Chapter Sixteen
The stable had worked its magic on uncle and orphan. When they returned from their morning call upon the equine dignitaries, Leander was perched on Arthur’s shoulders, hands fisted in His Grace’s hair. Arthur was smiling as if…
I had never seen my brother exude such warmth of spirit. He was in quiet transports, delighted, agog with joy. Tonight’s letter to Banter would be long and effusive.
“I met Beowulf,” Leander bellowed. “He likes me! He’s very tall. Uncle Arthur says Bey is a horse of dis.. dis… Uncle, what was the word?”
“Discernment. Beowulf is a horse of great discernment and refined sensibilities. Down you go.” He hoisted Leander up off his shoulders, held him aloft until the boy was kicking and giggling in midair and demanding to be put down this instant—or Miss won’t let you have any pudding —and then set the lad on his feet.
Leander was flushed and beaming, and so, for those with eyes to see, was Uncle Arthur. I slipped Dasher into the chair behind me.
“I believe the stated agenda,” Arthur said, “calls for a certain little Cossack to wash his hands.” His Grace took up a piece of jam-slathered toast and gave half to Leander. “Uncle Julian might like to take that same Cossack for his first ride later this morning, before the heat grows too fierce.”
Between bites of toast, Arthur had just laid down a challenge in the favorite-uncle sweepstakes, while Miss Du—what were we to call her?—Miss was blinking again.
“Simmons,” I said to the lurking footman, “please take yonder Cossack and his plunder up to the nursery. See that he washes his hands and changes into boots. Tend to nature’s call, if necessary. Master Leander and I will be mounting up in a half hour or so.”
Leander looked to his mother. “Miss?”
“One doesn’t wear slippers in the saddle, Leander. Your uncles and I will be here when you come back down.”
“You promise?”
“I promise I will be here.”
“I promise as well,” Arthur said, munching his toast.
I put my hand over my heart. “The winds of ill fortune, the cruel hand of fate, and the unceasing larceny of the local toast thief will not move me from this garden until next you grace us with your presence.”
“Your Uncle Julian will be here too,” Arthur said around his last mouthful of toast. “Be off with you, lad.”
Leander—bless his stubborn, wonderful heart—looked to his mother.
“Wash your hands,” she said. “Change your shoes. Shoo.”
Her placid maternal authority reassured the boy as my silliness had not. He scampered off, leaving the footman to take up the valise and trail after him.
I explained to Arthur what had passed between Leander’s mother and me while Beowulf had been holding his morning levée in the stable.
“You will bide with us,” Arthur said in his best the-duke-hath-spoken tones. “You and the boy. Don’t think to quibble when we’ve been denied his company for years, madam.”
Now I had two brothers in need of a kicking.
“The matter wants some discussion,” I said. “First, what shall we call you, ma’am?”
The lady resumed her chair. “Millicent is my given name. I am a Bleeker by birth, though I like the sound of Dujardin better.”
Arthur and I took chairs, and now that he’d got the lady’s back up, Arthur apparently had nothing to say.
“You are Leander’s mother, correct?” I started with first principles, because a general agreement set the stage for more specific treaty terms to follow.
“I am.”
“And Lord Harry Caldicott was his father?”
“Yes.” She sat very straight. “No other candidates for the post pertain, if that’s where you’re going with this.”
“It isn’t. As Leander’s mother, given that you and his lordship were not married, you are Leander’s legal custodian. You should also know that Harry left a considerable sum more or less in trust for you and the boy.” I named the figure Quinton Wentworth had recited half a lifetime ago. “Harry did not mention you or Leander in his will, but his terms with the bank put that money at your disposal.”
Arthur shot his cuffs. “You should know something else.”
I sent him a look promising him a pudding-less eternity if he intended to turn up all ducal and stupid on me now.
“Harry left us money?” Millicent said. “ That much money?”
She’d posed the question to me. “The sums you picked up at the Swan were the interest. Don’t ask where Harry acquired that fortune, because I don’t know and I don’t want to know. The money is yours.”
Arthur sent me a look that told me to shut my nattering gob, or pudding would be the least of my worries.
