What the hell are you talking about?” Anthony asked, dumbfounded.
“Mother, you had nothing to do with it.”
“I did!” she sobbed into the folds of her handkerchief.
“I did. You would never have purchased a commission had I not encouraged you to it!”
Encouraged him to it? She had never; not once. It had been a perpetual war between them when he had made his decision, right up until the day he had left, so severely had she been set against it.
“I never meant to do it. I didn’t see my mistakes until long after they had occurred. But I brought you up upon stories of your uncle, gave you the tin soldiers that had been his in childhood. I only wanted you to know your family; I never imagined—” Her voice broke upon another sob. Tears slid down her cheeks in a ceaseless flood.
“I might as well have sent you off to die myself.”
Shaken, Anthony reclaimed his seat, breathing deeply. His uncle—his mother’s middle brother—had passed away well before he had even been born, in the American rebellion. His mother had been little more than a girl at the time.
“Mother, I never even knew him,” he said.
But he had always thought it…rather odd that Mother had been so passionately against him taking up a commission. Being an officer was a respectable career for a gentleman, and a suitably patriotic one.
“You never had to know him,” Mother whimpered.
“It was enough that I glorified him to you. I put the idea of military service in your head practically from the cradle. All those tin soldiers, all the hours I played with you at imaginary military campaigns.”
Those had been some of his fondest memories of her when he had been a child. But they hadn’t had a thing to do with his decision. It had only been childish play. The fact that it had involved tin soldiers had been immaterial.
“Lots of little boys play such games,” he said.
“Mother, you know as well as I do that I was always going to have to find a vocation. I haven’t the temperament for the clergy, and my marks in school were average at best. I’d have been a dismal barrister and a worse doctor. What is there otherwise for a gentleman but the military?”
“You never had to have a career,” Mother said.
“Your father and I would have supported you. And eventually, your brother—”
“William would have had enough to contend with of his own. His own family, the management of the estates, his parliamentary duties. There was no reason he should have had to support me, too.”
There was something vaguely familiar about this; the peculiar drama of it. He’d seen something similar from time to time on the campaign, in men who had lost friends in battle. A strange sort of guilt, of blame taken upon themselves for things well beyond their control. Too many if onlys had peppered their conversations. If only they had been a few steps to the left, they might have been close enough to save one of the fallen. If only they hadn’t turned their back for a fraction of a second, they might have seen the strike of a bayonet coming. If only they had arrived a few moments earlier, then some unspeakable tragedy might have been averted.
He had never been able to make sense of it, himself. But he had long learned that there was no sense in war. That these if onlys, as senseless as they had felt, had only needed to make sense to the one issuing them. Guilt borne upon shoulders that had never earned it for actions unpredictable, consequences unforeseeable.
“This is why,” he said, “you were so against me taking up a commission?”
She gave a single, miserable nod.
“I tried to prevent it,” she wept.
“I thought—hoped—that cutting you off would force you to relent, to reflect. That you would reconsider and come home.”
Perversely, it had only cemented his decision.
“You never even wrote to me,” he said.
“I wrote to you. I wrote to you every week, for years.” Up until he’d been wounded. When his recovery had been long, and his own spiral into self-pity had convinced him that there would be no point to it. That if she hadn’t wanted his letters before, certainly she would not want them after.
“I kept them,” Mother whispered.
“Every one. I had hoped my silence would bring you to your senses. And then, after—” Her chin quivered.
“I knew you would not wish to hear from me.”
“I would have loved to hear from you,” he said, his voice scratching at the inside of his throat.
“I hated that we had grown so distant. I thought you detested me.”
A small, shrill wail eked from her throat, and she shook her head.
“I prayed for you,” she admitted, and the slump of her shoulders felt foreboding, laden with yet more guilt.
“Every day and every night. I prayed for God to bring you home to me. I promised anything, anything at all, so long as it would bring you home once more.”
