by Mary Balogh
“It is nothing short of a miracle that Viscount Dirkson even found out about the custody hearing,” Wren said.
But it had not happened by a miracle, Matilda thought as she picked up her own cup and sipped her tea. There was nothing miraculous about her.
“You are very quiet this afternoon, Matilda,” Alexander said, smiling kindly at her. “What do you think? Will you come to our dinner? Will you persuade Cousin Eugenia to come too?”
Her opinion was rarely solicited. She was merely an appendage of her mother as she fussed over her, making sure she did not sit in a draft or overexert herself or get overexcited, though her mother resented her every attention. Sometimes, especially lately, Matilda wondered whether her mother needed her at all—or even loved her. It was a thought that depressed her horribly, for if the love and care she gave her mother were pointless, then what had been the purpose of her life? And why was she already thinking of it in the past tense?
“I think it is an admirable idea,” she said. “You are a worthy Earl of Riverdale, Alexander. You take your responsibility as head of the family seriously. Inviting Viscount Dirkson to dine with as many of the family as are in London is a good way of showing him that we appreciate his speaking up for Gil. It will show him that we consider Gil one of us, that we value his happiness and Abigail’s. And Katy’s.”
Katy was Gil’s daughter—and Charles’s granddaughter. That realization stabbed a little painfully at Matilda’s heart every time her mind touched upon it. He had other grandchildren. Both of his daughters were married and both were mothers. His son, the youngest of his offspring, was as yet unwed. His wife of twenty years or so had died five years ago.
Alexander looked pleased at her praise. “You will come, then,” he said. “Thank you.”
Yes, she would go, though the very thought made her feel bilious. He was still so very handsome. Charles, that was. Whereas she . . . well, she was an aging spinster, perhaps even an aged one, and . . . Well.
“And will you invite Viscount Dirkson’s family too?” her mother was asking. “His son and his daughters?”
“It is hardly likely they know of Gil’s existence,” Alexander said, frowning. “I doubt he would want them to know.”
“Perhaps,” Wren said, “we ought to inform Viscount Dirkson that he is welcome to bring his children if he wishes, Alexander. Let the decision be his.”
“I will do that, my love,” he said, nodding to Matilda, who was offering to pour him a second cup of tea. “Yes, thank you. You will come, Cousin Eugenia?”
“I will,” she said. “Dirkson ran wild with Humphrey as a young man, you know, though he did not have the title in those days. His reputation became increasingly unsavory as time went on. He was not welcomed by the highest sticklers and perhaps still is not.”
“I think we will not hold the past against him,” Alexander said, a twinkle in his eye. “If he had not fathered an illegitimate child when he must have been a very young man, we would not even be planning this dinner, would we?”
“And Abigail would not have found the love of her life,” Matilda said.
“Oh, I think you are right about that, Cousin Matilda,” Wren said, beaming warmly at her. “I believe she and Gil are perfect for each other and perfect parents for Katy. No, no more tea for me, thank you. We must be on our way soon. We have taken enough of your time.”
“But we have not told you our own very happy news,” the dowager said.
“Oh,” Wren said. “We must certainly hear that.”
And Matilda was instantly reminded of why she had been feeling severely out of sorts even before Alexander and Wren arrived with their invitation.
“Edith is coming to live with us,” her mother announced.
“Your sister, Cousin Eugenia, do you mean?” Alexander asked.
“Edith Monteith, yes,” the dowager said. “I have been trying to persuade her to come ever since Douglas died a couple of years ago. She has neither chick nor child to keep her living in that drafty heap of a mansion all the way up as near to the Scottish border as makes no difference. It will be far better for her to come to me. She was always my favorite sister even though she is almost ten years younger than I.”
“And she is coming to live permanently with you?” Wren asked. “That does indeed sound like good news.” But she looked with a concerned frown at Matilda.
Her mother must have seen the look. “It is going to be wonderful for Matilda too,” she said. “She will not be tied to the apron strings of an old woman any longer. She will have someone closer to her own age for companionship. Adelaide Boniface will be coming with Edith. She is a distant cousin of Douglas’s and quite indigent, poor thing. She has been Edith’s companion for years.”
Aunt Edith had suffered from low spirits for as far back as Matilda could remember, and Adelaide Boniface made good and certain they remained low. If the sun was shining, it was surely the harbinger of clouds and rain to come. If there was half a cake left on the plate for tea, then the fact that half of it was gone was cause for lamentation, for there would be none tomorrow. And she spoke habitually in a nasal whine while the offending nose was constantly being dabbed at and pushed from side to side with a balled-up handkerchief, the whole operation followed each time by a dry sniff. Matilda found the prospect of having her constant companionship, not to mention Aunt Edith’s, quite intolerable. She really did not know how she was going to endure such an invasion of her home and her very life.
“I am very happy for you both, then,” Alexander said, setting aside his cup and getting to his feet. “Are they coming soon?”
“After we go home to the country at the end of the Season,” the dowager told him. “We are certainly happy about it, are we not, Matilda?”
