Page 6 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

“ F rederick!” his mother cried, appearing in the doorway sometime after his wife had fled through it. “What on earth are you doing in here? Get out at once!”

Freddy was sitting on the edge of the bed.

He didn’t remember sitting down or beginning to fiddle with the canopy curtains that were looped around the posters, the rich purple fabric twisting pleasantly around his fingers.

He didn’t remember deciding to fixate on the collection of bottles on the dresser top either.

The curtains were lovely, he thought. They’d been a faded red color when he’d lived in this room. This was much better. The gauzy, deep tones brought out the gleam in the wood.

Claire was also lovely. Wasn’t that something?

He had expected her to look either exactly as she had that last time he’d seen her—which was to say, pregnant—or else look somehow alien or old.

She looked instead much as she had on the staircase in the Fletcher house that fated night, her curls pinned back, her color high, her eyes glowing like amber in firelight.

She was beautiful. She was still so beautiful. She had lips that pouted even when she frowned, and a little upturned nose that managed to charm even when it was wrinkled in distaste. She was graceful, even when doing a runner.

He blinked up at his mother, who looked deeply scandalized there in the entryway, her stance fully akimbo.

“They put my luggage here,” he said by way of explanation, if not greeting. “Hello, Mother. Don’t call me Frederick. Please.”

“Oh, Freddy,” she said with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Hello. Now get up and get out.”

“Fine. But I do need my things,” he said with a crooked, humorless little smile. “Will someone see to that? Clearly, I can’t be trusted to do it.”

His mother gave a very particular sigh that managed to both be void of voice and still, somehow, shrill. It made him grin as they turned back into the hallway and she reached up for his arm, clinging to it in her specific way.

“So, you encountered one another, I gather?” she asked, without needing an answer. She did the sigh again.

He grinned wider.

“How did it go?”

“Oh, very poorly,” Freddy said cheerfully, leading her down the staircase. “She shoved me and fled after shouting the word No! Honestly, it’s made me optimistic.”

“Of course it has, dear.” She was smiling too now. “I note that you greeted Tommy before you greeted me. I shall punish you for it later.”

“Understood,” he replied, a lightness finding his heart that he hadn’t felt in quite some time. “I might have agreed to take a puppy.”

Patricia Hightower cut her eyes to him. “Did Silas also agree?”

“He did.”

“Well, then,” she said with a sniff. “Now you both have to do it. You agree to everything. Your brother, however …”

“Yes, yes,” Freddy said as they reached the solar. “I know.”

They sat on the sofa with the best view of the green, an overstuffed coral and teal affair that had been here longer than Freddy had been alive. He wondered if they weren’t adding more stuffing every year, just to see if someone noticed.

His mother’s harpsichord was glaring with sunlight from the corner, its polished white surface serving as an aggressive mirror for the afternoon sun.

It threw a wavering reflection on the carpet in its particular shape, so bright and hot that Freddy thought it a wonder that the fibers hadn’t burst into flame many times over by now.

He used to love that spot, he realized. When he was little, he’d sit in the warmth and delight in making things catch the light.

He wondered if his son did the same. Did little Oliver Hightower like this patch of fire in the solar?

Did he cast sunlight about with buttons and beads and teaspoons just to see if he could?

Why did picturing it make his throat ache?

“You’re optimistic,” his mother said, snapping him out of his reverie. She was still holding his arm, even though they were seated now, staring up at him like she could see through his skin and into his mind. “I gather that optimism means you intend to reconcile?”

“Reconcile?”

“With Claire,” she prompted with a little frown. “Really, Freddy, how poor is your attention span when you’re not even listening to yourself?”

“Oh, right. With Claire. Do you want the details of all my sordid plans, then?” he teased, chuckling when she pinched him. He blinked, forcing his eyes away from the sun-bathed fire starter on the carpet. “Yes. If it is possible, I intend to reconcile.”

“I don’t think possible is the question, my dearest one. If she ran, she still cares.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he agreed, watching the clouds from the window, at the streaky shadows they cast on the lawn. He thought they looked like they were also in pursuit of one another. Perhaps the clouds themselves were divided lovers, eager to find one another again.

