by Olivia Kelly
The prig.
Whether he was the duke's man or the king's, he had better mind his manners. Lily was right about one thing; being American, Harry couldn't care less about stepping on toes. He stepped forward, partially blocking her, narrowing his eyes at the smaller man and folding his arms across his chest.
"I cannot see. Move, Harry, you're being rude!" She poked him in the back with her finger, not very gently, but Harry refused to budge. He would not leave her open to ridicule by this arrogant little man in his grandfather's employ.
The prig cleared his throat, taken aback as Harry towered over him. "I am Mr. Lionel Dryer, one of the Duke of Danby’s solicitors, and I have come to fetch the duke’s grandson."
The man’s words brought back Harry's dread in a rush, stiffening his muscles until they felt locked in iron. How could they know? He had travelled halfway around the world to confront his grandfather, but now that the moment was upon him, Harry only wanted to drag Lily back inside and blot the door behind them.
Despite his best efforts to shield her from the duke’s officious lackey, Lily popped her head out from behind him. Harry attempted to shift to the side, but she jammed an elbow in his ribs and his partially healed wound flared white hot. Sucking in a breath, Harry moved quickly to allow her to step forward again.
Lily sent him a swift apology with her eyes but quickly turned back to the prig, a puzzled frown on her face. "I hesitate to inform you, but you have wasted a trip. He is not here, sir. ‘Tis only myself, my father and Mr. Connelly at the vicarage this evening. Perhaps you were given misinformation?"
Harry closed his eyes, knowing what was coming even before the prig opened his mouth, as the pompous man smiled slyly at him.
"Why, then it is not a wasted trip after all. For Mr. Harrison Connelly is the duke’s eldest grandson. Isn’t that right, Mr. Connelly?"
~ 7 ~
Harry stood in his grandfather's study, in the house his mother grew up in, and had never felt more lost in his life.
Nothing had gone as he had planned. It was only days before Christmas, he should have been here and gone again. Off to the Orient, or Turkey, or perhaps Jamaica. When Harry had stepped off the ship in Plymouth, he had thought the world would be his.
But now the only thing he wanted was out of his reach.
One solution was to just get in a carriage, find another ship and leave the whole blasted country, but that wouldn't heal the ache in his heart. The memory of her would follow him to the outer reaches of the earth. Harry wasn't quite sure just when he had fallen in love with Lily Beaumont, but there was no escaping it, no denying it.
He was beginning to wish he had never come to England.
Had he never received the letter from the duke, had never thought to extract his rightful inheritance from the man, he would still be sitting in his little cabin in the woods, listening to the patter of rain on the roof, eating venison stew... and he would still be empty. Damaged. With her soft hands and soft heart, Lily had healed him. Not just the wound in his side, but much more. She had filled up the places torn and bruised by war and loss and sorrow, and made him whole again.
She wouldn’t speak to him.
The night before, he had tried to tell her his side of the story, but Lily had just frozen him with an disdainful look and said she understood perfectly. Then she turned around and left him standing there in the front hall, with his grandfather’s men. She had not reappeared while he packed his meager belongings, nor when he knocked on her father’s door and explained he why he was leaving. He would not have gone if she wanted him to stay, but her absence spoke clearly. Clinging to the last of his hope, Harry had lingered in the hall, staring at the door to her silent room, willing her to come out, but she did not. And so he left.
How could he make things right when she wouldn’t see him?
The betrayed look on Lily's face, as she shook her head and backed away from him, ran through his mind over and over. He had reached out to halt her escape, but when she flinched he had dropped his arm and let her walk away. At the time Harry had thought it the right thing to do, to let her go. But perhaps he should have followed her up the stairs and made her listen to him.
Because he was starting to think that maybe she was the one good, the one pure and untouched and innocent, thing in his life. Harry's chest ached at thought that he might have lost her for good, and he rubbed the heel of one hand over his heart.
The door to the study suddenly swung open, sending a jolt through him. He had almost forgotten why he was there.
"Are you going to stand there all day, boy?" muttered the old man who strode into the room and sat behind the large, ornate desk. The estate steward, whom Harry had met just that morning after breakfast, followed the older man into the room and silently set a stack of ledgers on the desk. At the duke's short nod, he turned to leave, only pausing to tip his head at Harry in acknowledgment, his eyes sympathetic. The door swung shut softly behind him. Harry just stood and looked at his grandfather.
The old man was still strong. His body was unbent by many years of life, his head held high and proud. Shrewd eyes narrowed slightly, he said nothing.
"Do you know who I am?" Harry's palms were damp, and he stepped forward awkwardly at the duke’s short nod, gripping the back of the chair in front of the desk. Never, in all the scenarios he had imagined over the years, had he ever thought he would be nervous when the moment of confrontation came. He waited a beat, but still the duke held his silence.
The rage that swelled within him carried an old, familiar bitterness.
"Why did you not send for her? You know she would have come. She died knowing you never forgave her." The wood of the chair creaked beneath his clenched hands. Harry had carried this with him for so long, pushed it so deep inside. It was a struggle to find the words. "She didn’t have to die, they didn't have to die, if you had swallowed your pride and let them come home."
