Michael drained his brandy and went for more. “You’ll forgive me for speaking plainly, as this does concern your daughter, but I’d say after today, it may be many, many years before we have any offspring.” He looked toward the door. Would she let him in her bed at all? “I suspect I’ll be sleeping down the hall tonight.” He looked at Sherbourne and a bit of his helplessness must have shown.
He stood and came for another round, then paced to the fireplace and looked up at Mrs. Hopping. “Relative?”
“No. The original owner’s wife.”
“I thought it was a smudge, but I see it is not. Damned if she don’t have a moustache.” He turned and rested a boot against the fire screen, leaning an elbow on the mantel. “There’s a fine art to groveling, Blix. Get it wrong and you’ll not be down the hall, but outside with the hounds.” He nursed his brandy, appearing to be lost in thought. “I’ll tell you a story to demonstrate. When I’d been married less than a year, with Connie only just delivered of our first child, I made the grievous error of siding with my mother when she insisted Constance employ a wet nurse. My mother thought it common and low for a lady to nurse a child. Before it was said and done, Connie was cast as an ignorant Scottish peasant, less than common, even. I found it rather endearing that she wished to nurse our son, but I didn’t say so. I allowed my mother to interfere, and suddenly, somehow, it all got away from me, all because I didn’t stand up for Connie and tell my mother to mind her own business.”
Michael retook his seat and listened, wondering where this was going.
“She packed up and left me. Took the babe and went all the way to Scotland, she did, to her own mama. I was young and proud and stupid and determined she would be brought to heel, so I wrote and told her she should hie herself back home, or suffer the consequences.”
“What were the consequences?”
Sherbourne barked a laugh. “Hell if I had any idea. I thought certainly she’d shake in her boots and rush back to me. Instead, she sent me her wedding ring and told me to pawn it for coin and buy myself a brain.”
Michael couldn’t help a chuckle. “Did you go after her then?”
“Oh, no, I was righteous at that point, furious, of course, and determined to wait her out.” He swirled the brandy in his snifter. “I waited another six months in a cold bed, until I thought I’d expire of loneliness and missing her. I wrote every week and she sent the letters back, every blasted one. I had a son and I was missing everything, wouldn’t see him grow up. Then I ran into someone who’d done some business with her father and found out, through him, a relative stranger, that Constance was with child again. I’d had enough. I went to Scotland, well prepared to grovel. Or so I thought. I brought her an expensive gift of jewelry, said I was sorry, that I would never go against her in future, and surely now she would come home? She wouldn’t allow me to stay, made me go into the village, where there was no inn, and I lived two weeks with an old harridan of a woman and slept in her hayloft.”
By now, Michael was laughing right out. “A hayloft? You’re funning me!”
“No, no, I don’t exaggerate. She had a foul tempered goat whose head butts I tried and failed to dodge every night on my way to the loft ladder. He was quick and wily and I could scarcely sit for the bruises on my bum. Time passed and I went to see Constance every day, bearing gifts, begging her to return home with me. The gifts were not accepted and the answer was always no. I was exhausted, depressed and wondering how everything had become so dismal. She loved me, I knew she did, but she wouldn’t relent. Oddly enough, it was that nasty old woman who made me see the light. She wanted me out of her hayloft, in spite of the coin I gave her, and she told me one morn, if I’d just be sincere, and tell Constance how I felt, how I really, truly felt, she would forgive me. The old woman said too much unhappiness comes from pride, that it’s the downfall of every man, and the one who is able to swallow it turns out to be the one who always wins, who has most to be proud of. I went back to Connie’s father’s house, but this time without a gift, with nothing but humility. She was there, I recall, in the nursery, nursing James in a rocking chair, her belly round with my child, and I thought I’d fair die of loving her. I went down on my knees and told her so, swore she was my life, my heart.”
“And she forgave you?”
Sherbourne swallowed the last of his brandy. “She told me I was ruining a perfectly good pair of breeches. Always wasteful, she said to me. If I wasn’t careful, I’d go through all of our money and we’d be destitute and have to live in a cold garret, and she’d have to take in laundry. I stayed on my knees and said I would do half the laundry, if it came to that, but I wasn’t getting up until she forgave me.”