A queer, sour nausea churned in his gut. “Mother—”
“And my prayers were granted,” she said.
“At the cost of your father and your brothers.” Her eyes closed on a fresh wave of pain.
“How was I meant to face you, knowing what I had done, knowing what I had cost you? What I had cost Esther and Helen and the children?” She swiped at her eyes, unable to stem the flow of tears.
“You were my littlest boy,” she said.
“You were never meant to bear the burden of the title. And I had given it to you, and you were so unprepared for it.”
Somehow he had forgotten, while weathering Mother’s coldness and condemnation, that she had been suffering every bit as much as he. William had been raised to be a duke, and he had not. Perhaps she had, in some manner, been attempting through the weight of her grief to give him that instruction he had been lacking. But the shame he had so often witnessed upon her face had never been meant for him—it had been only her own. It had manifested only more coldness, more distance. And he—
He had done the same, he realized. He, too, had acquired an unearned sense of guilt, for the position he now inhabited, for all that had been lost to place him within it. Captain Sharp, he had insisted upon, because duke had been too painful to bear. He had adopted the same coldness, the same reticence, made certain assumptions that had turned out to be erroneous and allowed them to guide his own actions. And the whole of the household had frozen over entirely, until Charity had chiseled through that icy barrier.
“Mother,” he said softly.
“It wasn’t your fault any more than it was mine. It was an accident, bad luck with terrible consequences. You couldn’t have known. Just as with my accident—it wasn’t anyone’s responsibility.” It was just the ugliness of war. He, like so many others, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“But I wish you had told me.”
“What purpose would it have served?” she sobbed.
“Well,” he said.
“I might have forgiven you sooner.”
And then her composure, fragile as it had been, splintered altogether. Mother wept in heartrending sobs that shook her whole frame. Anthony lifted himself from his seat, crossed the room to kneel beside her chair, and for the first time since he had returned, reached out to her. Just her shoulder, just with his fingertips. But it was enough to clog her sobs in her throat, and her breath hitched as she lifted her head.
“I forgive you,” he said.
“For not seeing me off when I left. For not writing to me when I was away. For being so cold to me upon my return. Those are the only things I am capable of forgiving, because the rest of it—none of it merits anyone’s forgiveness. It was never your fault.”
And for the first time in years, Mother embraced him, weeping upon his shoulder not as if her heart had broken, but as if it had, at last, begun to heal.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking across the words.
“I’m so sorry, Anthony. I’m so very sorry.”
“You owe Charity an apology as well,” he said gruffly.
“I only wanted to protect you,” she said in a small voice, like that of a chastened child.
“To save you from her.”
“Mother, she saved me. Charity has never deserved your scorn. You owe her,” he said, “for the very fact that we have spoken this evening. Do you know what she whispered to me as she left? After you struck her? Talk to your mother, she said.” There was at least a little gratification to be had in Mother’s fierce sniffle.
“She saw something in you that I missed. You owe her for that.” Hell, he thought. They all owed her, in some way or another.
Always the healer first, Charity had mended his fractured family.
***
Two days since Charity had last seen Anthony, not because he had been engaged for some other evening event—but because he and his mother had at last cleared the air between them. She had been so pleased to learn it in the note she had received from him, so happy that she had judged correctly. It had seemed a comparatively small sacrifice to make, to give them just a few days of privacy to begin to close those old wounds between them.
But now, she thought, it was bound to be more than that. In retrospect, those two days had been the last of their time together, now spent and unrecoverable. She would not, as she had hoped, be returning to his house this evening.
“Are you going to open it?” Phoebe asked, with an inquisitive tilt of her head as she peeked at the letter Charity held in her hand.
“’Course she is,” Chris said.
“Just as soon as she works up the nerve. Not every day that a marriage ends wivout a death, now, is it?”
Charity suppressed a sigh, casting a censorious look at Chris, who lounged upon her sofa as if he still owned the place. Which he most decidedly did not.