The old man sat unflinching as Harry spat out his accusations, but the carefully folded hands on his desk told a different story. The only sign of emotion the duke would allow to show was the whiteness of his knuckles, and the tendons that stood out in relief on the backs of his hands.
"My mother, my father, and my sister, would still be alive if you hadn’t been so stubborn, so full of your own consequence. Their deaths are on your head," Harry snarled, but the duke’s halting words stopped him.
"Do you think I don’t know that? I tried, Harrison, I tried for years to find her—to find you all."
"Conveniently you say that now."
"I had left it too late." The duke leaned forward, his body tight with tension, his eyes intent on Harry. "I didn’t allow myself to recognize the magnitude of pain wrought by my mistake until years after, when your cousin Nicholas was born. I stood looking down at him and despaired that I never knew what had become of my darling Heloise. If she had become a mother, had the family she had always longed for."
The rawness in the older man voice was unmistakable, but Harry's certainty of the duke's villainy had filled him for so long that it shook him to the core to see the pain his grandfather wore.
"Your mother was always my favorite." The duke rose, agitated, and came around the desk. "When I look back, I find it hard to believe she did not know, considered how I had spoiled her." He stopped a short distance from Harry, his lined face tight with suppressed emotion.
"I never denied her anything, and so perhaps this truly is entirely my fault." The duke’s expression was pained, filled with regret and self-recrimination. "She couldn’t accept that I had arranged an agreement with the Duke of Glastonbury, who was so much older than she. We fought over it bitterly."
"I never knew there had been anyone other than my father."
His grandfather's small smile was wry.
"For her, there never was." He sighed and ran a gnarled hand over his face, looking much older than when he had entered the room. "I should have seen the marriage would be a disaster, but she ran off with
your father before I could consider other options. At the time, I was blind with rage, thinking she had done it because she was spoiled and spiteful. But I was wrong."
Harry stared at the man before him, the man he had hated his whole life, whom he blamed for the loss of his family. His grandfather lowered himself back into his chair, hands shaking, and met his eyes with his own pain-filled ones. "I was wrong."
Harry had blamed the old man while he had buried his father. While his muscles burned and ached as he learned to conquer the forests of Illinois, and fend for himself. He had blamed him as he grew into a man, during the long, lonely nights as he slept under whatever shelter he could find, during the rough early days before he earned enough to build the cabin. He had blamed him while sitting in a rainy ditch, covered in filth and other men’s blood, wondering if the next charge over the hill would be his last.
But he could not reconcile the old man before him with the weary eyes and unsteady hands to the uncaring, cold monster he had always imagined.
Harry took a step back, scrambling to rearrange everything he thought he knew. "My parents loved each other. My father never got past her death. Her name was the last word on his lips."
Now the duke flinched, and passed a quivering hand over his mouth. He seemed to fold in on himself, growing older by the moment and his voice was just a broken whisper.
"How did she die?"
"When I was a babe, she caught smallpox from a neighbor. She had visited with the intention of helping nurse them back to health." Though he had not even been a year old, Harry felt a twinge at the telling. How different things might have been if his mother had lived.
"She was never what you would call hearty, according to my father, who regretted letting her persuade him that she should be allowed to assist the sick." Harry walked back to the desk, and dropped into one of the chairs, a feeling of exhaustion overcoming him. So much had changed in just a few weeks. He rubbed a hand over his forehead, and continued. "Most of the settlement was struck down, although many were able to recover. Mother did not, and neither did my sister."
"I am sorry for your loss," the duke murmured, his eyes dark. "A babe should know his mother."
Swallowing, Harry acknowledged his sympathy with a short nod. "By the time Father realized there was no hope for either of them, I was already gone from our home. He had me packed off to a friend up at Fort Knox as soon as Mother fell ill, knowing he could not care for us all."
"I don’t know what to say to you, Harrison. Your life was not what it should have been. If it weren’t for my actions, you would have grown up here, in the lap of luxury and privilege. Perhaps your family would still be alive," the duke said, looking at Harry, purpose filling his gaze, and he leaned forward. "But you have other family. Cousins, aunts, uncles; they are all coming to stay for the holiday. A few members of the family are already in residence. I ask you to remain, at least through to the new year. I ask for the opportunity to get to know Heloise’s son."
"I... don't know."
"I understand if you cannot forgive me, but please take some time to think on it. It would mean a great deal to us all if you would stay."
Harry looked at him for a long moment, then away, his emotions crashing and swirling within him. He studied the drapes blindly, his mind spinning as he tried to sort what he still needed to know. His grandfather sat, shoulders tense, waiting for his answer.
Harry looked the old man straight in the eyes, willing him to tell the truth. "Is that why you requested my presence for Christmas? Because you regretted your actions, you wanted to make amends? Why did you wait so long?"
"I couldn’t find you before now. I swear it, Harrison," the duke insisted, at the downward twist of Harry’s mouth and cynically raised eyebrow. "Do you have any idea how many Connollys live in America?"
Harry felt a pinch of surprise and he offered the duke a half smile. "It had never occurred to me, to be honest."