“It will be something new to look forward to,” Matilda said, smiling determinedly as Wren hugged her and Alexander kissed her cheek and bent over her mother’s chair after assuring her that she did not need to get to her feet.
“We will see you both tomorrow evening, then,” he said.
Oh, Matilda thought after they had left, how was she going to bear it all? Coming face-to-face with Charles again tomorrow and spending a whole evening in his company. Going back to the country in one month’s time to a home that would be home no longer. Could life possibly get any bleaker?
But how could spending an evening in Charles’s company possibly matter after thirty-six years? One could not nurse a broken heart and blighted hopes that long. Or, if one did, one was a pathetic creature indeed.
Oh, but she had loved him . . .
All silliness.
* * *
• • •
“He is thirty-four years old,” Charles Sawyer, Viscount Dirkson, was telling Adrian, at twenty-two the youngest of his offspring. “It happened long before I married your mother. Before I even knew her, in fact.”
“Who was she?” Adrian asked after a pause, a frown creasing his brow, one hand clasping a leather-bound book he had taken at random from one of the bookshelves upon which he leaned. “Or perhaps I ought to have asked, Who is she?”
“Was,” Charles said. “She died many years ago. She was the daughter of a prosperous blacksmith. I met her while staying with a friend at a house nearby. It was a brief liaison, but it had consequences.”
“So all the time you were married to Mother,” Adrian said, “you were seeing that woman and him. Your other family.”
“Nothing like that,” Charles assured him. “She would have nothing to do with me when she understood that I would not marry her even though her family had turned her off without a penny. She refused all support for herself and the child. She raised him on the money she made from taking in other people’s washing until he went off with a recruiting sergeant at the age of fourteen to join the army. After she died I purchased a commission for him. But he stopped me and cut all ties with me lat
er, after I had purchased a promotion for him. His mother raised a proud son.”
“But he managed to rise to the rank of lieutenant colonel after you gave him a leg up into the officer ranks,” Adrian said, opening the book briefly before snapping it shut again without even looking at it. “And now he has married into the Westcott family. Bertrand Lamarr, that friend of mine from Oxford who came to call a few weeks ago, has a connection to them too. His father married one of them a few years ago. And the lady who came here with him was a Westcott. You took her to look at the garden while he and I were becoming reacquainted. Was it through her that you discovered your . . . son had married a Westcott and was in a court battle to regain custody of his daughter? Your granddaughter?” He laughed rather shakily and set the book flat on the shelf rather than slotting it into its appointed place.
“Yes,” Charles said. “I went to the hearing and said a few words to the judge. Riverdale, head of the Westcott family, seems to believe that what I said made a difference and helped . . . Gil to win his case.”
“Gil,” his son said softly.
“Gilbert,” Charles said. “She named him. His mother.”
He had pondered telling his son after a second note had come from Riverdale following the initial invitation. Viscount Dirkson was quite welcome to bring his children and their spouses to the dinner too if he wished, the note had said. Charles most certainly did not wish any such thing. He did not even want to attend himself. Perish the thought. He could not see why the Westcott family felt somehow indebted to him. Gil was his son, after all. Katy, as Adrian had just pointed out, was his granddaughter. He had not attended that custody hearing for the sake of the Westcotts. He had done it for his son, whom he had never seen before that day but whom he had loved for thirty-four years. Yes. True.
Ah, but he had done it also at least partly for one of the Westcotts, had he not?
For Matilda?
He had rarely been more surprised—no, shocked—than he had been a few weeks ago when his butler had come to his dressing room to inform him that Lady Matilda Westcott was downstairs in the visitors’ parlor with young Lamarr, Viscount Watley, who claimed to be a university friend of his lordship’s son.
Matilda. Here in his own house. Wanting to speak with him. After . . . how long? Thirty years? Thirty-five? It must be the latter or even a bit longer. Gil was thirty-four, and all the drama with Matilda had been over before he was conceived. In fact there had been a connection. Charles would almost certainly not have engaged in that ill-considered affair with Gil’s mother if he had not been raw with pain over Matilda’s rejection when she had adamantly refused to stand up to her parents’ disapproval of his suit. Within months or even weeks he had gone dashing into the arms of the first pretty woman to take his eye and respond to his flirtations. And he had taken none of the usual precautions when he lay with her. She had taken none either. Perhaps she had not even known such a thing was possible. Or perhaps she really believed he had promised to marry her, though he knew beyond all doubt that he had not.
He had gotten over Matilda years and years ago, though he had spotted her occasionally when they were both in London, growing ever older and more staid, wasting herself upon a mother who had denied her daughter’s happiness and now did not seem to appreciate that daughter’s attentions. He had felt irritated every time he set eyes upon Matilda Westcott—the only feeling he had had left for her.
