Chapter 9

“We should therefore be ready to set off for London by the end of this month, if we are to arrive in the first weeks of the Season.”

The dowager had chattered away making plans excitedly all through dinner, with James encouraging her. And it was giving Robert a blinding headache.

Miss Langton, at least, was quieter than usual.

Do not think about her, he instructed himself firmly. Not about the feel of her lips against your own, not about the fire you discovered lurking beneath that innocent exterior, not about the feel of her soft, pliant body pressed against your own.

“Robert, dear, is that amenable to you?”

“I couldn’t care less when we go, Mother,” he answered abruptly then immediately felt like a heel as hurt flashed in her eyes.

Damn and blast, he could not get a hold on his temper this evening.

But the end of the month would be the anniversary of Gina’s death. Were they all going to just ignore it in favour of fancy balls and fripperies?

He already felt bad enough that he’d been distracted from remembering his little sister by the doe-eyed blonde driving him insane with desire.

It was annoying him that they were all seemingly ignoring Gina’s upcoming anniversary, but he had caused his mother enough pain to last a thousand lifetimes already and snapping at her was unfair and uncalled for.

“My apologies,” he uttered coarsely. “What I mean is, I will ensure everything is in place for whenever you want to set off. My man of business will begin making enquiries at the inns we intend to stop at along the way.”

The journey to London would take a goodly time, and the dowager would tire easily.

James, he knew, would spend as much of the journey as possible on horseback, as would he.

And as for Miss Langton, well she’d managed to cross the Atlantic, then travel from Liverpool to Northumberland after only a couple of days’ rest and still look beautiful. So, she obviously travelled well.

His mother’s smile returned at once.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I know the idea of being in Town for the Season holds no appeal for you.”

“Then he shouldn’t come.”

In shock, Robert looked down the table to the bloody nuisance with the big mouth.

As he watched, he saw the exact moment she realised that she’d been heard.

Her wide blue eyes grew larger still, and she clamped a hand over the mouth that had tormented his thoughts since he’d tasted it that morning.

A quick glance at the other occupants showed they were as shocked as he, though James looked more amused than anything else.

Robert looked back at Miss Langton and raised a brow.

His lips twitched infinitesimally in amusement as heat suffused her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” she finally blurted into the shocked silence. “That was unpardonably rude. I-I didn’t mean—that is to say… I wasn’t saying…”

She floundered desperately, and Robert found himself actually feeling sorry for her. Wanting to jump in and rescue her somehow. So, of course, he stayed quiet.

Because it wouldn’t do to feel anything for the chit, sympathy or otherwise.

“What I meant was that if his grace finds London so unpleasant, I should hate to be an inconvenience to him in forcing him to go.”

She addressed this to her plate, presumably because she didn’t dare make eye contact with any of them.

“You’re already an inconvenience, Miss Langton, so it makes no difference if that’s here or in London.”

Once again, the room fell into a stunned silence.

This time, however, the disapproval came off his fellow occupants in waves. He didn’t need to look at them to know they were furious.

Besides, his sole focus was on the beauty sitting down the table from him.

Her eyes flashed a sudden, blue fire, and an answering flame flickered to life inside him.

He’d felt more riotous emotion in the short time she’d been here than in his whole life.

It was irritating as hell. But though he hated to admit it, there was a small part of him, a part he thought had died all those years ago on the riverbank, that found it exciting.

However, if he was hoping for a fight, he was to be disappointed it seemed.

For as closely as he was studying her, he saw the fire die in her eyes just as quickly as it had flashed there.

“I find I have a sudden headache,” she mumbled into the strained silence. “Please, excuse me.”

“Abigail!” his mother called after the young lady as she dashed from the room.

And James, who had stood when Abigail had, turned to face Robert, fury stamped on his usually affable face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled.

It was a testament to his friend’s anger that he would use such language in front of the dowager.

Robert laughed, but there was no humour in it.

