by Millie Adams
‘You’re addled,’ said another boy, and gave William a shove, and Briggs mobilised.
‘You better find your governess,’ he said, moving forward, and the boy looked up, his eyes going wide, and Briggs knew enough to know that the boy must have a father in the peerage, because he clearly identified Briggs as a man of great authority, his entire face going pale.
‘I... I...’
‘Is your governess about? Because she should seek to teach you manners, as you clearly have none.’
A woman came fluttering across the field. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said.
‘You will do well to tell this boy’s father when you give an account for his day, that he insulted the son of the Duke of Brigham. I will not allow for such a thing.’
‘Sorry, Your Grace,’ she said, ‘so terribly sorry.’
He bent down and picked up the box, and all the cards, dumping them back in rather carelessly. And then he thrust them into William’s hands. ‘Take these.’
William was silent, his countenance dimmed.
They went back to the blanket where Beatrice was standing, looking outraged.
She knelt down. ‘William,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘He will be fine,’ Briggs said. ‘But you must...’
But then William shattered. He burst into tears, leaning against Beatrice as he wept.
‘William,’ she said, bringing him down to the blanket and holding him to her chest. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’
‘Don’t cry,’ Briggs said, his breath coming in shallow, angry bursts.
If the other children were to see William weeping, it would only make things more difficult for him later. He could not be remembered as that boy. And this was the exact thing he had feared. That he would find censure among other children, and it would be impossible for him to be known as anything else. And he might not be so lucky as to find a friend like Hugh who would come alongside him, who would be patient with him when he had outbursts. Who would...
‘If you do not wish for other children to pour scorn on you, then you must learn to speak only of things that they care about. You must listen to them, not speak endlessly about things that they do not care about.’
‘Briggs,’ she said. ‘He’s a boy, and he loves those cards. The other boys, they were the ones at fault.’
Beatrice was angry at him. This she could not understand.
This part of him.
And what he knew.
Because of course she could not. No one could understand him quite so deeply.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Briggs said. ‘It does not matter if they were at fault, and they were. They have the manners of jackals, and their fathers should beat them. But it does not change the fact that William’s tears will only make the children think less of him. It does not change the fact that... The children will do what they do. And if you are different in any way, they will exploit that difference. They will make you miserable. They will make you wish you had not been born. And so you must learn to conceal it.
‘We will finish our picnic,’ Briggs said.
William was still weeping piteously against Beatrice. ‘William,’ he said sharply. ‘We will finish our picnic.’
He had successfully startled his son into stopping his tears.
‘You cannot let them see that they have made you hurt.’
‘But it hurts,’ William said.
‘It does not matter. They do not deserve your tears. Remember that. Nor do they deserve to hear about your cards.’
They ate, but he took no pleasure in the taste of the food. Instead, he was consumed by his outrage, and the memories that it began to stir up inside him.
* * *
By the time the afternoon had worn on, everyone had left some of the incident behind. And he found some space to breathe around it.
But by the time they got back to the town house, he felt restless. And when William went to the nursery, he dragged Beatrice to her bedchamber, and unleashed more of the same on her from the night before. He took his pleasure, and she took hers, and when they were through, she laid her head on his lap, and spoke softly. ‘Surely you cannot mean to have William never mention the things that he loves to the other children. You made it sound as if it was something he should be ashamed of.’
‘It is not that he should be ashamed,’ Briggs said. ‘I am not ashamed of him. I’m not. But it does not matter if I am the proudest father in all the world, children will only see difference. And they will... Attack it like savages. It is who they are. It is what they do. They cannot help it, I suspect. It is innate. To make for the vulnerable, to make them wish they had not been born.’
He could remember being shoved to the ground by an older boy in the village when he’d been a lad. The boy’s mother had been horrified because of who Briggs was, not because of the violence itself.
But the other boy had not cared who he was.
Imbecile.
He’d spat the word at Briggs.
All because he had asked Briggs about the weather and Briggs had explained the ideal climate for orchids. On and on he’d talked until the other boy’s fist had hit his face.
It had connected in his head, the weather and the flowers. He understood now why it had not to the other boy. But not then. Then he had not understood at all.
‘Briggs...’
‘No, Beatrice, you must trust me. I know of what I speak.’
‘I’m sure that you do. You were right about the carriage ride, Briggs. You were. It was very hard for him. But look at how he has bloomed here in many ways. Exploring the city delights him, he adores the town house, his tantrums have slowed, the new environment is actually quite engaging for him, and it is clear he takes deep joy in it. So yes, you could’ve protected him from the carriage ride, but you would have also stopped him from experiencing all of this. And what a terrible tragedy it would’ve been. And think... If you would continue to protect me in all the ways my brother wished you to... We would’ve been protecting me from something that made me very happy.’
