Page 40 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

He sighed as he walked towards the front door. It opened before he reached it. A footman stood there. ‘My lord.’ He bowed.

‘Is my uncle, Lord Marlow, here?’

‘He is, my lord.’

‘Please ask if I might speak with him?’ He hoped for someone to share his burden with. Though his uncle could never take the guilt away he might take on a portion of the responsibility.

The footman disappeared through a door as Henry waited in the hall. He took off his hat and gripped the rim in both hands.

It was not the footman who returned but Harry. ‘Come in, you fool!’ he shouted as he walked out from the dining room. ‘What are you doing loitering in the hall?’

Swallowing my pride . ‘Kicking my heels. I want to speak with your father about mine.’

‘He is eating breakfast. Come and have something to eat.’

Harry was wearing his scarlet jacket, the brightness of it glared in comparison to the black armband cutting across one scarlet sleeve. The sight clawed at Henry’s chest more than his whole family’s blacks.

He breathed in, to keep his breath steady, as he followed Harry. It was so strange to see Harry; he was a figure from Henry’s past, part of the Henry he could no longer relate to. He was not the same now. Life was not the same. It would never be the same again.

‘I am sorry about William.’ Harry’s hand rested on Henry’s shoulder for a moment. ‘It is a tragedy.’

God, it felt so much more than that. It was an irreparable tear ripped open in life. Henry did not answer. There were no words to respond with.

The solemnity hanging over his own family was absent from this dining room. They were not in black nor whispering, they were talking busily and yet when they saw him the air filled with pity. The women stood immediately. Rob’s wife, Caroline, Henry’s Aunt Ellen and his female cousins.

Mary, the eldest of his cousins, who was here with her husband, and Helen, Jennifer, Georgiana and even the youngest Jemima, who was twelve, were all drawn across the room to him, to offer condolences and comfort.

Bees coming to his flowering misery. Women were like that.

Alethea had been like it yesterday. Revelling in the opportunity to commiserate and show their capacity for compassion.

The reaction was shallow when moments ago they had been speaking as though the world was unchanged.

It had changed entirely for him.

After he had been relieved of his hat and endured their kisses on his cheek, and their kind words, and accepted a chair at the table and a dainty porcelain cup filled with tea from Rob’s wife, he looked about the room.

Edward, Rob, Harry, and Drew, who was Mary’s husband, sat together at the table, looking at him with expressions that carried the pity the women had shown.

His younger male cousins must have remained in school, at Eton, where William had died. They had been close to William , but like Gerard and Stephen, would be continuing life and denying their grief, pretending nothing had happened.

An urge shot through Henry to stand up and walk out. He could not abide this; the pain of watching others leading a normal life. He sipped the warm tea to dispel the tight sensation in his throat and let its sweetness take charge of his senses.

‘You wished to speak with me…’ his uncle said gently.

‘Yes, but alone.’

‘We will talk when you have finished your tea.’

Henry could see the next question on his uncle’s lips. How are you? He hoped he would not ask it and turned to Harry. ‘I am surprised to see you, I thought you were with your regiment.’

‘I have a leave of absence to attend the funeral.’

Henry looked at Rob, fighting to deflect the conversation from himself. ‘I am sorry if this has meant you are descended upon by visitors you did not expect.’

‘I am happy to be descended upon, but the circumstance… for such a sad event I would not wish on anyone. We all miss William.’

William’s name on Rob’s lips whispered through Henry’s soul. Rob smiled.

‘We came straight here when we heard.’ Drew also smiled sympathetically. ‘It is awful.’

Henry looked away, searching his thoughts for another question to ask someone to avoid facing more consolation.

Harry provided the distraction. ‘Can you believe a brother and sister of mine have developed such boring streaks, Henry?’ he said, referring to Rob and Mary. ‘They so rarely come to town, it is easy for them to change plans at the drop of hat.’

Drew laughed with a bark of humour before answering, ‘Your sister is not boring, just carrying another child. And some of us prefer a sedate life, Uncle Baba…’

Uncle Baba was the name Drew had bestowed on the black sheep among Henry’s cousins and he loved teasing Harry with it.

‘Baaaa.’ Harry made the sound in a way that said the name was as good as a sash of honour. ‘You were a black sheep once and now you might act as white as snow but I have heard tales of your past. You lived far more wildly than I may ever achieve.’

‘Those times are precisely that, in the past . Now I am as white as snow,’ Drew retorted with a smirk.

‘And as boring and dull as Rob,’ Harry countered .

The teasing and debating continued as Rob took exception to the charges against him.

Henry looked at his uncle. He drank the last of the tea then set his cup down on its saucer. ‘May we talk, Uncle?’ he said over the others’ conversation.

Edward smiled and set his cup down too, even though it was half full. He stood. ‘Shall we walk outside?’

Henry’s father was full of mocking humour and sharp wit – much like Harry, or himself. Uncle Edward was more serious and measured.

When they left the table he lifted a hand, directing Henry towards the door into the hall.

In the hall, he told the footman who had followed they did not need him, then looked at Henry. ‘If we go out the front door the others will assume we have gone to look at horses or something else more business-like. Shall we do that?’

This was how his uncle was – always insightful.

Once they were outside, he did not turn towards the stables, but away from them, crossing the gravel frontage. Henry walked beside him.

When they entered the yew-lined avenue leading to the garden at the rear of the house, Uncle Edward stopped, turned and his arms wrapped about Henry’s shoulders.

The comfort gripped at Henry’s heart. It was what he had needed his father to do – but then perhaps his father needed to be held too…

He would never accept that gesture from Henry. Would he?

Henry sighed.

Uncle Edward’s arms slipped away. ‘Tell me how I may help,’ he said, walking on.

‘It is Papa.’ Emotions pressed at the back of his throat. He swallowed as he tried to speak. ‘I would be grateful if you spoke with him…’ His words dried, strangled by the grief he battled with.

‘Why?’

He coughed into his fist, clearing the pain from his throat for a moment. ‘He has become withdrawn. He barely speaks, and Stephen and Gerard are not coping, and Mama…’ Henry had to swallow. ‘She cries all the time.’

‘And you?’ his uncle asked.

I need help. I wish to grieve and I cannot because I need to help them and I am not succeeding.

‘I will speak to him,’ his uncle said without waiting for Henry’s answer.

‘Robert has always run from grief.’ He stopped walking and turned to look at Henry, then clasped his upper arm.

‘He will recover, Henry, time will pass and then things will go back to a normal life of some description. Never the same, but normal. The loss of someone never heals over completely, yet the rift in life knits back together with time.’

Henry’s thoughts turned to himself; he could not imagine the slashes of guilt and grief healing.