Livia shrugged. “They’re nonsensical.”
“I know that. However, I allowed myself to resent you for them, rather than directing my hostility toward the source. And I am sorry for my mistake.”
It was an afternoon of wonders, to be sure. Livia felt tears prickling, and nodded silently.
“Where do you wish to go, Grandmama?” Gabriel asked. “To the sea, perhaps?”
“No. I—well, I should like to go home.”
Gabriel stared. “You are home.”
“You misunderstand me. I want to go home to the Hall.”
“The Hall,” he echoed, and Miss Cott pressed her hand to her mouth, looking all at once very pale.
His mind seemed to be going in too many directions at once. The wedding abruptly postponed, the dynamics among them shifting too rapidly to be grasped, and now this stunning thunderbolt of a request from Grandmama.
Take her home?
It would be an understatement to say that this wasn’t what he wanted—wasn’t what he had planned on.
It complicated everything.
Then a troubling idea occurred to him. He eyed Grandmama as she lay in her bed—better, yes, but still thin and weak and wan. She returned his gaze and said, with some of her usual sharpness:
“What is it?”
Well, this was awkward. “Your wanting to go to the Hall—it’s rather—it’s surprising, Grandmama, to say the least. And given your illness, and how severe it was, I just wonder—that is to say, I hope that—”
The old lady startled him by bursting into laughter.
“You think I want to go home to die, don’t you?”
He resisted the urge to shuffle his feet like a defensive ten-year-old. “Your announcement is, you must admit, unexpected.”
“I’ll grant you that. No, Gabriel, I don’t want to go home to die, and God willing it shall be many years before that event occurs. I want to go home to live.” She played with the emerald ring she wore, slowly turning it round and round her finger. “I’ve had a great deal of time to think these past days, you see. It’s been twenty years since I’ve been at the Hall. Did you know that I was born there?”
“What? No. I don’t understand.”
“How could you? You were too young when Henry—when your father died, and I never cared to explain things to you. Yes, Surmont Hall belongs to my line of the Penhallows. Richard—my husband, and your grandfather—was a third cousin of mine, a member of the cadet branch.” The old lady laughed again, but softly this time. “He didn’t care about the difference in our rank, but it certainly did bother my parents.” She was silent for a while, evidently lost in her own memories. She smiled, sighed, then went on: “I was the only child and a female, but in our family such cases have never meant that the estate must inevitably pass out of our hands to more distant male relations. Fortunately, the Penhallows are known for their strong women.”
Gabriel couldn’t resist glancing at Livia.
“Yes,” murmured the old lady, meeting his eyes, “strong women. So Richard came to live with me at the Hall, and we knew it would, in time, belong to one of our children and thus stay within the line as it has for centuries.”
“It is—quite a heritage, Grandmama.”
She nodded, then gave another sudden crack of laughter. “I’ll tell you who else was troubled by the difference in rank between Richard and me. Your father Henry! It’s my strong suspicion that, had he lived, he would never have told you about it.”
“Why, Grandmama?” asked Gabriel, fascinated. His past, which heretofore had felt like a closed book, was all at once feeling more vivid to him than it ever had before. More real.
“Henry was a dear, good boy, always very interested in knowing what the rules were, always wishing to follow them most minutely. To be sure, he loved his father, my Richard, but when he married that Adelaide of his—well, I’ve sometimes wondered if her own consequence was the most important thing in the world to her. And her influence over Henry was immense; in time he became more like my own parents than I ever could have dreamed possible. It wasn’t long after Henry’s wedding that—that Richard died. I’m afraid that I was—oh, I was quite crazed with grief. I’m sure I was a great trouble to Henry and Adelaide.”
She looked over at Miss Cott, and a smile briefly flickered on her face. “It was Evangeline, whom I had known from my girlhood, who came to my aid, and it was she who suggested a visit to Bath. So I took my little girl Sophia, who was four, along with me, and Evangeline came too. Adelaide made no secret of the fact that she was glad to see me go. I suppose it was only natural that she wished to assume her rightful place as mistress of the Hall. If only—if only we had—well, I tried hard to love her, but she was not an easy person to love.”