Until, that was, he had stepped a few weeks ago into the visitors’ parlor here in his own home and she had called him by his given name instead of his title, a woman of fifty-six who was a stranger and yet was not. He had found himself then remembering the pretty, vital, warmhearted young woman she had once been and had felt an irritation far more intense than usual—against her and perhaps against time itself for robbing her of youth and beauty. And maybe against himself for remembering not just facts but feelings too, most notably the depths of his youthful passion for her and the contrasting pain of his despair at losing her, not because she did not love him but because her parents did not think him worthy of her. And anger. That she had turned him off and there had been no way of getting her to see reason. And present anger that she had come to his home like this without a by-your-leave and with only young Lamarr’s connection to Adrian as an excuse.
He had been angry that he could still remember those feelings. For it had all been a lifetime ago. And why should he remember? He had known scores of women both before and after her and even after his marriage.
Why should it annoy him that Matilda had grown old? No, not old. That was both inaccurate and unkind. Besides, she was almost the exact same age as he. She had grown middle-aged—to the shady side of middle age, to be more precise. She had never married. Why not, for God’s sake? Had no one measured up to the expectations of dear Mama and Papa? Yet their two younger daughters had married well. Had Matilda been too valuable to them, then, as the family drudge? Had it pleased them to sap all the life and youth and passion out of her until she became as she was now?
But why should it annoy him, what had happened to Lady Matilda Westcott? A bruised heart did not remain bruised for very long. He had soon learned that. He had forgotten her before that summer was even over. Gil’s mother had had successors. His reputation as a rake had been well earned.
“So,” Adrian said, “is he going to be in your life now? As a semirespectable member of the Westcott family? Is that what this dinner is all about?”
“The dinner,” Charles explained, “is Riverdale’s way of thanking me for appearing at the custody hearing and perhaps having some small part in enabling my . . . son to get his daughter back from her grandparents. He does not need to thank me. None of them do. I do not really want to go to the dinner, but it would seem the civil thing to do.”
“And you want me to go with you,” Adrian said.
Charles shrugged, picked up the quill pen from the desk before him to trim the nib, changed his mind, and set it back down. “I thought I ought to tell you at last,” he said, “before word somehow leaks out, as it well might, and you learn the truth from someone else. The existence of my natural son makes no difference to my feelings for you and your sisters.”
“I have a half brother twelve years my senior,” Adrian said, as though he were only now understanding what Charles had told him several minutes ago. “Does he look like me?”
“No,” Charles said.
“No.” Adrian laughed. “How could he? I look like Mama. Does he look like you?”
“Yes,” Charles said. “But he has a facial scar.” With one finger he traced a line across one cheek and down over his chin.
“The crusading hero,” Adrian said. “I suppose it makes him irresistible to women. And he is tall and dark like you, is he? I suppose you are going to grow close to him now.”
“I very much doubt it,” Charles said. “He does not have a high opinion of me, and I cannot blame him.”
“Do you have a high opinion of him?” his son asked.
Charles hesitated. “Yes,” he said. He pushed his chair with the backs of his knees and got to his feet. “You may come to the dinner with me if you wish, Adrian. I will be pleased if you do. I will understand if you do not.”
“Do you intend to tell my sisters?” Adrian asked.
Neither of them was in London at present. Barbara, the elder of the two, was in the country with her husband and children to celebrate the fortieth wedding anniversary of her parents-in-law. Jane had discovered herself to be with child just before the start of the Season and had remained in the country until she had recovered from the bilious phase that had plagued her also with her first child.
“I do,” Charles said. “In person when the opportunity arises.” And for the same reason that had persuaded him to tell Adrian. The truth was bound to come out now that Gil had surfaced in his life, even though his son planned to live year-round in Gloucestershire. It wa
s better that the news come from their father.
Adrian nodded and pushed away from the bookshelves. “I’ll come,” he said. “Bertrand will be there, you said?”
“Lamarr?” Charles said. “Viscount Watley? Very probably, since his father is married to the former Countess of Riverdale.”
“Then I’ll come,” Adrian said again. “Just as long as your other son will not be there too.”
“No,” Charles said. “He has already taken his wife and daughter home to Gloucestershire.”
“At your expense?” Adrian asked.
“No,” Charles told him. “He is apparently independently wealthy. So is his wife.”
“I have to go out,” his son said abruptly, making his way toward the door. “I was supposed to be somewhere half an hour ago.”
“Adrian.” His son stopped, his hand on the doorknob, and looked back at him. “I adored you from the moment I first saw you all swaddled up in your mother’s arms, your cheeks red and fat. I have not changed my affections since.”
His son nodded again and was gone.
He was not good with words of affection, Charles thought. He had not been a good husband. They had not married for love, he and his wife, and they had lived very separate lives. They had always been polite to each other, but there had been no real warmth of affection between them.
It had been otherwise with his children. He had always loved them totally and unconditionally, and still did. He had spent time with them when they were young. He had taught them to ride and had taken Barbara hunting with him on several occasions. He had taken Jane and Adrian fishing. He had taken them all swimming and tree climbing—the latter when his wife was well out of sight. He had read to them before they could do it for themselves. Perhaps, he thought now, he had lavished upon his legitimate children all the time and affection Gil’s mother had refused to allow him to lavish upon his firstborn.