He glanced at his mother, sidelong, and perhaps just a little bit mischievous. “Did you run? When you saw Raul again?”

She pursed her lips, which won an actual laugh from him.

“You did!” he exclaimed. “Did you, really?”

“Not the way you are imagining,” she said with a sniff and a grimace, “but I certainly had the impulse. You’ve met Raul. He intercepted me.”

“Interception,” Freddy said thoughtfully. “Hm.”

“Hm,” she mocked with a click of her tongue. She leaned back in the lumpy embrace of the couch and turned her head, watching him with a little line between her brows. “Don’t mess it up, Freddy. I like Claire. You made a grand mess of it, but you chose well.”

“I know I did,” he replied. “I can’t promise I won’t mess it up, of course, but I would be open to assistance, should you feel so moved to offer it.”

“Ah,” she said, frowning. “Blackmail, is it?”

She reached up and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, considering his expression, like she could find the integrity of his commitment within it.

He smiled again, leaning back to meet her, and sighed happily. “Yes,” he said, pulling her hand from its task and kissing her knuckles. “I think it is.”

“Oh, very well,” she agreed, “I will assist you.”

“Good,” he said.

They sat in silence after that, just mother and son and the afternoon light that spread across the sprawling green of Crooked Nook.

She just had to make it through the wedding. That was all. Just a week, and he’d be gone again. She could survive until the wedding, couldn’t she?

The wedding.

Claire could do that.

Just survive until the wedding.

Once she’d found her breath again and invited quite a lot of dust into her lungs besides, she’d emerged from that phantom library with a new outlook.

She grabbed the first servant she passed by the shoulder and gave two commands—first, get Freddy’s things out of the master chamber, and second, air out that room she’d just found!

What was that room about, existing like that beyond everyone’s perception? Unacceptable!

She’d then taken a turn back toward the proper library to find her son and his governess again, if only to check that she hadn’t completely lost her grip on what was real and what wasn’t.

Oliver was seated with his knees askew on the rug, sorting wooden toys into their proper categories. The governess looked a little harried, yes, but didn’t they always?

“Is it time for luncheon, Mama?” her little angel asked, blinking up at her. “Is it time for tea?”

“Not yet, sweeting,” she said with a gentle smile. “I only missed you.”

“Oh,” he said with obvious disappointment as he waved a wooden crescent at her. “Well, here I am!”

“There you are,” Claire agreed, before silently shutting the door behind her.

A maid was passing with a stack of linens, and Claire held her hand out to signal the girl to stop. “Marianne, have you seen the dowager?”

“Which dowager, my lady?” the girl answered, big brown eyes peeking over the top of the folded sheets.

“The younger,” said Claire with an encouraging little smile. “Imagine if I’d asked for Lady Bentley instead.”

“You wouldn’t be the first today,” the girl replied, those eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m not certain, but I think she’s in the solar. I heard the harpsichord.”

“Thank you,” Claire said, and then, two steps later, she turned. “Marianne! She … is she with Lord Bentley?”

The girl stopped, her stack teetering precariously, and she turned her head. “No, my lady. He went down to the green with Lord de Faria.”

“Who?” Claire paused, tilting her head. “Oh, Dom Raul?”

The girl blinked again, this time in profile. “Isn’t his name de Faria?”

“Call him Dom Raul, Marianne,” Claire said gently. “It is his title, and many fellow Portuguese are with us now.”

“Yes, my lady,” said the girl, “of course, my lady.”

“And thank you!” Claire called as she turned to take the stairs.

“Yes, my lady!” the girl’s voice answered, from much farther away this time, as though she’d broken into a sprint the instant Claire had turned her back, tower of sundry and all.

She gave a little crane of her neck from side to side, reminding herself not to frown lest she wrinkle her face.

Dom was an odd sort of title, certainly.

She, too, might have balked at it when she still lived at her parents’ house in Bloomsbury, but was it really all that different to sir or baron or what have you?

She wasn’t actually sure what Raul’s title was in Lisbon. Given the way titles and nobility and the attitudes of the people were going there, she thought it perhaps unkind to ask.

