Etiquette With The Devil (31 page)

When she turned, Bly sat in the chair holding her son. She struggled to hold back the aching sob caught in her throat. Her hands ached to hold Rhys as Bly did now, but she remained an impassive front, keeping the tumult to herself.

“Our son,” he said finally when she could not find the right words. Another swell of panic and tears gripped her, but she did not show any emotion.

“
My
son,” she said, her voice frigid, “is a bastard like his mother.”

Clara kept her eyes on the pair—Rhys sleeping with his plump lips parted, his hair mussed about, much like his father, and Bly, staid and motionless. She had noted that he no longer moved about as he once had. He was deliberate now, often stationary and contemplative. It was hard to admit that she wondered why this was so, but she did.

“He doesn’t need to be,” Bly replied, just as coolly.

Clara understood his meaning. Her entire body understood his meaning, because the crush around her heart doubled until it felt as if her ribs would collapse and crush her lungs. She closed her eyes to fight back the tears, but she lost that battle too.

“I thought you were well enough for a visit,” Bly continued, even as he noticed her wet eyes. He did not move to brush the tears away, even as he brought Rhys over and laid the boy beside Clara on the bed. He receded back to his chair and sat, his hands on his knees, his eyes fixed on her and Rhys.

Clara no longer cared that Bly was there; she only had eyes for Rhys.

She brushed back his silky hair, missing the sight of how the brown came alive with gold in the right light. His long eyelashes fluttered from dreaming, brushing the round apples of his cheeks. His lips were like hers, full and pink. His nose was long and straight, much like his father. Rhys was a whole of two broken parts—the better of those two parts—best on his own. A perfect whole.

“My little hero,” she whispered, pulling the quilt to cover him. She rested her hand over his small chest, feeling his heart beat against her palm.

“You weren’t going to tell me,” Bly said, his words laden with bitterness. She did not feel compelled to answer. Instead, she dropped a kiss onto Rhys’s forehead and fought the urge to hug him and never let go.

“Clara?”

She noted the thinly veiled anger in Bly’s voice, so she obliged. “I imagine you are leaving soon. I did not think it was important to tell you.”

“Not important?” Bly shot to his feet and stormed to the foot of the bed where he paced.

There, she thought, watching him with a reserved fascination, there was the pacing beast she remembered. He was not changed at all, not truly.

“Don’t wake him,” she hissed, feeling her lungs contract as if they would suck the air out of her. She did not need to be coughing. She was weak enough watching Bly appear as tortured as he did at hearing her words.

“I told you I was staying,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “I have a right to know. He is my son, Clara. Our son,” he corrected as she opened her mouth to speak.

But Bly did not get to claim Rhys as his so easily.

“My son.” Even though it was a mere whisper, her words were pointed.

Bly bent at the foot of the bed, pressing his hands into the mattress, caging in her feet. She drew her legs back as he peered up at her, pain heavy at his brow.

“Our son. Don’t take him away from me. I’ve only just found him.”

“So you will send me away? That is why I did not tell you. You will keep him to yourself until you tire of him as you did me and the children.”

She watched as anguish pulled at his features, drawing down his shoulders and eyes, until he was bent in half at the foot of her bed, bent as if he were being crushed by the weight of the world.

“You have such little faith in me. As if I could be capable of separating a mother from her child.”

“I do not know you or what you are capable of. Not fully. But from what I have suffered, I can hazard a guess.”

Bly gnawed at his lip until he finally stood and walked to the fireplace.

“This woman,” he said in a deep voice, pointing up at the sad portrait, his words terse. “This woman,” he repeated, “suffered that fate.” His hand dropped to the mantle. “I suffered that. I would never want you or Rhys to know the pain of such a separation.”

Clara saw it now. The woman with eyes like Bly’s, only sadder and blue. It looked as if she were crying, but her thin lips were spread into a smile charged with happy lies. Her hair was black and worn in loose curls, her pale shoulders draped in soft pink satin. It was a beautifully haunting portrait, even more so as her son stood below it, searching for an answer he would never receive.

*

“I was the one who found her in the pond,” Bly whispered. “She drowned herself.” The words were thick in his throat.

He felt Clara move in the bed as if she was trying to close the distance between them. He did not want her comfort, not after what she had said.

“I was returned to England after it was discovered I had a will of my own in India. Apparently, I took away from my father’s favorite pastimes. I was kicked out of a dozen other schools before Eton for bad behavior,” he continued, clearing his throat. If Clara could hate him so easily, then she could hear the part of his past he never wished her to know.

“I only wished to return to Burton Hall, you see. So, I continued acting the role of the hellion until I was chased out of Eton as well. I was sent here until it was decided what to do with me. When I arrived, my mother didn’t recognize me. I hadn’t seen her since my father took Walter and I to India when I was five.”

Bly tapped his fingers against the mantle in a busy rhythm, numbing away the pain that threatened to erupt from within. He paused for a moment and swallowed, casting his eyes to the floor. If she believed him to be the devil, then here was her final proof.

“The changes in my mother were more than those brought on by the passing of years. She had a wild look to her eyes. She lived in a world that was not living. Her body roamed Burton Hall, but her mind was elsewhere. She drifted from room to room, Clara, dressed in her favorite ball gown, wearing every piece of jewelry she owned, acting hostess to an imaginary ball. My mother was mad,” he said in disgust, finally looking to her for some ounce of understanding.