“Do you want a list?” he asked sardonically.

“I knew you wouldn’t exactly be the most welcoming of hosts, Robert. And I know the image you so carefully cultivate so that you can hide behind it, but I’ve never known you to be intentionally cruel.”

“Watch yourself, James,” he warned, injecting steel into his voice.

He and James could say a lot of things to each other. As could Simon and Nicholas. But some things were too close to the mark, and therefore off limits.

“Watch myself? Do you expect me to sit here and listen to you insult my cousin?”

And just like that, Robert’s temper exploded.

“Why the hell shouldn’t you?” he demanded, standing with enough force to send his chair tumbling to the floor. “I’ve had to sit here listening to you all making plans to take London by storm and ignore the anniversary of Gina’s death.”

His mother flinched as though he’d slapped her, and James’s face blanched as he sank back in his chair with a thump.

But Robert didn’t care.

His breathing was ragged, and he struggled to get it back under control.

Suddenly the room felt oppressive, the air toxic.

He turned and stormed away from them, needing to escape their stares.

If only it were as easy to escape himself.

The clock on the mantle ticked a steady rhythm, the only sound in the study aside from an occasional crackle of the fire.

It had been two hours since Robert had stormed from the dining room, yet he still felt as unsettled as ever.

What he’d said about Gina—it had been unspeakably cruel, he knew.

He’d never spoken like that to or in front of his mother.

And he could admit to himself, at least, that the longer he spent in the company of Miss Abigail Langton, the looser his grasp on his emotions became.

She wasn’t to blame for his behaviour, of course. She wasn’t to blame for his temper, or his rudeness, or his cruelty to his family and closest friend.

But the truth was the more time he spent around her, the harder it was to keep his distance. He was concentrating so much effort on not touching her as he wished or caring for her as he was afraid he could, that he was losing control in other aspects of his life.

A soft knock sounded on the closed study door, and Robert’s heart picked up speed in response.

Ridiculous to think his thoughts had somehow conjured her.

“Enter,” he called gruffly.

The door creaked open. But it was his mother, not Abigail Langton, who stepped hesitantly into the room.

He steadfastly ignored the twist of disappointment.

“I don’t wish to disturb you.”

Robert hated himself for the worry sketched on his mother’s face.

When would he stop hurting this woman, whose only crime was to have given birth to him in the first place?

“You’re not disturbing me,” he answered softly.

He needed to apologise. But for some reason, the words stuck in his throat.

His mother moved further into the room, her burgundy skirts swishing about her as she glided forward.

Her grey eyes, a lighter shade than his own, took in her surroundings before she settled smoothly in one of the high-backed chairs and faced him.

“I used to spend so many hours in here when your father was alive,” the dowager said softly, her eyes gentle, her still beautiful face etched with lines of age and grief.

“He was always so busy. Sometimes I would just sit by the window and read quietly while he worked. It was enough to be in the same room as him.”

Robert felt a sickening churn of guilt and grief in his stomach.

His father was dead because of him. The grief of Gina’s death had led him to drink. And Gina’s death had been Robert’s fault.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hearing how jagged his voice was but unable to help it. “I’m sorry for what I said at dinner. It was—unpardonable.”

The dowager studied him in silence for a moment, her gaze searching.

Finally, she spoke.

“You know, there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of your sister. Not one single day. Every morning I open my eyes, and for an infinitesimal moment, I forget why I feel like I can’t breathe properly. And then, I remember it all.”

Robert was struggling to breathe himself. He had thought he was the only one who felt that way.

But his mother had lost her child. And as torturous as his own feelings were, he couldn’t even begin to imagine the horrors his mother lived with.

“The truth is, I haven’t been able to take a proper breath since the day Gina died. I think it’s because when you love someone as a mother loves her child, your soul splits and is no longer fully your own. Parts of it belong to your children.” She paused and smiled gently at him. “And if you’re lucky, to the person you marry. So, when part of your soul dies, you’re never fully whole again.”