In any event, he was at least partially British, by way of his grandmother. After the wedding, he was taking his new bride on a tour of the country to choose a new home in which to settle.

Claire hoped they did not go far.

She followed the strains of the harpsichord, which only ever sounded so well under Patricia’s fingers.

There were not many people about, she noted, as they drifted through the afternoon.

She wondered where everyone had gone. Perhaps they were napping to recover from their journeys.

Perhaps they’d gone out to enjoy the sun.

Perhaps they ought to have invited Claire to either event, rather than the panicked hell she was currently embodying.

She walked into the solar, immediately caught about the wrists and ankles by the toccata and dragged closer. It sparkled like the sunlight on the carpets, light and sharp and glinting. If her mother-in-law saw her enter, she did not look up from her sheet music to acknowledge it.

Claire was used to that much. One must always await the needs of the music when the dowager was at her keys.

She crossed her arms and gazed out over the green.

She could see Freddy again, she realized, this time standing at the edge of the little duck pond with Dom Raul. It was absurd, but upon spotting him there, even mostly in saturated silhouette under the high sun, she could suddenly smell him again too.

Had he been in this room?

Recently?

He was holding Raul’s wrist, placing something in his palm.

Claire frowned. Was Freddy already bribing someone, not even half a day into his parole? And, heavens above, was Raul accepting?!

The other man seemed pleased with whatever he was just handed, allowing Freddy to tap at his wrists and gesture out over the pond as a flock of geese passed overhead. Freddy wound backward and mimed throwing something far away.

His integrity?!

“Darling, what are you doing?” Patricia’s voice cut in, just as her husband-to-be began to wind his own form up, just like Freddy’s.

“I …” Claire attempted, unable to look away. “Look there!”

Raul released whatever he’d been handed. A stone, Claire realized. A bloody stone.

It skipped across the pond in rippling jumps, much to the applauding delight of both men.

“Oh,” said Claire, coloring. “Never mind.”

“Well, look at that,” Patricia mused. “He finally got it. I’ve been trying to teach him for weeks.”

Claire turned on her heel, putting the scene firmly to her back. If she had been alone, she also would have fanned her face. As it was, she’d have to hope the sunlight could be feasibly blamed for the elevated color in her cheeks.

“I was looking for you,” she said, a little louder than entirely necessary, drawing polite interest from the other woman. “I think … I wanted to ask … it should be you.”

“It … should?” Patricia repeated, bemused.

“You should introduce Oliver to Freddy,” Claire said quickly, blinking far too many times in the space of the thought. “I can’t. I’ll only make it tense, and that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. It should be you.”

“Oh, Claire,” the other woman said, pressing her fingers to her chest. “I don’t know if that is correct. You are his mother.”

“Yes, I am,” Claire agreed, “and I am asking you, his grandmother. I don’t want to taint his perception of his father or lose my words in a muddle trying to do it. Please. I will beg if you require it.”

“Don’t beg,” said Patricia immediately. “I … I can do it, Claire, but you should at least be present, even if you are only watching from a distance. It seems important that you observe, at the very least.”

“Is it? Important?” Claire replied weakly, knowing it was. “Fine. After dinner, perhaps? Before Oliver goes to bed for the night. You can prepare Freddy to tell him a story or whatever it is fathers do in these situations.”

“These situations,” Patricia repeated softly. “My dear, I think there is little precedent. I don’t think before bed is a good idea, however. The boy won’t sleep if we excite him so late in the day. We could do it now?”

“Now?!” Claire balked. “No! Not now! I need to prepare. Freddy ought to prepare too!”

Patricia gave her a little smile, her face perhaps the most correctly maternal thing in the room at that given moment. “How about tomorrow morning, then?” she suggested, reaching out to squeeze Claire’s shoulder. “You’ll both have the time you need, that way.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Claire said, sucking in a little breath and nodding. “All right. Tomorrow morning it is.”

Tomorrow morning, she told herself many times over the next several hours. Too soon. Too far away.

Tomorrow morning.

She could survive at least until tomorrow morning.