He shifted, his stomach going sour. ‘I do not know that I do you any favours.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You do. I feel... Connected. To my body. To you. I do not know if I can explain. I spent my childhood very much as an observer. I felt as if I was not part of my family. I was always at home. While Hugh was away at school, I was at home. While he was away in London for the Season, I was at home. I was like a ghost in that house. My parents often acted as if I weren’t there. Unless I was having some sort of episode.
‘Sometimes my mother went away for the Season. My father would bring mistresses into the house, under the guise of...them being governesses for me. He did not speak to me. He did not... He acted as if I wouldn’t tell. My mother wept outside my room often. Sometimes for me. Sometimes for herself. And I always felt as if I was pressing at a glass box, outside of all of it, controlled by everyone around me, and yet somehow completely distant from them. Closed off.
‘Sometimes I would be left at home with only a governess, while they went to London for the Season, and the doctor said that my lungs would not be able to handle the city. And I learned to go places in my mind. I learned to dream. To read to find something happier than what I had in reality. But... Briggs, you must know that is such a miserable thing.
‘And with you, I feel everything. When we are not separate. We are not distant. It is a revelation. It makes me feel like myself. In a good way. Not in the way I said the other morning. That I did not wish to be Beatrice. You make me feel as if Beatrice is a good thing to be. And I am always astonished by that. And I should take this feeling over protection always. Again and again.’ She sighed heavily. ‘You are a man who enjoys pain, and if you enjoy giving it you know someone else must enjoy receiving it. It is a balance. It is...life. How do you not see that sometimes to r
each beautiful things, you must endure pain?’
‘Because these are games, Beatrice. Games played in the bedroom, and they are not true to life.’
Her eyes were soft and filled with pity. ‘They are not just games. Not to me. There’s something so much more.’
‘Beatrice,’ he said. ‘I have learned how to... Be the man that I must be. I have learned that I cannot simply... That I cannot simply follow every whim inside myself. There are places where I can be all that I feel.’
‘Brothels,’ she said.
‘In the past that has been true. With women I have a transaction with, there is a certain expectation. I can meet them. And they meet mine. But I do not wonder about behaving this way to all and sundry.’
‘Quite apart from anything else it would be very shocking,’ she said.
‘Yes. You cannot control the way others will treat you. But you do not need to needlessly expose yourself.’
‘I do not wish to see William crushed.’
‘I do not wish to see William crushed at all,’ Briggs said. ‘I would see him protected. From anything and everything. The best way to do that is to teach him how to... How to look like everybody else.’
He knew the pain of standing out. That boy...he had rallied other children to come after him whenever he ventured outside Maynard Park.
Eventually he had stopped leaving.
Eventually he had decided he preferred being alone.
It was Hugh who had taught him how to behave.
‘Don’t talk about flowers all the time, Briggs.’
‘I don’t. All the time.’
‘No, but too often. And facts about soil and sun and things other boys don’t care about.’
‘I do not know what else to speak of.’
Hugh had looked confounded for a moment. ‘Do you like the look of a woman’s breasts?’
Shock and shame had poured over him in equal measure, as he was still coming to grips with the shapes his fantasies were beginning to take. But that at least was an easy answer to give. ‘Yes.’
‘That is something all those lot are interested in. If you can’t think of something else to say, extol the virtues of a woman’s figure.’
Be shocking. Be charming. He had learned how to do that. He had learned to be a rake.
And it had served him well.
‘All I ever wanted was to be like all the rest. To be a girl like every other. To have the same expectations for my life. But it was not the path for me. If I were not born with my illness, then perhaps I would not... Perhaps the things that you and I do together would not be something I desired. But I cannot untangle those hardships with which I was born from who I am with you. From who I am all the time. So how can I say that I wish it were not so? How can I say that I wish I were not Beatrice? For if one thing in my life was changed, then I might not be the woman I am here and now. And while I might wish away my every hardship, while I might wish that you would allow me to fully be a wife to you... I cannot take away the risk, the concern, the terrible things that I have endured, and keep these precious things that we have found.’
He leaned his head back against the headboard, his thoughts a tangle. ‘But perhaps if everything wrong in my past was undone, we would not need these things.’
‘Perhaps. But they are not wrong,’ she said. ‘If we are both happy enough, they cannot be.’
‘The only way to avoid my father’s disdain was to be something completely different than what I was,’ he said. ‘My father despised me. And when I thought I had finally found the person who might care for me as I was, she also...found far more to despise than care for.’
He had not meant to carry on this path. Had not meant to continue on with this conversation. It was fruitless, after all. There was no point visiting any of these wounds in his past. He had bested his father by the simple virtue that he accepted William for who he was.