“Harry applied for a special license too,” Arthur said. “Julian dispatched a clerk to Doctors’ Commons, and given that Harry was only in Town for a limited time, the search went quickly. Harry applied for the license and never retrieved it. He meant to marry you, and he meant for Leander to be legitimate.”
Well, damn. If ever a brother had redeemed his memory…
Millicent simply stared at Arthur. “A special license. A marriage license?”
Arthur looked around as if somebody had forgotten to put jam and toast on the table. “A special license would have meant the ceremony could have been very, very discreet. The next thing to secret. Harry apparently never saw a chance to retrieve the license.”
We sat in silence for a few moments, each of us doubtless rearranging our memories of Harry and our questions about his life and honor. He’d sneaked back to London on several occasions, but had not seen a way to fetch that license or go through with a ceremony.
Whose safety had driven his choices? His own? Millicent’s and Leander’s? Mine?
“Will that be enough?” Millicent asked quietly. “Will that application for a special license and the money be enough to prove Harry was Leander’s father?”
She was thinking of legalities, and unfortunately, the bank account terms were too general to be of any use, and the application for a special license wouldn’t carry any weight either.
“We have something better,” I said, sending up a prayer that my faith in Harry wasn’t misplaced. “I hope you are up to a bit of veterinary surgery before Leander rejoins us, Millicent.” I produced Dasher and subjected him to a few strategic squeezes. His left hind leg satisfied my tactile inquiries.
I took the knife from my boot and carefully split the stitching from fetlock to stifle. Sawdust spilled onto the ground as I extracted a rolled-up document about three inches by four.
“ I, Harold Merton Abershaw Wittingham Caldicott, do on this eighth day of December in the year of our Lord 1812, acknowledge as my son and issue that child whose birth is recorded as September 12, 1811, and who was baptized Leander Merton Bleeker. It is my specific and heartfelt wish that Leander be shown every advantage of his station as my beloved progeny and that his dear mother be accorded the esteem and affection she will always enjoy in my heart. Attested to on the date above by my hand and seal before these witnesses signing below… ”
I passed Harry’s paternal decree to Arthur. “I suspect those witnesses work at Wentworth’s bank,” I said. “The names are legible enough. If we need to find them, we can.”
Arthur scanned Harry’s parting gift to us all and then passed it to Millicent. “And that is Harry’s signature and the Caldicott seal. Harry could not have acknowledged the boy more clearly if he’d made an announcement on the steps of St. George’s, Hanover Square.”
Millicent studied the words on the paper. “Leander has hated calling me miss , but he never got it wrong. He hates it. I’m his mother, and he cannot abide that he hasn’t been able to call me mama . He hasn’t understood, and I haven’t been able to explain, and this is all…”
She set aside the proof of Leander’s paternity and began crying all over again. Arthur shifted to proffer his handkerchief and pat her shoulder, while I tidied up the injured Dasher and spared a prayer for Harry’s soul.
You old dog. You dear, damnable old dog. I no longer wanted to kick him. I wanted to hug him, tightly, but I would have to content myself with hugging his son, gently and frequently, when the moments were right.
We’d name his pony Dasher, of course, and on long hacks at Caldicott Hall, I’d explain to the boy that his father had loved him—and the rest of our family—very, very much.
“You’ll need Lady Ophelia to manage the talk,” Hyperia said. “You should call on her today, if you haven’t already.”
Hyperia was stitching embroidery onto a chemise or nightgown, adding flowers by the light of the morning sun. I’d called upon her—bedamned to Healy’s nonsense—because after a week of Leander settling in and Arthur trading voluminous dispatches with Banter—I’d missed her.
And she apparently didn’t intend to call on me.
“Godmama has been expected at Waltham House by the hour, but I suspect she’s giving us all time to consider options.” Either that, or Lady Ophelia was trying to keep us in ignorance of her latest adventures.
Hyperia speared her needle into a corner of the fabric and set her hoop aside. “What will you tell the world?”
“About Leander?”
“About Leander and Millicent.”
“Arthur at first wanted to claim Leander as his own son. He said that would open more doors, but Millicent wouldn’t hear of it. She claimed any door that would open to a duke’s by-blow as opposed to the by-blow of a ducal heir wasn’t a door worth passing through.”