“I do not believe,” she said, “anyone invited you to intrude upon my privacy.”
“Didn’t ‘ave to. Such a flimsy lock might as well be an invitation on its own.” He widened his eyes when she glowered, affecting an expression of patently false innocence.
“What?” he said.
“Phoebe picked the lock this time around.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the letter.
“Go on, then, open it.”
“I don’t think she wants to,” Phoebe said quietly. And rather too observantly.
The letter had arrived early this morning, sent from the Archbishop himself. A decision had been rendered at last, she was certain of it. Either she was married, or she wasn’t.
“D’you mind if I keep ‘im?” Chris asked, stretching out his leg to nudge Charity’s hip with the toe of his boot.
“’E’s a strange one, I’ll grant you. But a pleasant enough bloke, fer a duke.”
“Strange?” Phoebe asked of her husband.
“How do you mean, strange?”
“Brought a damned plant to our club,” Chris said.
“Said it was meant to be fer some woman.”
Lady Cecily. Her heart twisted in her chest, and the clench of her fingers wrinkled the letter in her hand. The jealousy that kindled in her heart wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. Neither of them had wished to remain married. It was hardly sporting of her to have changed her mind now, when he had decided upon another. She had pushed for the match, after all. And it would be a good one.
Even she had to admit to it.
She wished she could have put off opening the letter for longer than the few hours she already had. Just a few more blissful hours of not knowing, one more evening where she could visit his house with the setting of the sun, with the right to do it. Just one more evening spent in his company. But if she had received a letter, then so, too, had he. And he would know.
She would be able to see it upon his face. The happiness at obtaining the sought-after annulment, or the horror to be put through the public spectacle of divorce.
At least she had gotten the gratification of having opened Mercy’s unforgivably late response before she had come to this one. Yes; come, it had said, in the haphazard scrawl of a harried new mother. Come for Christmas. We’ll make a proper holiday of it.
So she would have somewhere to go, when the worst happened. Somewhere to escape her conflicted emotions for a little while. Some distance from the melancholia that would no doubt enshroud her when she read her fate.
“I liked ‘im,” Chris said, and his grin held only a touch of cunning within it. Mostly without guile, though Charity did not doubt that he would find some way, eventually, to turn a burgeoning friendship to his benefit. But that was all right, so long as Anthony would benefit as well.
And he would. If not from Chris alone, then from the rest of his connections. A ready-made extended social circle sprinkled throughout the aristocracy. He had been brought home at last and settled into his rightful place. Perhaps it would take some time yet for him to feel comfortable within it, but she did not doubt that he would achieve it.
He would have the perfect helpmate to do it. And for that one small blessing, she could be grateful. Eventually. She would find a way to be.
“The words are not going to change themselves upon the page,” Phoebe said softly, in gentle encouragement.
“Best to get it over with, no?”
Probably she was right, Charity allowed. The sun would set, eventually. She needed to know by then. She needed to know whether she ought to extend her condolences or her congratulations. And she realized, suddenly, that she could never do so in person. That she could lie to him with words on a page, but not to his face. She could not pretend a shared joy she did not feel, nor a horror that was meant to be mutual.
It did not matter, then, what words were written, she reasoned as at last she edged her fingernail beneath the wax stamp and peeled it off. It was the end of them either way.
She unfolded the letter. Scanned the scant few lines contained within.
And knew, even before she had finished, what she would ask of him as her fee.
***
Anthony returned to his residence late in the evening, having spent far too many hours holed up within his solicitor’s office poring over the myriad documents which would, at last, transfer ownership of the selected estates from him to his sisters-in-law. A more complicated process than he had hoped it would be, but a necessary one—neither Esther nor Helen had ever had to handle the financial aspects of running an estate, but he had not wished to put either of them in the same confusing, tangled mess into which he had been thrown, left to fend for themselves without a clear picture of both their resources and their responsibilities.
