Page 26 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

His father stood, crossed the room and pulled a cord. ‘When the maid comes, I will ask her to bring you something to eat. Food will settle your stomach.’

Henry doubted it.

‘There is water beside you.’

Henry looked across to see a clear glass jug, with an empty glass beside it. He sat up, his brain rolling forward in his skull and his stomach lurching.

His father came back and poured water from the jug into the glass. ‘Here.’ He handed it to Henry. His father may be helping him but he was still angry; his movements were stiff and his voice low and bitter. There was a stern conversation to come. A conversation Henry did not care to have.

Henry took a gulp of the water. His stomach lurched again.

‘Sip it,’ his father ordered, before turning away.

Heat flooded Henry’s face; embarrassment. He was ashamed his father had needed to look after him, it made him feel like a child.

A knock struck the door. ‘Lord Marlow?’

‘Come in!’ his father called .

‘Oh. I’m sorry, sir.’ The maid stepped back, startled.

She had obviously not realised Henry had been joined by his father.

She had been giving Henry the eye his entire stay and probably hoped he had rung to ask her to share his bed.

The thought kicked him sharply in the gut and set the nausea spinning once more. He sipped the water.

‘Please take the chamber pot.’ His father pointed to it. ‘Then bring up some bread and cheese.’

She bobbed a curtsy at his father, picked up the soiled chamber pot, and threw a smile at Henry, out of sight of his father, before bobbing another curtsy and leaving the room.

His father walked to the window, with his back to Henry, as Henry turned to sit on the edge of the bed, his brain thumping.

His father rested his hands on the windowsill and his head bowed in an expression of defeat.

‘You invited Alethea to town,’ he said, without lifting his head.

‘Then deserted her. Do you know how bad that looks? Do you realise how that impacts me?’ His father straightened suddenly and turned.

‘And damn it, this sounds like a conversation my father had with me when I was younger than you, and in pain because your mother had rejected me. But I do not wish to push you away, I only wish you to see sense. When will you grow out of this recklessness? When will you care what others think and feel?’

Self-centred… Henry cared what Susan thought. He feared what Susan thought. ‘I care.’

‘Then you show it poorly. The way you act bears no impression of it.’

Henry grimaced. He was not in the right temper for this.

‘Do not make a face at me. You are an embarrassment. You must know it. Casper has made some bitter comments to me in these last days. You are destroying my friendship when I am naught to do with your foolish acts and self-centred nature. I have tried, Henry, by God, I have tried to make you see sense. I thought when you invited Alethea to town, your accident had encouraged you to change your ways; then I hear you have challenged others to a race again, on a whim. Why?’

Because I needed to escape . ‘Because I felt like it.’ He had never cared to hear his father’s opinion when he was in an melancholy mood.

‘Reckless; as I said. Uncaring; as I said.’ His father walked closer, with quick strides.

Henry stood, so his father could not lean over him and wave a damning finger as he did when Henry was a boy.

‘I am tired of this, Henry! Grow up, boy!’

‘I am grown. It is just you do not see it, and travel miles to drag me out of a brothel, as though I am a youth still.’

‘Because you cannot behave like a grown man,’ his father growled in Henry’s face.

Yes, he could. He could behave too much like a grown man; that was his issue. But the charge of recklessness was true.

Why the hell did I kiss Susan? He might have stayed in town and pretended all was right if he had not.

‘Alethea will not wait forever. I was at a ball which she attended last evening. Do you think she sat out all the dances, awaiting your return? No. Of course she did not. She danced every one of them.’

There was a pause as though his father assumed Henry might be horrified by the news. He wasn’t. He knew very well that Alethea would meet other men and he did not care if Alethea found another man to propose to her, it would be simpler if she did. It meant his guilt would at some point subside.

But whether Susan might ever be persuaded to relinquish her sense of loyalty …

‘The Earl of Stourton sends her flowers, did you know? Casper told me very proudly last evening.’

Henry sighed. He had not known about the flowers. He did now. As Uncle Casper had intended.

‘Alethea and Susan are making a grand impression in town, and you… You will lose her.’

Susan was making an impression… What impression had she made? ‘Did Susan dance every dance too?’