“Let’s get some air, shall we?” Hyperia rose, and I had no choice but to comply. I could not read her mood—discontented, not precisely annoyed—but I entertained the possibility she wasn’t glad to see me. Was she expecting a call from Ormstead, perhaps?
I escorted her into the garden, a peaceful enclosure that embraced the house on three sides. We’d have privacy back here. Since our interlude in the park, I’d had the sense she was avoiding me. If the lady was giving me my congé, she’d do so where we wouldn’t be overheard.
“Have you considered presenting Leander as your son?” Hyperia asked.
“I have not. I am still considered a traitor by many, Harry was at pains to acknowledge the boy, and I… I am resigned to not having children, Hyperia. I will be—I am—the most devoted of uncles. My sisters’ children all have papas, and Arthur rather eclipses me for consequence, but with Leander, I can take an active, avuncular hand.”
She slipped her arm through mine and guided me down a rose alley that no longer sported any flowers. The greenery and thorns wove overhead, providing shade and promising more blooms next year.
“Ironic, isn’t it? You seize upon the opportunity to be a father figure to Leander, while Clarissa hides away the fact of her motherhood. Millicent treads a middle path, and the objective in all cases is supposedly keeping the child safe from society’s cruelties.”
“What of you?” I asked, feeling as a doomed prisoner must feel when deciding on the menu for his last meal. “I imagine you look forward to the prospect of motherhood.”
She took a bench halfway down the rose alley and did not invite me to sit beside her. “I like children,” she said. “Atticus is a darling, and I’m stitching some monogrammed handkerchiefs for him. You must explain to him that they are not for every day.”
“I can do that.”
The urge to pace rose in me like a caged animal’s compulsion to map the metes and bounds of its captivity. I instead took up a lean against the support opposite her bench. A lone straggler from the late summer bloom was trying to bud out at about my eye level. Cut off from the regiment, struggling to find the sunlight amid all the foliage.
“About children…” Hyperia said. “Do you know why I never pushed the matter of a proposal from you, Jules?”
What was she going on about? “You understood that a man riding off to war isn’t in a position to make commitments.”
She rose and began fussing with the thorny new growth trying to encroach on the alcove around the bench. “I did understand. I also understood that you… that Arthur and Harry weren’t married. That Harry was a soldier, too, and not as naturally cautious as you. Arthur was a confirmed bachelor even five years ago.”
“You want children,” I said, rather than prolong my torment. “I cannot give you children. Hyperia, if you want to marry Ormstead, just say so. You deserve to be happy, to be a mother. He’s a decent fellow. This business with Leander and Millicent has to have brought to mind all that I might never be able to give you. I understand that. You owe me nothing, though I hope we will always think well of each other.”
Don’t leave me. I felt exactly the desperation Leander must have experienced when he’d watched his sole anchor and refuge in life preparing to steal away. I felt even more strongly, though, a grown man’s duty to bow to the demands of honor.
I loved Hyperia West as a man loves a woman, and that meant my happiness could not come at the expense of hers.
She left off weaving the roses. “What has Ormstead to do with anything?”
“He clearly fancies you, and he comes from a good family.” I made myself say the next part. “He can doubtless give you children and will acquit himself enthusiastically to that end.”
She stalked across the alley, boot heels rapping on the brick walkway. “Why do you use that phrase—‘give me children’? Do you know what Harry gave Millicent?”
“A son.” A dear, darling, lively, fascinating, brave, stubborn little boy.
“ Ruin ,” Hyperia snapped. “He ruined her, and the fact that for a time he sent money does not change her situation in the slightest. When the money stopped, she had to sell all her worldly goods, stoop to deceptions, cast herself on the mercy of unkind strangers. She was relegated to endless terror for her son, terror she faced only because Harry had ruined her . That he wanted to marry her, that he acknowledged the boy in some secret treasure map hidden from even Millicent’s view… What if she’d died in childbed, Jules?”
A not-unheard-of risk. “A tragedy would have occurred.”
“For her and for the child, assuming Leander survived. Not for Harry. He’d have been sad, perhaps, if he’d ever learned the truth, but he was too busy being a war hero to even tell her he’d acknowledged the boy… I digress.”
“Ormstead won’t ruin you. He will esteem you above all other women. He will give you his name. He will provide for you.”
