A Gentleman’s Position(18)

But he did want more. He wanted Lord Richard and could not have him, and for the first time since he’d entered service at ten years old, David felt himself ashamed. Ashamed of his standing, ashamed of taking orders he did not want, and aware of a bright flame of resentment beginning to flicker at the edges of his mind.

Lord Richard’s obligations took up the whole morning and much of the afternoon. A service, some awkward funeral meats, Lord Richard doubtless giving words of thanks to those who had been his mother’s friends or acquaintances over the last two decades, who probably knew all about her cruel treatment at the hands of the Vane family and her estrangement from her thankless sons.

When his lordship returned to Arncliffe House, past four, David took one look at his face and said, without so much as a greeting, “If we depart in the next half hour, there is a room kept for you at the inn at Thirsk.”

“I should—” Lord Richard began and then said, “Yes. Thank you.”

That meant a scramble for departure and a coach ride in the gathering twilight, but it was worth it to get Lord Richard away from this bloody place. There was no leisure at the inn either, where the innkeeper had taken a lackadaisical attitude to preparing a room and dinner for a guest who probably wouldn’t arrive. David clarified the innkeeper’s obligations for him in strong terms, and the work of making all acceptable for his lordship went some way toward filling up the gaping silence between them in the night.

He couldn’t avoid it the next day, sitting together with Lord Richard as the coach bowled south along the post road toward London.

David was good at silence. That was one of his greatest assets as a valet, since gentlemen wanted servants who were invisible and inaudible except when needed. He’d never felt less invisible than now. Lord Richard was staring out of the window, but David could feel his master’s awareness of him so that he was painfully conscious of every little shift or stretch, and crossing his ankles seemed like an act of aggression.

They had to talk about it, however dreadful that conversation might be. Anything would be better than this awful refusal to look at him. David thought that and said nothing, and endured a luncheon stop in more silence. They got back in the damned coach for another five hours’ jolting along the roads, and David couldn’t stand it any longer.

“My lord.”

Lord Richard had his head back, eyes shut. He seemed not to hear at first, then opened his eyes. “She left a letter. I think I told you that?” He held a hand up, as if to forestall a protest that David hoped his face hadn’t shown. “It was addressed to Philip and me. She said she owed us an explanation.”

“An explanation,” David repeated.

“She talked of her marriage. Called my father despotic, tyrannical. He beat her, you know.” He gave a tiny flinch, a twitch of shame. “He was a powerful man even in his seventies, and he had a temper. She said that the contempt was worse. That he belittled her when she spoke until she did not wish to speak at all. I remember the silence well. And she says her marital duties were…unwelcome attentions. It seems she had a number of miscarriages and two stillbirths between Philip’s birth and mine. I didn’t know that. The way she writes…” There was a muscle jumping in his neck. “My father was a stern man, a strict master, but he was my father, and I had to love him, because I was not allowed to love her—” He stopped, looking startled at his own words.

“Not allowed?” David repeated.

“That is nonsense. I meant— Naturally Father did not wish us to cling to her skirts, even if she had wished us to do so. He never forgave her for straying in the early days of their marriage, you see. He believed in duty, and I always had a sense that she was in disgrace. But my mother’s account—the revulsion— She hated being with child. She says, ‘He made me have children, but he could not make me love them. That I could refuse.’ ”

“My lord, throw it away,” David said. “Don’t read it again.”

“My father was a good man,” Lord Richard insisted, as though someone were arguing it. “He married to secure the line, and she made that bargain. He had a right to congress with his wife, a right to expect children, a right to rule his household. And yet…”

And yet, indeed. David had been brought up in a house full of women whose role was to be fucked, and he recalled quite enough of births and bleeding and cursing at the unwanted fruit of treacherous wombs to have an inkling of how the Marchioness of Cirencester must have felt about her lord’s rights and his rule.