"I was only able to find you due to the cousin of one of my barristers. My men have been on the lookout for any and all Connollys in America, which is quite a job, and apparently you made an impression on my barrister’s cousin." The duke's tone was dryly amused, a flash of the man he must be when he was on surer footing peeking out. "Something about threatening to find him and take him apart with your bare hands if he so much as lifted an amputating saw in your presence?"
Harry snorted at the hazy memory that surfaced. The army surgeon’s face had been shocked as he hastily stepped away from Harry where he lay injured and bleeding in the medical tent after the massacre at Prophetstown.
As Harry's eyes connected with the duke’s, for a brief moment there was a glint of amusement and admiration in the older man’s gaze. Given enough time, he might come to like the old codger. The idea shocked him to his toes, and yet...
He thought of his mother and his father. What they would want for him in this moment. And the lovely, warm Lily.
What would she say if she had been witness to the conversation?
His angel would undoubtedly tell him to forgive an old man for his mistakes, that his grandfather was human. He had lashed out at Harry’s mother the same as anyone who felt betrayed and hurt would. And though it was still a struggle to admit it, even to himself, she would be right. It was obvious the duke regretted what his actions had wrought, and had suffered terribly for his pride. His mistakes had been made thirty years before. More than a lifetime ago.
Harry was so tired of being angry all the time, of never moving forward, of allowing the bitterness to hold him back. It was time to let it go.
Time to let it all go.
Harry stood abruptly, his grandfather struggling to his feet at his movement. The older man watched him with guarded eyes, but Harry offered him a small, crooked smile.
"As it turns out, I happen to have some free time on my hands." His grandfather's eyes lit up at Harry's casual comment, and the tiniest sliver of warmth crept into his chest. "I'd like to stay, and to know my family."
~ 8 ~
Lily stepped into the house and shut the front door behind her, blocking out the icy wind. As she unwound her scarf and stomped the snow off her boots, voices came from the other room. She stiffened; her first thought of Harry. But the voice that replied was high and musical, and without a doubt, female. Silently, she berated herself for the moment of wild hope that had flared at the thought of Harry returning. Of course he wouldn’t. He was the grandson of a duke. What did he need with the spinster daughter of the local vicar, except perhaps a little sport while he recuperated?
The rat.
She made her way down the hall to the drawing room and poked her head in. Blanching at the sight of the two very finely dressed young ladies seated on the sofa opposite her chuckling father, Lily made to withdraw as quietly as possible. Her plan was foiled however, when one of the women turned her head and caught her in the act.
Lady Isabel Whitton caught her eye and smiled smugly, as though knowing there was no way for Lily to escape or pretend she hadn’t seen them now. Lily ignored her childhood friend's raised eyebrow and laughing gaze, as she stepped forward into the drawing room, greeting her father and Isabel’s twin sister, Lady Emma. Or rather, Lady Heathfield, as the entire village knew she had been married just the day before. After her father excused himself at Lily's appearance and left the parlor, she sank into a slight curtsey in front of the new viscountess.
"My lady, may I offer congratulations on your marriage to Lord Heathfield? You must be very happy," she murmured.
When only silence met her comment, Lily raised her head warily. The twins stared at her with widened eyes, their lips parted in surprise. Although they were as different in appearance as a rose and a tulip, in that moment the sisters looked like an impossibly lovely set of bookends.
"It’s worse than I expected." Isabel's comment was thoughtful, as she exchanged a glance with her sister, then took a reflective sip of her tea.
"Truly. Well, at least we know now it’s mut
ual." Emma poured another cup of tea and sat back with a sigh. Lily looked from one sister to the other in bewilderment, settling on the couch opposite them. She was at a loss. Sometimes it seemed as if the twins had their own language.
"Lily, you are one of our dearest friends. Why did you think you needed to curtsey to me?" Emma asked, her voice gentle. Isabel cocked her head to the side when Lily looked to her helplessly, as if waiting for an explanation as well.
"Well, because, you… you are a married to Viscount Heathfield now. You are a lady of the realm, and I am but a commoner."
The pitying expressions on the younger women’s faces irritated her. Didn’t they see that this changed everything? She may hate it and wish it wasn't so, but this was the way society worked.
The twins exchanged another look, and Isabel leaned forward her eyes narrowed with impatience.
"That’s rubbish."
Lily's mouth dropped open. "It is not rubbish. It's the way things are."
"Pffft." Isabel's dismissal of hundreds of years of tradition was immediate. "You would never have thought this if it weren’t for my dolt of a cousin making a mess of things with you. The differences in our stations have never bothered you before, nor us. I don’t know what happened between you and Harry, but you have never considered either Em or myself as anything other than friends, and we will not allow you to start now." Isabel set down her tea cup and stood in preparation to leave.
Lily stood in bewilderment. "Are you leaving? I've only just come home."
"There is much to do back at the estate." Emma's comment reminded her that the duke's annual Christmas Eve ball was just the next evening. The thought of Harry dancing with some faceless aristocratic beauty brought a stab of pain that nearly stole her breath.