It had all come out well, he thought. The folios with which he had returned would outline for them clearly the summation of their assets and project the expected income to be received from the tenants upon their new lands. But the doing of it had eaten up the better part of his day.
And his evening. Dusk had fallen hours ago. He’d kept Charity waiting well beyond what anyone could be reasonably expected to bear.
Redding was waiting to admit him as he climbed the steps, opening the door well before he had reached it.
“Evening, Redding,” Anthony said.
“Is Charity in the drawing room?”
“No, Captain,” Redding said.
“Miss Nightingale did not arrive this evening as expected.”
“She didn’t?” Disappointment struck deep. Well, at least he had not kept her waiting for him as he’d imagined—but he had hoped to see her. She was meant to have come this evening, and he’d missed her these last few days.
“She did, however, send a note round,” Redding said.
“I have got it here, with the rest of your correspondence.”
Rather too much of it, Anthony thought as he accepted the stack of letters. But the mail was delivered several times each day, and he’d not been home to receive it, so it stood to reason that he would have to contend with more of it than he’d hoped.
Anthony thumbed through the stack of letters as he headed for the stairs to his study, separating out those which could be put off until tomorrow. He had only just settled into his chair and lit his lamp when the last letter in the stack gave him pause.
A letter from the Church.
For a long, difficult moment he could only sit and stare at it laying there in his hand. His heart wrenched itself into a vicious pound, beating at the cage of his ribs as if there were some wild beast trapped within his chest struggling for freedom.
He didn’t have to know what the letter said, he realized. He knew already what he wanted it to say.
And there it was at last. A bolt from the blue, just as Charity had once suggested. The one he had hoped to feel. Not for the woman he was supposed to want, the woman whose name had been scrawled upon the carefully-curated list of acceptable duchesses. But for the woman who had shown him such kindness so many years ago. The woman to whom he owed his very life. The woman who had offered him her friendship, her tutelage, her compassion. The woman who had mended his broken family and taught him that his worth was not measured by his appearance, nor by the acceptance of society. The woman who had helped him to discover a life worth living when he had despaired of ever finding one.
There was the sense of impending disaster looming before him. The fact that Charity had not arrived this evening, the letter she’d sent in her stead—it all added up to one terrible, heartbreaking conclusion. She had certainly received a letter of her own, knew already what the judgment had been. The rapid pace of his heart slowed to a crawl as he peeled up the wax seal and carefully unfolded the letter. Read, in the dim lamplight, the words scrawled within.
The Church hereby grants an annulment in the matter of the marriage of Anthony Sharp, Duke of Warrington, and Miss Charity Nightingale. The Church concludes that no such legal marriage ever existed and is to be considered invalid from its inception.
That was it, then. Such sharp misery boiled down to only a few sentences upon a page. He was not married. According to the Church, he never had been. In the space of a single letter, he’d lost so much more than an eye, than the prettiness of his face.
He’d lost the whole of his heart, torn of out his chest still beating.
It was Charity’s letter in his hands now, the fluid flourishes of his name rendered in thick black ink on the outside of it. No hesitation marred her perfect penmanship, not even the tiniest blot that would suggest some manner of disquiet, of conflict within her. Nor even a wax seal, as if it had not mattered to her how many hands her letter might have passed through, who might have read it before him. Anthony opened it with trembling fingers, carefully peeling back the pleats and tucks that sealed it.
Dear Anthony,
I wish you every joy. For my fee, all I ask of you is your happiness.
I trust that this will now prove no great obstacle.
Yours, Charity
No. His mind rebelled, a violent revolt that sent his senses reeling. How could she ask that of him? Money he could have paid her, or the precious jewels she favored. But happiness? She had asked the one thing of him that he had lost all hope for the moment this verdict upon their marriage had been rendered.
The only way to give her what she’d asked of him—
His heart shuddered in his chest. A fearful, cringing quake.
The only way to give her what she’d asked would be to make the biggest gamble of his life, and hope against desperate hope that she might have him.