‘Yes. But do not think it means that Alethea was not particularly popular, only that Susan is also popular.’

Henry shut his eyes as the words jabbed at his ribs. Damn!

He sipped the water to give him time to compose himself.

His father turned away and paced across the room, then turned back and stood still, his hands clasping behind his back, as he stared at Henry. ‘Do you care?’

Henry said nothing.

‘I mean, do you care for her?’

He knew what his father had been asking.

‘I like her… and you know I asked her to come to London to see if it might become more than like,’ and I have discovered a burning hunger for her sister – a thirst so fierce I cannot imagine it will ever be quenched.

But he still liked Alethea, only now he knew it would never be more than that.

‘Casper and I have hoped for a union between you since the moment she was born.’

‘I know, Papa. It has been forced down my throat since the moment she was born.’ Henry had no patience for this talk; or his father’s cursed dreams for them.

‘Are you no longer willing?’ His father’s pitch was deep and serious.

‘I have not said that.’ He had not said anything, he could not form the words that would tear the two families apart. He was not as reckless nor as selfish as they thought.

What might he be saying now, though, if Susan had come to the bookstore? What might have happened next?

The words inside him were a constant waterfall of desire, guilt – fear and hope.

That was why he left London. Not to run, but to deal with this riot of emotion.

It was a melee of feelings storming at each other.

He had been managing it with a daily substantial dose of liquor since he’d arrived here.

‘You have embarrassed me,’ his father said. ‘The whole of London will learn you are here, when Alethea is there.’ He paused for an instant and swallowed. ‘And damn, I sound far too much like your grandfather.’ He looked up at the ceiling, then back at Henry.

‘I have been you. I have drunk myself stupid, gambled and acted irresponsibly. My father sent me abroad so I would not be an embarrassment to him. I have always regretted that I cut myself off. He died before I returned.’ He sighed, then in a lower softer voice, said, ‘Perhaps this is justice, that I have such a son in return. But I will not cut you off.’

Henry said nothing. What was there to say?

His father sighed again. ‘I will not force you to take Alethea. That would not work for either of you. I married your mother for love. You ought?—’

‘I know?—’

‘If there is no feeling there, then we should make it clear to her and Casper that you are unable to fulfil our hopes. I know he only wishes Alethea happy too, he would rather you were not forced.’

‘I know you will not force me, Papa.’ If he was going to back out of their arrangement then Alethea ought to be the first to know, not his father .

‘Then when the hell will you accept some responsibility, and cease this behaviour?’

Henry put down the glass of water and rubbed his temple. ‘When I do not have a thumping headache. Must you shout?’

His father stared at him. ‘Will you come back to London with me?’

To face the mess he had made of things… ‘Yes.’ He had to face it at some point.

There was a knock at the door. His father walked over and opened it, then held it open. It was a footman with a table for them to eat at and the maid with the meal his father had ordered.

‘What am I to do to get through to you?’ his father asked as they sat down to eat.

‘Nothing, Papa, I must get through to myself. I am certain no one else will achieve it.’

‘Am I to give up on you then, and wait for Percy to leave university to have a sensible son?’

‘Have no hope of Percy, he is as bad as me, and you know it,’ Henry said as he spread golden-yellow butter on the soft sweet-scented bread that had suddenly made his appetite roar.

‘Then perhaps I should wait for your younger brothers. Perhaps Stephen will step up to the mark.’

‘Except he looks up to Percy as Percy has always looked up to me.’

‘Then I will move Gerard and William to a different school, so they cannot be tarnished by stories of your antics, and send them to Cambridge not Oxford. There, so now the situation is resolved,’ his father said with his more usual note of satire. He had no intention of doing any of it.

Henry smiled. ‘You have good odds, with five sons, that at least one of us will meet your expectations. Perhaps William as the last will be the best of us all. ’

A note of humour rumbled in the back of his father’s throat.

His father might frequently express his anger and annoyance, whenever he and Henry were in a room together they seemed to rub each other up the wrong way, and yet, despite it, they were still close.

He liked, nay, loved, his father. Love. The emotion stirred inside him, topping all the others.

The intensity of his feelings for Susan resembled the clasp of love.