Something gouged his stomach.
Do you?
He did. What he had said to William was about keeping him safe. It had nothing to do with the way he thought the boy ought to behave. He loved the way that William thought. He was interested in the things that his son was, it was only that the rest of the world would never be. And it was not the same as what his father had done with him.
Serena had solidified these truths.
His father had been the one to teach them.
‘I was not what he hoped for,’ he said.
‘Why?’ She looked up at him, her gaze filled with genuine curiosity. ‘You said before your father was ashamed of you. You seem everything a man could want his heir to be. You are handsome, and clever, and there is not a single person who does not enjoy rousing conversation with you. Why should your father not be proud of you?’
‘I’m not the same as I was,’ Briggs said. ‘I learned. I learned to be the heir to the title. I learned to become the Duke of Brigham. Obsessions and specific curiosities, inflexibility, none of it allows you to connect with those around you. I had to learn. The other children in the village, they hurt me, Beatrice. They sought to punish me for my differences with words and fists. The boys at school did the same until Hugh taught me.’
‘And so William must learn,’ she said softly.
‘It is not something you should concern yourself with.’
‘Briggs... Tell me. Tell me about your father. Tell me about you.’
‘There is nothing but the man before you,’ he said, and when he said it, he almost believed it. Almost believed that he had successfully become something other than he had been.
‘I am all that I must be. And that is all anyone ever need know.’
He got out of bed, and she reached for him.
‘I cannot stay with you,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘You already know the answer.’
Perhaps she did know. Perhaps she didn’t. It was not essential.
She could not become essential. And this could not become bigger than his responsibilities.
Bigger than what he’d made himself.
He had to remember. Even if Beatrice accepted him in her bed, it did not erase the way he had failed in the past.
He had become Briggs because Philip had been wrong.
And he stood there in the hall, by himself, imagining what it would be like for William when he was the Duke, and Briggs was gone. The idea, the image, made him feel hollow inside.
So he put it away, and he carried on. He knew what example he must set. He knew what he must be. In the meantime, he would take care of William and Beatrice.
Nothing else mattered.
Chapter Fifteen
For days Beatrice had been beset by what had happened at the park. By how badly Briggs had hurt William, even if unintentionally. She knew it had been unintentional. But William had been... Different since it happened. Quieter.
She wanted him to chatter again.
She had a feeling if it had only been those boys that had said those things to him, he would not have been cowed at all, but his own father had told him not to speak of those things, and that was what had silenced him.
She understood why Briggs had done it. She understood it was not out of any desire to hurt him or alter him in any way. ‘William,’ she said. ‘Would you like to take a walk today?’
‘No,’ he said.
It made her chest hurt.
‘What would you like to do?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Come, let’s go to the garden,’ she said.
She found herself the focus of his irritation, but she did manage to cajole him outside to the garden, where he at the very least seemed contented by the presence of the statues. She had not spent much time outside since coming to London, other than when they had gone touring. She hadn’t been out in the garden in full daylight, she realise
d. And for the first time she noticed that there was a large glass building out in the corner.
‘What is that?’ she asked William.
‘Oh,’ William said, looking where she was gesturing. ‘I don’t know.’
It occurred to her then that the boy had never been here before. So asking him that question was silly at best.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I forgot that you have not been here before either.’
‘It looks rather like the one at Maynard Park,’ William said. ‘It is a greenhouse. It is where the flowers are kept.’
‘Flowers?’
‘Yes. Orchids.’
She did not realise there was a greenhouse at Maynard Park. Briggs hadn’t mentioned. Then she had not had a chance to explore the grounds thoroughly.
‘Let’s go look,’ she said.
William was uninterested. But she considered it a mark of progress that she was able to extract him from the statues, and convince him to come with her. They went down the path and peered through the glass windows.
It was filled with flowers. Beautiful flowers.
She cracked open the door and walked inside, and looked around the room.
She did not know the name for all of these blooms. They were exotic and rare, brightly coloured.
‘I’m not supposed to be in here,’ William said.
‘Why?’
‘It is a rule.’
‘How do you know you’re not supposed to be in here if you’ve never been to the town house before?’
‘It is the rule about the greenhouse in Maynard Park.’
‘It seems a silly rule. I am with you, so you cannot get hurt.’
She grabbed his hand, just to be certain. And they began to stroll through the rows of exotic plants.
She saw movement outside the glass door, and then it opened, and in came Briggs, looking... Well, he looked furious.
‘What is the meaning of this?’
‘We were looking at the flowers,’ she said.
‘William is not allowed in the greenhouse.’
‘So he said, but he’s with me and...’