Page 35 of A Duke to Undo her (The Husband Hunt #1)

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Light this one too,” Dowager Duchess Nerissa instructed the Duke of Ashbourne, passing him yet another candelabra to add to those now illuminating the gallery room.

Disquieted, and hoping that their visit to this room need not be a long one, Cassius obeyed.

He preferred to focus on the task of lighting candles and moving one candelabra after another into place rather than looking at the largest painting on the wall where he knew his attention would shortly be directed.

Finally, all available candles were blazing and there was nothing for Cassius to do but join his mother in front of the painting.

It was entitled “Henry, Ninth Duke of Ashbourne, and his son Cassius, Earl of Telsington,” with the date of its completion engraved on the same small golden plaque. Sixteen years ago…

The duke’s eyes slid sideways from the title plaque rather than upwards to the picture itself.

How different the various smaller portraits in that room looked at night.

The flickering candlelight gave them a warmth and movement that brought their subjects to life.

Maybe all portraits should be viewed at night while non-human subjects were better viewed in daylight, rivers, mountains, seascapes and so forth…

“Cassius,” his mother’s light, clear voice called him back from this escapist reverie. “Can you tell me what you see in this picture?”

With a distinct force of effort, the Duke of Ashbourne set his jaw and shifted his gaze to look at the painting before them. It had never been easy to look at this picture but it had also never felt quite this hard before.

“Father and myself,” he answered tightly. “Father’s last portrait, three months before he died. I believe it is both accurately painted and of artistic merit. The artist earned his fee.”

Duchess Nerissa had taken his arm again and Cassius knew she must feel the tension in his body.

It was not just looking at the painting that required such self-control, it was waiting for his mother to reveal why she had really brought him there.

She was not a manipulative woman and rarely had a hidden agenda, but in this case her motivation was opaque and unnerving to him.

“Henry loved you very much, Cassius,” she told him as she gazed on the portrait. “He would have been so very proud of you, as I am.”

Cassius could only nod at this. He had never doubted his father’s affection and pride. It was even visible in this painting, the smile on the older man's face somehow seeming directed at the youth in front of him as well as out at the observer.

“It was so long ago, I suppose you won’t even remember sitting for this painting…”

“I do remember sitting for it,” the duke blurted out, surprising himself after feeling so lost for words only a few moments earlier. “It seemed interminable but Father talked to me of all kinds of things and I forgot to be bored. We even planned my Grand Tour…”

He gave an unhappy laugh that was half a gasp at the end. There had been so many plans made during those sittings: a new dog on Cassius’ next school holiday, Oxford university after he finished school, a Grand Tour across half of Europe after that. All had been blasted by the family tragedy.

It was Benedict who had received first the dog, then the university education and the Grand Tour. It had been Cassius who bestowed them, wanting for his little brother everything that their father had promised to him.

Ah, poor little golden-haired Benedict, carefree and laughing as he chased his hoop through the portrait sittings, and soon after left without mother or father.

“I am so sorry, Cassius,” his mother told him, but the duke immediately shook his head as he always did at her apologies.

“None of it was your fault. You were ill,” he said, giving the usual automatic response.

They had been over this point many years ago, once Duchess Nerissa had been well enough to return to society. The duke thought that his mother knew and accepted that he did not blame her for leaving so much on his shoulders, but her mood seemed strange this week and perhaps her guilt had returned.

“I didn’t mean that,” she replied. “You lost so much and I feel for you, Cassius. You should have been able to finish your schooling, to play like other boys, to travel like other young men. You should have been able to grow up in your own time.”

“Should…” he mused. “It was neither your fault nor mine, but life had other plans, didn't it?”

While he still spoke with control, a moment later he shuddered despite himself and Nerissa squeezed his arm.

“What is it, Cassius? Can you tell me?”

Could he? Was it safe to tell his mother that he had just remembered the sound of her scream when she found his father dead in their shared suite? The former duke had only gone to lie down with a headache and had never risen again.