His mother’s words, the vocalising of her pain after all these years, were like excruciating daggers piercing Robert’s heart. But he welcomed the pain. He deserved it.

“I have lost two parts of my soul.”

There was a pause, a silence that Robert couldn’t even attempt to fill.

“I hadn’t forgotten her anniversary, Robert.”

“I know,” he said gruffly.

“But I can remember your sister. Grieve for her and your father, and still be among the living. I’ve learned that these past days.”

The dowager leaned across the mahogany desk that had been his father’s before him and clasped his hand.

“You haven’t learned to do the same.”

“That’s ridiculous, I—”

“No, Robert,” she interrupted softly. But it was enough to silence him because they both knew she was right.

“I don’t know how.” He hated himself for admitting it, a weakness in the face of his mother’s unerring strength. “I don’t know how you do it.”

His mother shook her head sadly and squeezed the hand she still held.

“I do it because I have someone to do it for,” she said. “You.”

Robert’s heart thumped painfully in his chest.

“So, that’s the answer?” he asked, unable to keep the bitterness from his tone. “A child?”

“Love,” she answered softly, undeterred by his sneering.

He laughed derisively, hating that an image of Abigail Langton with her golden curls and wide blue eyes swam before his eyes.

“I don’t have it in me to love, Mother,” he said. “And who would ever love the Monster of Montvale Hall?”

“I love you,” she said firmly.

Robert couldn’t stand this anymore.

He pulled his hand from hers and stood.

Marching over to his steadily depleting decanter of brandy, he poured himself a generous measure and swallowed it whole.

“How can you, after what I did?”

The question tumbled from his lips before he could recall it.

He heard his mother move toward him, then felt her hand on his arm.

“You didn’t do anything, Robert.” She still spoke in that even, determined tone. A tone that almost reassured him enough to believe her. “You have to stop blaming yourself. Gina’s death—”

“Was caused by me. Father’s death was caused by me.”

His mother blanched.

“What? How can you possibly think that?”

Robert shrugged her hand off his arm.

“He drank himself into an early grave, Mother, and we both know it. And he did that because he couldn’t handle Gina dying. And she died because of me.”

Robert turned away again to stare unseeingly out his study window.

The night sky was immense and cloudless, yet the thousands of stars might well have not been there for all the attention he paid them.

He heard the dowager sigh behind him and then heard the unmistakable clink of ice hitting a glass.

Turning, he saw to his surprise that his mother was pouring an extremely generous measure of brandy for herself.

Wordlessly, she recapped the decanter, replaced it, then picked up her glass and downed the liquid in one seamless movement.

“I think,” she said, turning to him, her eyes bright and fierce, “that I have made a very grave error with you, my dear.”

Robert’s heart stopped in his chest.

Here it came—the recrimination, the anger, the hatred he’d always expected from the only real family he had left.

Maybe their having had this conversation had woken her up to the truth of Robert’s crimes.

“All these years,” she continued speaking, though she made no attempt to move back to him.

And he was glad of it.

He had kept his mother at an emotional and physical distance since his childhood, he knew.

Yes, he ate meals with her, spoke to her, provided her with anything and everything he thought she could want.

But for all he cared for her, he’d treated her like a stranger at times.

So, talks like these were non-existent. Until now, apparently.

Physical closeness as well as this attempt at frankness and honesty would be too much to bear.

“After Gina’s death,” the dowager continued, only the slight wobble in her voice indicating that her control on her emotions wasn’t as strong as first appeared. “After that terrible, awful accident, I saw how much pain you were in. And it almost killed me, Robert.”

His mother refilled her glass and then moved to sit on the chaise by the window.

Without her asking, Robert mirrored her actions and sat with his own much-needed drink.