“My grandmother provided for me. I already have a name.”
The obvious finally dawned on me. “You are angry.”
She studied the knot of my cravat—a plain mathematical. “I suppose I am, but that’s not the point I wanted to make. Why is this so difficult?”
I loved her, and even in the middle of this awkward, sad discussion, admitting that gave me joy. “Just say whatever troubles you, Hyperia. I’ve entrusted you with more confidences than I’ve placed in even Atlas. My worst fears, my nightmares, my doubts, my joys, my hopes. They all repose in your keeping.” Not all of my hopes—I had some dignity left—but most of them.
She brushed my hair back from my brow, the sweetest caress. “You are right, Jules, I am angry. I have lost two cousins to childbed. My best friend from school took months to recover when her second came along less than a year after the first. Came along , as if babies just toddle up the lane by some spontaneous whim of the Almighty. I was not a saint while you were off making war.”
“I have never been a saint.”
“I am not a virgin,” she said, glowering at me. “Not by half. At first, I thought there must be something amiss with me, because the whole business was the most awkward, uninspiring… Don’t you laugh at me.”
“I am not laughing.” I wanted to hug her, to tell her that her sentiments were likely echoed by many a bride on her wedding night. My sisters had doubtless felt some of the same consternation. In my present state, I could even agree that copulation was an odd business on a good day.
“I was unimpressed,” Hyperia said. “Even when I came across a fellow who seemed to know what he was about, I still could not believe that such an undertaking was counted as worth a woman’s freedom, her personhood, her life .”
Good God, Hyperia spoke the domestic equivalent of treason. “Just how much adventuring have you done, Hyperia? The matter can take some study.”
“I am invisible, Jules. Not a diamond, not an heiress to great wealth, not titled. I am agreeable, and I draw no notice. I armed myself with all the sponges and tisanes and whatnot. I was careful, and I was curious, and then I was…”
“Disappointed?” What was she trying to tell me?
“Bored. Puzzled, then furious. Women are not stupid, so we must be kept in ignorance. We are to remain chaste until marriage, and then it’s too late to decide the reward isn’t worth the sacrifice. Not nearly worth the sacrifice. A few minutes of pawing and panting, even skilled pawing and panting, isn’t worth…” She waved a hand.
“Not worth security? Children? Respectability?” I left for another time the whole business of the pawing and panting. Hyperia might well have shared her charms with bumblers, but she spoke as if she’d also explored beyond the reach of the bumblers.
My dear Perry was quite the reconnaissance officer, and for that, I was glad. She knew what she was giving up if she continued to spend time with me. She knew, in some sense, what I mourned.
She was silent for a moment, staring at the middle of my chest. “Why do you keep bringing up children?”
“Because I can’t have any? Because I am a duke’s son and heir, and my sole redeeming quality at times has supposedly been my ability to sire legitimate sons? Because Arthur, who has never asked a blessed thing of anybody, needs me to fulfill that obligation?”
More confidences given into her keeping.
Of all things, she smiled at me. “You feel like a barren broodmare?”
“Well… yes. I suppose.”
She leaned against me. Did not put her arms about me, but gave me her weight. “I am unnatural, Jules. I like children, and I think my heart is as affectionate as anybody’s, but a chasm stretches between being affectionate and becoming a mother. Leaping that chasm requires ignoring dangers—to my life, to my health—and giving up privacy, independence, and freedom for the rest of my life.”
I wrapped my arms around her and rested my cheek against her temple. “Say the rest of it.”
“If I could leap with anybody, it would be with you. But I don’t know as I will ever make the attempt, even with you, even for you.” She sighed and snuggled closer. “I will miss you sorely, but I cannot allow you to be misled. I am not panting for marriage, much less children. I am not merely content without either, I am happy.”
She wasn’t waiting for me to recover my powers, in other words. More to the point, she wasn’t longing to exercise her maternal instincts.
“We are a crooked pot and a crooked lid, then,” I said. “In the eyes of Society, not in my eyes. The dukedom doesn’t make Arthur happy. It makes him busy, important, powerful, careful… many things, but not happy. I don’t want that title hanging around my neck. Why would I want it burdening my progeny?” I spoke blasphemy to go with Hyperia’s treason, but my logic was sound and sincere.
