by Mary Balogh
“Am I?” Colin asked him. “Am I your boy?”
“Dear me,” Lord Ede murmured, and both eyebrows went up to give him a look of arrogance. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“And Wren?” Colin said. “Is she yours?”
Lord Ede took his time about withdrawing an elaborately enameled snuffbox from his pocket and flicking it open with his thumb. He examined the contents.
“Might I ask what has put such an extraordinary idea into your head?” he asked.
“Mother always called Wren’s birthmark a judgment on herself,” Colin said. “My father sent Wren away and made sure she was dead to the family. He sent me away to school when I was eleven and to Oxford after that. He did not do the same for Justin, yet Justin was the eldest son. I was always Mother’s favorite.”
Lord Ede closed the snuffbox without availing himself of its contents. He looked at Colin for a few moments with lazy eyes.
“Perhaps, my boy,” he said, “you should be having this discussion with your mother.”
“I am having it with you,” Colin said.
The half smile played about Lord Ede’s lips again. “A discussion has to be a two-way thing,” he said.
“You will not answer my questions, then?” Colin asked him. “But you will not deny that you are my father?”
“Ah,” Lord Ede said, “but I will not confirm it either. Your evidence is quite flimsy. Your father did not disown either you or Rowena. Perhaps he sent her away for her own good. If that was so, then he did well by her. Perhaps he sent you to school because you asked it of him and he wished to please his younger son. You were a beautiful, good-natured child, and the youngest, a natural to be a mother’s favorite. Your evidence is very flimsy indeed—my boy.”
“If you are our father,” Colin said, “then I believe it is time you did the honorable thing. You could not do so at the time because your wife was still alive and presenting you with children. And Mother’s husband was still alive.”
Lord Ede regarded him with almost open amusement. “You believe,” he said softly. “Go on believing, my boy. It is your cheerfulness and optimism and the added streak of honor and stubbornness that have always endeared you to your mother. And to me—as her particular friend.”
Colin nodded slowly. He was obviously not going to get any further with this man, who had always hovered in the background of his life, it seemed to him. Perhaps his father. And perhaps not.
He would probably never know for certain.
He would not ask his mother.
Perhaps it did not matter. Perhaps the mere asking of his questions would clear the burden from his mind at long last.
Perhaps it simply did not matter.
“Good day to you, sir,” he said, inclining his head curtly and making for the door. Lord Ede stood aside to let him pass.
“Do give my regards to Lady Hodges,” he said. “I believe you have done well for yourself, my boy. Despite the discrepancy in your ages, I believe she is the very one for you. Well done.”
Colin paused a moment but did not either look at Lord Ede or respond. He continued on his way out of the room and out of the house.
Twenty-three
Elizabeth spent an hour with Araminta and then called briefly at South Audley Street to see her mother and Wren, who were in the nursery with Nathan. When she arrived back at the hotel, she found Colin already there and walked readily into his arms when he stood to greet her.
“This feels like coming home,” she said with a laugh when she stood back from his kiss to remove her bonnet and set it aside with her gloves and reticule.
“It does now,” he agreed, smiling at her. “You had a good visit with Miss Scott? She seems like a pleasant lady.”
“She is and I did,” she told him. “Did you thank your mother for coming to our wedding yesterday and tell her how much it meant to you? And to me? Did you ask if she really plans to come to Roxingley?”
“I did not call on her, Elizabeth,” he said. “I never did intend to. I am sorry. I called on Lord Ede.”
“Oh?” She looked at him in some surprise.
“I needed to ask him a question,” he said. He examined the backs of his hands for a moment and then curled his fingers into his palms before tapping them a few times against his thighs.
“I had better complete what I began to tell you last evening,” he said. “When my father was in the library with the vicar on the day of Justin’s funeral and showed him the miniature from his desk drawer, he spoke three words that have haunted me for eleven years, though I have sometimes pushed them deep enough to be almost forgotten. My only son. That is what he said. He sounded as if he was weeping.”
Colin had been fifteen at the time. He had been brought home from school because his brother had taken his own life. He had been sitting on the window seat, where he had sat often as a child, drawing comfort from the presence of his father. The curtain had been half drawn so that he was hidden from the eyes of his father and the vicar as they came into the library. And his father, grief-stricken, had not chosen his words with care.
“You were young, Colin,” she said, setting a hand on his arm. The knuckles of his clenched hands were white, she could see. “You were still a schoolboy. It must have seemed to your father at that moment as though the only son of his who was adult and ready to take over from him as his heir was gone at a moment’s notice. He doubtless did not mean the words literally.”
“It is what I have told myself more times than I can count,” he said. “And of course the vicar reminded him that he had another son, who was a good lad and would make a worthy heir.”
“What did your father say?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “He said yes. That was all.”
Why had Colin been to see Lord Ede? She was not sure she wanted to know.