“I will never forgive myself for allowing my own pain and grief to blind me to yours. I knew you were suffering, of course. But I-I wasn’t handling things all that well at that time.” She attempted a small smile but for the life of him, Robert couldn’t return it. “And everyone told me that children are resilient. Children bounce back. Children accept things that adults find harder.”

She stopped and took a generous gulp from her glass.

“I was selfish. So very selfish. I chose to believe what they said was true. The doctor had given me laudanum to help me sleep, and I took it for weeks, ignoring nearly everything and everyone. Pretending to myself that you didn’t need more of me than the shell I was giving you.”

Robert’s head was spinning. How could his mother think she had any part in the plentiful guilt surrounding that day?

“I will never forgive myself,” she spoke quietly, into her glass.

“Mother—”

“Please, let me finish,” she interrupted his protestations. Reaching out and once again clasping his hand with her free hand, she continued, “Over time, it seemed as though the opportunity to truly help you come to terms with things had passed. Your nightmares had stopped.”

No, they hadn’t. But he’d learned to manage them alone. Pretended to everyone that they were gone.

“You remember how I used to sit with you. Sing you back to sleep.”

“I remember you moved yourself into my rooms for weeks.” He grinned despite the sombre mood of the evening. “If my friends at Eton had known that my mother was sleeping in a cot in my room, they’d have never let me live it down.”

He was grateful to see the dowager laugh softly.

“But the nightmares stopped, and your father insisted you were ready to go back to school, and then life just seemed to…go on.”

Little did his mother know that Robert had lived in a personal hell that first year back at school. And only the friendship of James, Simon, and Nicholas had kept him from something truly dire.

“I know that you blame yourself for Gina’s death, despite what I have told you many, many times. But your father—”

Here, Robert flinched slightly. It was true that in those first years, his mother had desperately told him he wasn’t to blame for what had happened that day.

They’d never, however discussed his father.

“Robert, I loved your father very, very much. But he was weak in some ways.”

Shock had him lifting his stormy eyes to his mother’s.

The duke had been formidable to say the least.

Something of what he was feeling must have showed on his face.

“Oh, he was powerful and brilliant, just like his son.” She smiled before sobering. “But he was weak in ways that truly mattered. He insisted that life go back to normal, for your sake, and I saw the merit in that. But he never tried to really heal from Gina’s death. Normal to him meant things appearing to be fine, without them actually being fine. I didn’t realise that back then. I just went along with it. Had he been more honest, more open about his grief, he would not have turned to alcohol and come to rely on it so greatly.”

“But Gina’s death was because—”

“Tell me, Robert, do you drown your many sorrows in two bottles of brandy every single night?”

He had done, often. But not every single night. He didn’t rely on it. Didn’t need it.

“No,” he admitted gruffly.

“You, who were a child when the accident occurred. You, who was there and tried to save her. You, who had the mantle of duke, the duchy, and all of its many responsibilities thrust onto your young and grieving shoulders?”

“No,” he said again.

“Your father chose his path, Robert. He died because of his choices. His choices. And only his.”

Robert said nothing as he allowed his mother’s words to sink in.

She really didn’t blame him for losing her husband only a few short years after losing her daughter.

“There is blame to share, for so many things. None of us are blameless for the events after Gina’s death.” His mother finished her drink, placed the glass on the floor, then stood and shook out her skirts.

“Loving you has gotten me out of bed every day. Being your mother has been my purpose in life. I failed you then, but I will not do so again. You must find a way to forgive yourself for what happened, or it will consume you. It’s been slowly consuming you for years.”

Robert remained in his seat, refusing to make eye contact with his mother.

Perhaps there was truth in what she said of his father. But not Gina.

“You have a wonderful heart, even encased as it currently is in ice. But please, my dear, please let someone in. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to share your soul.”

Without another word, his mother left the room.

Their talk had been more honest and open than any they’d ever had, and it left him feeling raw and drained.

But more than that, it had chipped away a tiny piece of his armour.

And that was no good.

For who would ever want to share a soul as black as his?