There had been talk in the household of some bad seafood at luncheon and a recent fall from a horse, never mind a recent flu that all the family had suffered, and many of the staff too. There had even been a physician in the house when his father died, although Cassius could no longer recall why.

He did recall the chaos of grave physicians, agitated servants and a hysterical mother threatening to do herself harm if her husband could not be restored to life. He certainly remembered physically picking up Benedict and carrying the distressed child out of the house in order to calm him.

No, he could not tell his mother of these things and shook his head. Still, she did not back away.

“I am strong now, Cassius,” she tried to reassure him, sensing the cause of his reticence. “This is all in the past. Whatever you have to say, I can hear it and not crumble.”

“I have still never felt such pain in my life as I did that day,” the duke whispered at last in at least partial explanation.

“The only person who might have helped me was dead. My grief was never assuaged by hearing from so many that I had ‘coped magnificently,’ upheld our family name, or shown ‘judgment beyond my years.’ I only wanted Father. How ridiculous that must sound!”

God, now his flow of memories had reached the funeral.

That was when it became clear that Nerissa’s condition was something more than a normal widow’s grief for a beloved husband.

Well-grown for his age, Cassius had held her back bodily from throwing herself into the open grave while she wailed her husband’s name and the other funeral attendees only looked on in horror.

“Help me, damn it!” he had sworn at some distant cousins, his anger covering his grief, fear and the chilling understanding that he was now the responsible adult in his family.

For the first time in his life, those relatives had jumped at his command, and helped him bear the dowager duchess back to their carriage. Leaving her there with the physician and her maid, luckily both at the back of the funeral party, Cassius had had to return to the interrupted service.

Benedict had run to him and refused to let go. He had held the boy close while the vicar intoned the final words and then led him away from the graveside as relatives and friends gossiped in hushed but awful tones about the family’s fate.

“You were magnificent, possessed of good judgment and a credit to your family name, Cassius, but you were also a boy, even though you took up a man’s responsibilities.”

Yes, he had done that. What choice had he? None.

“They wanted to take Benedict away,” he recalled to his mother.

“Aunt Helena and I talked with my godfather after the funeral, and agreed it was best for you to be nursed away from Ashbourne for a time. After that, everyone assumed that some relative or other would take Benedict, some distant cousin or uncle he barely knew.”

“Your father never wanted his boys sent away too young,” Nerissa remarked. “You didn’t go away to school until you were thirteen, for that reason. Henry himself was sent away at seven and never forgot his unhappiness. He said that young children needed their families and I was glad of it.”

“I know. I couldn’t have let let anyone take Benedict.

He was so frightened by what he heard people saying at the funeral reception, Mother.

I had to promise him over and over again that I would remain at Ashbourne Castle and he would stay with me.

He even slept in my room for a time, afraid that someone would try to snatch him away in the night. ”

“My poor boys…”

“I refused to hear a word of Benedict’s removal, any more than to listen to those ignorant voices who thought you should be declared insane.

By the funeral, I had already written to my school with news of my departure and set out a plan for Benedict’s education with his tutors.

My godfather found no fault in my reasoning and no one else was willing to argue. ”

For a moment, his mother’s deeply moved expression made Cassius think he had said too much.

Duchess Nerissa already obviously knew of the machinations of certain relatives who would have been happy to see her permanently locked up and abandoned to keepers of the insane.

Still, hearing the words spoken so starkly was something else.

She did not however, quail or shed any tears. Instead, her expression smoothed and calmed.

“It is because of you that Benedict is the carefree, happy young man we see today,” the dowager duchess observed. “If you’d let him go, how hurt and fearful a personality like his could have grown among strangers and without love. Like me, he is a simple and homely soul at heart.”

“Yet now he chafes at me and demands that I let him alone,” the duke remarked with as much of a smile as he could summon, more in hope of lifting his mother’s spirits than his own.