A Gentleman’s Position(13)

“Never?”

“The last I saw of my mother was when Wellsbury—he was the butler, a very grand, stately man—when Wellsbury dragged her off with an arm round her neck, she struggling, my father’s blood on her hands. She screamed, ‘I hate you.’ I did not know, have never known, if she was addressing me.”

“My lord.” David bowed his head so Lord Richard need not hide the sheen in his eyes and held on tight. There was a silence that lasted too long.

“And I mention it now,” Lord Richard said at last, “because she has asked to see me.”

David looked up, startled. “See you? I thought—”

“That she was dead?”

He could have sworn it. The dowager marchioness had already been ancient history when he’d entered Lord Richard’s service.

“She might as well have been.” Lord Richard’s voice rasped. “It was never to be mentioned—her disgrace, the shame…her existence. I was only ten. Philip was seventeen and making his appearance in society since he did not choose to attend Oxford, and when I did see him, he did not want to speak of it. So I…forgot, because I was obliged to forget, until I was grown. I didn’t even think it was strange that she wasn’t at Philip’s wedding. It did not cross my mind.”

“No.”

“And then Father died, and Dominic left me, and I wrote to her. She did not reply. I wrote again. I asked if I might visit her. Nothing.” He grimaced. “I have written to her three times a year for fifteen years and not once received a reply. I don’t know why I kept writing. Duty, I suppose. And now…” There was a husk in his voice that could have driven David to his knees then and there. “She wrote to say she is dying. She said, ‘I wonder if either of Lord Cirencester’s sons would care to bid me farewell.’ And she sent the letter to Philip.” His voice broke on that. “Philip hated her. He has never written to her, not once, but she wrote to him, not me, and— Dear God, how can this still matter? I have not seen her since I was ten, but it feels just as it always did.”

His hands were so tight on David’s that his knuckles felt crushed. He tightened his own grip as best he could. “Oh, my lord.”

“She called us the heir and the reserve. It’s what we were, of course, but it seemed to be all we were. ‘Oh, here is your heir, my lord, and your reserve son with him.’ It seems that has not changed.”

David bit back what he would have liked to say about the dowager marchioness of Cirencester. “What will you do? Will you go?”

“Philip won’t. He won’t forgive her. He doesn’t want me to.”

“You don’t have to forgive, my lord. You don’t have to go, and if you go, you are not obliged to forgive, and if you forgive, you are not obliged to forget.”

Lord Richard swallowed hard. “That is— Yes. Thank you.” He leaned forward then, resting his head against David’s, forehead to forehead, hands joined, and David wondered why people spoke of hearts breaking. His did not break. It crumpled, as if squeezed in a giant’s fist till the blood ran.

I’m here. I will always be here.

Another moment’s silence, and then Lord Richard said, “We shall leave as soon as possible.” His voice was quite calm, quite level. An instruction to a servant whose hands he gripped as if they were a lifeline.

“Yes, my lord. I shall pack directly.”

—

It was a long journey to Yorkshire, and not a comfortable one. The coach had to be as light as possible for speed, so Richard had brought only his groom, Doone, to drive, and Cyprian. Of course he had Cyprian. He could hardly travel without his valet.

Cyprian’s hair was red. The powdering was a time-consuming business and would have been an unnecessary concern on a long journey. Richard had instructed him not to trouble with it. He’d said it didn’t matter.

It is not so, nor it was not so.

He couldn’t seem to forget that damned story. The aggressively red hair, the deep brown eyes, the sharp-toothed grin: Cyprian was Mr. Fox in person, padding silently around the room of the inn where they rested for the night. Richard wanted to push his hands into that hair, to feel those teeth biting into his lips, his neck.

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

This was their fourth night on the road, the last before they arrived at Ingleby Arncliffe and Arncliffe House. Days in the coach together, talking casually or in comfortable silence—if Richard didn’t look, that was. If he didn’t look at that damned red hair against pale skin and set himself imagining, because that was not comfortable at all.