Had Harry died rather than allow the title to imprison him?
Hyperia peered up at me. “Perhaps your progeny would enjoy having the great wealth that goes along with that title? Prestige? Influence? Consequence?”
“Arthur has significant personal wealth, and he’d give up all the rest of it for a chance to live out his days with Banter in peace.” Had Arthur admitted that to himself? To Banter?
“So you won’t disown me because I have a horror of childbed?”
I stroked her hair. “Your reservations go well beyond childbed. I would not have willingly gone to war, except that England was threatened. You are happy as a civilian, and last I heard, Mayfair is at peace. Why risk your life for anything less than your honor?”
She twined her arms around me. “You understand.”
I wasn’t sure I did, not entirely, but to be in Hyperia’s confidence, to have her trust, meant more to me than reexamining the institutions of primogeniture and coverture.
“I understand that I would miss you to the bottom of my soul if I ever earned your scorn or indifference, Hyperia.”
“I am similarly attached to you, Jules, but I owe you honesty. I didn’t want you strutting into my parlor someday and announcing that your powers had revived, a special license was in train, and I would have the privilege of making you the happiest of men Tuesday next, pawing and panting to follow.”
Would it really be so awful, pawing and panting with me? A moot and wistful question.
“Your Tuesday afternoon is safe.” A small, stubborn part of me wanted to add for the nonce .
We remained entwined beneath the roses for some time. I considered offering Hyperia the little pink straggler, but instead left the bud to enjoy its turn blooming on the vine. The discussion, about children, pots, lids, and titles, hadn’t shifted my circumstances at all, but my heart was more at ease, and I hoped Hyperia’s was too.
Hyperia had not disappointed me. She had freed me from expectations I’d never admitted I was carrying. Where we went next was up to us, and as long as we sallied forth with kindness and honesty, I was content.
“Oh, there you are.” Lady Ophelia paused at the end of the rose alley. “Canoodling in broad daylight. I vow I am encouraged. Julian, you are remiss. You may tell Arthur I am similarly wroth with him. When will somebody introduce me to my great-godnephew, and what must one do to be offered some potation in the midst of this heat?”
Hyperia slipped from my arms and greeted her caller. Once refreshments had been served, we agreed to accompany Lady Ophelia to Waltham House, there to rectify our oversight.
When we arrived, it was to find the duke pre-occupied by an express he’d received from Banter. While Godmama cooed and fussed over Leander’s soldiers—now patrolling the perimeter of a much larger garden—and Hyperia embarked on a cordial discussion with Millicent, Arthur pulled me aside, and passed me a missive written in Banter’s hand.
“He’s canceling his sitting with Reardon,” Arthur said. “Trouble afoot, and I gather the missing hound is the least of it, regardless of the beast’s sterling attributes.”
I scanned the few lines Banter had penned. “One does get a sense of more being left unsaid. We could all repair to Caldicott Hall.”
“I must meet with the solicitors tomorrow, and I think the boy and his mother could use a few days of peace and quiet.”
I did not want to go to rubbishing Bloomfield Manor. I wanted to meet Perry for more dawn hacks in Hyde Park, to become the uncle in charge of all outings to Gunter’s, to acquaint Leander with Atlas, who wasn’t half so stuffy as boring old Beowulf.
Arthur could not go to Bloomfield immediately, and he would sooner sit through all the speeches in Parliament than beg me to investigate in his place.
And yet, I needed a day of rest as well. “Have Banter come fetch me,” I said. “If he leaves Bloomfield tomorrow morning, he and I can make the return journey the day after. Perhaps the dog will have turned up by then. I’d rather not tax my eyes by riding the distance on horseback, and Banter has a lovely traveling coach.”
I was telling the truth, also presenting Arthur with a plan I knew he’d accept, because it entailed Banter spending a night in Town.
“I’ll send a pigeon,” he said, jogging up the garden steps. “Once I’ve finished with the solicitors, I might make a dash for Caldicott Hall myself.”
As it turned out, the whole entourage made that dash. Trouble was indeed afoot at Bloomfield, and it took the combined efforts of myself, Godmama, Arthur, Hyperia, and a few noble hounds to bring the situation right, but that, as they say, is a tale for another time!