“My father arranged to have Wren taken away,” he continued. “He sent for our aunt. She did not come by chance. I learned that only very recently. And he so willingly agreed to send me away to school that it seemed almost as though he had intended it all along. I was so happy that that latter possibility never occurred to me. Whenever I used to write to ask if I might spend holidays with friends, terrified that he would withhold his consent, he always said yes. He secured a place for me at Oxford before I even asked. I thought he did it all because he loved me.”
“Oh, Colin.” She leaned a little toward him. “Are you sure that was not the reason?” He might also have done it to rescue his younger son from the clutches of his mother.
“No,” he said. “I am not sure. But he might have done it because he hated me. And Wren. Or at least because he wanted us out of his sight. I am not sure he was capable of hate. Just as I am not sure he was capable of love.”
“Then you must think the best of him,” she said. “You must not torture yourself with suspicions that cannot be proved.” It was obvious what his suspicions were. It was equally obvious that his mother could not be trusted to tell him the truth.
He turned his head to look at her at last. His eyes were very blue—and very troubled. “My mother often said that Wren’s strawberry birthmark was a judgment on her,” he said. “On my mother, that is. A judgment for what? And I was always her favorite.”
“You were the youngest,” she said.
“And the prettiest?” he said with a fleeting smile. “I went to see Lord Ede this morning. I asked him if he is my father. And Wren’s.”
Her hand tightened about his arm.
“And?” she asked.
“He would not answer,” he said, shaking his head. “He would neither deny it nor confirm it. He merely looked at me in that inscrutable, half-smiling, half-mocking way of his and kept calling me his boy. Why did he come to our wedding, Elizabeth?”
“He is your mother’s friend,” she said.
“Friend,” he said so
ftly.
“Colin,” she said, “does it matter? I mean, does it really matter?” It was a foolish question. Of course it mattered very much to him to know who his father was. “You are who you are. You have grown up to be a man of principle and kindness. You have learned to stand alone yet have not cut yourself off from the dream of family and love. You have set yourself the task of building bridges and mending fences and whatever other analogy you care to cite. And with some success. Ruby and her family will be with us during the summer. So will Blanche and Nelson. And probably your mother. And all my family. All because of you. Start from today and discard what troubles you from the past.”
It was always easier said than done, of course.
He gazed at her. “I would rather start from yesterday,” he said.
“From our wedding?” She smiled at him. “Let us build a happy future, Colin. And let’s do it by living a happy present whenever we possibly can. We are together here in these rooms that feel so much like home because we made them home last night. What more could we ask of the present moment? You are the man I chose, and I believed you when you told me I was the woman you chose. I love you, you know. With all my heart.”
Why not be the first to say it? Why not make herself vulnerable by opening her heart to him? She trusted him. She had trusted him with her person, and her heart was part of her person. He would not hurt her.
He moved then to take her in his arms and settle her head on his shoulder. She heard him sigh.
“I can remember telling you at the first ball of the Season we both attended,” he said, “that the only time I had looked across the ballroom and found myself gazing transfixed upon a special someone, she was you. You laughed, believing I was joking. I laughed because I thought it too. Or, rather, I thought the truth inappropriate and therefore made light of it. And so I proceeded to look elsewhere for a bride, and you proceeded to make the way clear for Codaire to offer for you again. But I meant those words, Elizabeth. With all my heart I meant them even as I pretended to myself that I did not.”
“Oh, Colin,” she said, sighing against his neck. “And I knew it too when I saw you in the receiving line. But I refused to recognize it.”
“We almost allowed nine years to come between us,” he said. “When you look at me, Elizabeth, do you see a man nine years younger than yourself?”
She drew back her head and looked up into his face.
“No,” she said, raising a hand to cup his cheek. “I see Colin. The man I love.”
“And I see Elizabeth,” he said. “The woman I adore.”
“But not because I am on a pedestal,” she said.
“What pedestal?” He stared at her blankly until his eyes crinkled at the corners.
He kissed her then, and they clung together as though the world were spinning away from them and they had only each other as an anchor.
“I love you,” he murmured against her lips after a while. “May I also make love to you? Or is that absolutely not allowed during the daytime?”
“Somewhere else in the world it is night,” she told him.
“Ah,” he said. “A good point.”
And then he drew something of a shriek from her as one of his arms came beneath her knees as he stood up with her and carried her to the bedchamber they had used last night.
She was laughing by the time he had maneuvered the door open, stepped inside with her, and shut the door with one booted foot.
* * *
• • •
They remained in London for four more days before leaving for Roxingley. Colin looked forward to going with eagerness and trepidation. He had not really lived there since the age of eleven and had not been there at all since he was eighteen. There were no doubt all sorts of challenges awaiting them. There was no knowing what changes his mother had made to the house and park during those years the better to accommodate the parties she so often hosted. The letters of complaint he had received from the one neighbor did not reassure him—and that was just the man who had had the courage to write. There were perhaps a dozen more who would have liked to complain.
