Page 92 of Restored

That was the thing about hearts, Henry reflected. They looked quite small, but they could hold a lot—and all kinds of love at the same time, some of which could not be neatly boxed and labelled.

“I loved your mother. We loved each other. That’s all that matters.”

Itwasall that mattered, Henry decided. Really, when all was said and done, what else was there?

Kit had said that Henry could return to him at seven o’clock. He glanced at the clock.

Not quite noon.

Hell.

Well, there other things he could do in the meantime—spend some time with Marianne, plan his return to Wiltshire, and of course, come up with some way of persuading Kit to spend the rest of his life with Henry.

23

Kit

“I’m selling the club,” Kit said.

“You never are!” Mabel exclaimed, sitting forward in her chair and making Nell Gwyn—who had been perched on her shoulder—squawk and rise up in a fluster of outraged feathers.

“I am,” Kit confirmed.

“To that Sharp fellow?”

Kit nodded. “What do you think?”

“Depends on the price,” Mabel said promptly, canny as ever.

Kit told her the arrangements and was relieved when she nodded her approval.

“You’ve done well, my lad,” she said, and her eyes grew a little misty. “I wish your mother was here to see this. She would be that proud.”

He smiled, touched. Mabel Butcher was a tough woman, but even now, all these years on, she got a tear in her eye when she mentioned his mother. Kit had been thinking of Minnie Redford more often lately, remembering how much fun she had been when he was small, how proud he had been of having a mother so much lovelier than everyone else’s. Remembering too, less happily, the first time he’d seen her with a bruise on her face, and the times he’d seen her sadness, her exhaustion, her worry.

He wished he could have had just one chance to lighten her load, instead of making it always heavier.

“She knows,” a soft voice said, and when Kit looked up, it was to find the usually silent Gracie watching him with a calm expression. “She’s looking down on you from heaven, Mr. Redford.”

Kit was embarrassed to feel a lump rise in his throat at her gentle assurance. He didn’t believe in angels and heaven, but something in Gracie’s certainty made him at least want to do so.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“What will you do with yourself now, then, ducky?” Mabel asked. “A comfortable retirement? Your mother and I always used to say we’d retire to Southend. She fancied the seaside.” She sighed.

“You could still go there,” Kit said, but she waved that off.

“I’d only have been going for Minnie,” she said. “I’m London born and bred, and I plan to die here too.”

“You’ll live forever,” Kit said scornfully. “You and that bloody parrot.”

Nell whistled loudly. “Bloody parrot! Don’t be rude!”

Mabel chuckled, affectionately stroking the parrot’s head with the crook of her finger. “Ah, Nelly, my clever darling.” Then glancing at Kit, she said, “So? Retirement?”

“I’m too young for that,” Kit said, smiling.

“Another business then? Or the country? There’ll always be money in land.”