needed and deserved. The fault for what has become of our marriage lies with me, and I sincerely regret—” His voice caught. Her grip on his hand had become painful, but he managed a few more words. “I regret the situation we find ourselves in and would do anything to make reparation to you for it.”
He raised her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
He’d been honest. At last he’d been honest with his wife, and while there was no joy in it, there was peace. For long moments, Quinworth sat with his marchioness, side by side in the grass. A robin landed on Gordie’s headstone, then flitted away as if nothing within view could be of interest.
“I was so angry.” Her ladyship spoke quietly, worlds of sadness in her words, but she did not retrieve her hand from his. “I was angry with Gordie for dying, angry with myself for living. Angry with you for not being able to understand what I did not understand myself. You always used to talk to me, Hale. I love that about you. I loved just to hear your voice.”
She had used the past tense—she loved just to hear his voice—but she’d also used the present: I love that about you.
Quinworth remained still and quiet, her hand held in his.
“I’ve realized something, Husband. I’ve realized the anger was a way to stay connected with Gordie, and to pretend I wasn’t the mother who sent him off to wheedle his colors from you. I pretended I wasn’t the useless twit wishing him into some regiment so he wouldn’t be causing a scandal when his sisters made their bows. I became very good at pretending.” She frowned at the headstone. “But not good enough. All the anger in the world does not make the grief go away.”
“No,” Quinworth said, kissing her knuckles again. “It does not. Drinking, shouting, and galloping hell-bent across the countryside don’t either.”
Her ladyship withdrew her hand. “Tiberius says you are a man in love and must be forgiven much, and he recognizes the symptoms because they’ve befallen him.”
“Spathfoy has a certain pragmatic wisdom about him. He’ll make a fine marquess.”
She smiled at him faintly, a wifely curving of the lips that had something to do with forbearance. “He makes a fine son, and I have made a very sorry wife. This is what I want to say to you, Hale Flynn: When you needed me most, when you were, for the first time in our marriage, not indulgent, doting, and unrelentingly kind to me, I failed you. When our son…” She stopped and bowed her head, speaking very softly. “When Gordie…”
Her shoulders jerked, and Quinworth’s throat closed up to see her so tormented.
“Dee Dee, please don’t.” He shifted to tuck an arm around her shoulders, willing her to silence. She took a steadying breath, and he felt her gathering her great reserves of courage.
“When… Gordie… died, I failed you.” She pitched into him, lashing her arms around him and sobbing quietly against his shoulder. “Forgive me, Hale, for I failed you terribly.”
While the summer breeze wafted the scent of roses around him, Hale Flynn held his dear wife in his arms and wept. He wept for their departed son, for the years wasted, for the hurt his spouse had suffered and suffered still, but mostly he wept in gratitude for the simple comfort of having her restored to his embrace.
***
Ian MacGregor kept his voice down, because His Wee Bairnship had for once taken his nap at
a time convenient to his parents’ plans—some of those plans, in any case.
“All they need is a nudge, Ian.” Augusta smoothed a hand over the child’s sleeping form, which had Ian nigh twitching with the need to stop her. Anything, anything at all, was sufficient provocation for the baby to waken and start bellowing, and God knew how Ian was supposed to handle matters without his countess to direct him.
“Spathfoy is cooling his heels in the library with a dram of the laird’s cache, Wife. Come away with me.” Ian escorted his wife into the corridor and closed the nursery door very, very softly. “Is Hester lingering over her tea?”
“She’s tarrying in the garden, last I checked. I thought I’d steal a peek at the baby before I wish her on her way.”
“You thought you’d dodge out on me.” Ian took her by the hand and led her to the steps. “There’s a sound and lengthy scold in it for you if you desert the cause at this point, woman.”
“A lengthy scold?” She stopped and bestowed a wicked smile on him. “Marriage to you is growing on me, Ian.”
He could not help glancing at her flat middle, where he suspected another aspect of her fondness for marriage was having repercussions. “We’ll see how matters unfold with our guests. Spathfoy will not appreciate our meddling.”
“Yes, he will. So will Hester.”
She kissed him, which was no reassurance, none whatsoever. Ian parted company with her on the first floor and went to do business with an errant earl whose wanderings had once again taken him into the Scottish Highlands.
“Spathfoy, I do beg your pardon. The lad will fret, and then the wife will fret, and then a man needs a tot lest he fret as well.”
Ian’s guest shot him a curious look. “You take quite an interest in what transpires in your nursery, Balfour.”
“A wise man usually does.” Ian topped off Spathfoy’s drink, poured one for himself, and faced Spathfoy. “Hester tells me your brother’s will did indeed state that Fiona is to be in the care of her paternal family, but Gordie specified that you, and not Quinworth, were to be her guardian. I asked you to come here so we might settle the business like gentlemen—unless you’d rather take it up in the courts?”
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