But he kept in mind Elizabeth’s admonishment to think of the present rather than being bogged down in the past. Their suite at Mivart’s Hotel really did feel like home in an absurd sort of way. But Roxingley was really home. It was where they would live for most of the rest of their lives. It was where they would bring up any children with whom they were blessed. They would put the imprint of their own personalities upon it, their own hard work and optimism and love and sense of family.
His mother might decide to live there too, of course, and that was a bit of a drag upon the spirits. But she could dominate their lives only if they allowed it. Not doing so was never as simply done as it sounded, not with his mother, but again it was a challenge he was prepared to take on—with Elizabeth by his side. If he did indeed have a dower house built at Roxingley, the problem would be at least partially solved. In the meantime, there were little-used apartments in both the east and west wings—at least, they had been little used in his time, and he could not imagine that that had changed. Elizabeth suggested they prepare a large and sumptuous suite of rooms in one of the wings for his mother’s exclusive use.
His wife, he knew, was quietly excited about the move. She would be mistress of her own home again after a number of years of living in her brother’s house in Kent with her mother. And, in Colin’s estimation, she had been made to manage her own home and family. That aura of peace and serenity and competence he had noticed about her from his first acquaintance with her had been shaken in the last while but never shattered. It had returned in the days since their marriage until it enveloped him too and made him more content than he had ever dreamed of being. He would never admit it to her, but he still did place her on some sort of pedestal in his mind.
His bright, wonderful angel.
But when he tried to verbalize his feelings for her, he only embarrassed himself horribly and was very thankful he had not spoken aloud.
There were certain busy little tasks to accomplish during those four days and letters to write and a whole host of people to visit. He closed down the rooms that had been his home for five years and spent a few hours with his man of business. Elizabeth wrote to his mother and Blanche to thank them for coming to the wedding and making the day more memorable for them. She assured them that she looked forward to seeing them at Roxingley after the Season came to an end and to witnessing the reunion of all the Handrich family—for Wren, being one of the most courageous women Colin knew, had agreed that she and Alexander would be there.
They called upon all the members of her family—to thank those who had come from afar to help celebrate their nuptials, to thank the others for all the love and support they had shown in the past few weeks. They had all agreed to come to Roxingley for a few weeks of the summer, but farewells still had to be said now.
They called at the house on Curzon Street the day before they planned to leave, but his mother was not at home. It was unusual for her to be out, especially very early in the afternoon, and it did occur to Colin that perhaps she had simply chosen not to see them. But he did not argue the point. They would call tomorrow on their way out of London. Blanche had replied to Elizabeth’s letter to inform her that she and Nelson would certainly be at Roxingley, since she had not seen Ruby or her husband for many years and would like to do so now—and to meet their children.
“She is thawing,” Elizabeth said as she showed him the letter—a brief, rather cold little note. “We will give her time, Colin. As much time as she needs. And we must work on Nelson too. A stranger, more silent man I have never met, but I suspect that he really cares for Blanche. We will give them both time. You will have your larger family yet. I predict it with the greatest confidence.”
“Oh, do you?” he asked, bending over the escritoire at which she sat to kiss the back of her neck.
She looked back at him with twinkling eyes, his favorite expression of hers. Or perhaps a cofavorite with several others.
“I do,” she said. “I have consulted my crystal ball.”
They could not leave town quietly on the appointed morning. For one thing, there was no point in arriving too early on Curzon Street. It had always taken his mother several hours to prepare herself to face the day, even back in the time when she was naturally youthful and lovely. And she had never been an early riser. For another thing, Wren had insisted that they take breakfast at the house on South Audley Street and several of the Westcotts had promised to call there to see them on their way.
“I suppose,” he said to Elizabeth, “we can expect a grand send-off.”
“It is a little absurd, is it not,” she said, “when it will be all of five days after our wedding? But one can expect no less of the Westcotts, you know. It would not surprise me if a few Radleys slipped in there too.”
“I do love your family,” he said, grinning. “Alexander’s neighbors will doubtless lodge an official complaint about the noise.”
“Not to mention several carriages plugging the street,” she added.
All proceeded much as they had predicted until, late on the morning of their departure, the roadway outside Alexander’s house was lined with carriages and the pavement before the door was clogged with people all talking at once and all insisting upon kissing Elizabeth and pumping Colin’s hand.
“And here comes someone else,” Jessica announced suddenly above the hubbub. “Oh . . . goodness.”
“Oh look, Mama,” Winifred cried. “Look, Papa. Look, Sarah. A fairy coach.”
The white carriage drawn by the four white horses proceeded slowly along the street and came to a halt in the middle of the road while the family fell more or less silent in order to look.
“It must be your mother, Colin,” his mother-in-law said unnecessarily.
Well, at least, Colin thought, drawing Elizabeth’s arm through his and stepping off the curb with her to approach the carriage, they would not now have to delay their journey further by stopping at the Curzon Street house.