“Why is her portrait kept here instead of the portrait gallery? She does not deserve to be hidden away, Bly.”

“They’ll be unkind. They’ll make a mockery of her.”

“Who will?”

“Anyone who sees the painting. The story does not end with her being mad. It ends with me finding her in a pond after she weighted her skirts. It ends with me never finishing school and buying a commission into the army. It ends with my brother and father continuing on as if nothing happened. She never existed to them. It ends with my aunt being made the laughing stock of London because madness ran in her family. She was thrown off by a duke and left a spinster. The Ravensdales are blackguards and the Napiers are lunatics. I’m the result of both. Completely cursed, ruined by a name.”

“You were a child.”

“I was sixteen. I allowed it to happen. I thought she would be better off under the care of Tilly than in some asylum.”

“You were a child,” Clara insisted again. “You cannot blame yourself for what happened.”

“I killed my mother,” he confessed. He had never spoken those words before now, but there it was—the truth. He was unworthy of everything, including the woman sitting opposite him. She deserved a man capable of care, one that had not fought without rules and taken the lives of others without pause. Killing his mother had only been the first life that fell at his hands.

“Sometimes I wonder if there was a valid reason why my father took us away, and I hate myself more for swaying to his side. He was a selfish man, worse than me if you can believe it.” A heartless laugh escaped him as looked to Clara, her hand pressed against her chest, her eyes wet and dull. “My father took us because he could. He broke my mother’s heart and humiliated her. He robbed his sons of their mother, and because I was selfish, I stole away her life.”

“I wish you would stop saying that,” she said, closing her eyes tight. “It was never your fault. You must stop believing that.” Her voice cracked and Bly realized he had hurt her with his confession, as he feared; maybe as he intended.

Clara gazed down at Rhys and his heart tugged uncomfortably in his chest. To think she thought so lowly of him—that he would take Rhys away—well, his proposal would need to wait.

“I hated her for so long,” Bly said, moving across the room. He pulled the chair close to the bed and sank into the seat, unable to believe what his father was thinking those years ago. He suspected the main difference was his father never cared for his mother. His father only cared for his string of mistresses and his wicked debauchery.

“You are still her son and she never warranted what happened in her life. She was a victim. You—” she swallowed, her eyes shining.

What he would give to hold Clara again.

“You did what you thought best. You did not kill her and I would say you love her, even when you did not think that was possible. You must make peace with that, Bly.”

He reached over and placed two fingers into Rhys’s small hand.

“I did,” he admitted, much to his surprise. “I begged for her help the night I returned and found you dying. I…I forgave her when I saw you breathing the next morning.” His voice was just a small whisper to hide the embarrassment. His confession was a small secret between him, his heart, and that horrible night. He never intended to tell Clara.

“Life is too short to be burdened with hate.”

The conviction in her voice rang through the room louder than a firing cannon.

“Who have you hated?” he dared, knowing the answer.

Clara looked up, her eyes wide and gray. “You,” she said after a long pause.

“I deserve it.”

She must have agreed because she only averted her gaze. “Don’t take him away.”

Still, after everything he told her, she doubted him.

“No one is leaving, Clara. Not even me. Not even if you wish for it.”

C
lara was happy to be out in the late spring sun. After being shut away for so long, the warmth was rejuvenating. As was the smell of the air, rolling over the vast moors and carrying the sweet perfume of spring flowers.

She sat on her knees, the damp earth staining her skirts. None of it mattered as she hummed and clipped another anemone for a bouquet to adorn her new writing desk. What a surprise it had been to be moved from her sickbed to a new room a week ago, a grand room actually, facing the back gardens and fountains.

Her basket was becoming full of fresh-clipped blooms. She paused as Bly stepped down from the back pavilion and strolled her way. She pretended that she did not notice and continued to gather flowers, but it was impossible to ignore his presence, though she had tried since that awful night he had confronted her about Rhys.

Well, awful wasn’t the correct word. It had been meaningful and honest. But in his confession lay his feelings for her, feelings she did not think she could ever return now. Clara had tried her best to avoid him after that night, asking Mrs. Gibbs to sit in with her instead.

His shadow eclipsed her in the garden, depriving her of the warm sun. She clipped her shears through the woody stalk of a peony stem.

“Hello, Clara.”

“Hello.” She placed the blush-colored bloom into her basket, mindful not to look up.

“It’s a lovely day,” he said.

His feet shifted in front of her, but she continued to look at the ground. “It’s pleasant.” She had no interest in discussing the day’s weather.

“I just returned from a ride.”

“Have you?”

He took another step, purposefully blocking the basket from her reach.

“Was it enjoyable?” she asked, shaking the annoyance from her question.

“It was.”

She continued to clip flowers and hold them in her hand when Bly refused to move away from the basket.

“Would you care to go for a short walk?”

“I’m busy,” she retorted quickly. Perhaps it was a little too quickly, because Bly moved his foot to step on her skirts to keep her from her task. She tossed down her shears and glared up to at his imposing body, the sunlight beaming from behind, blocking out his face.

“Just a short walk,” he insisted, as if he was not purposefully holding her attention with his boot on her hem. “We can go to another garden and gather more flowers if you wish it.”

“I have picked enough to serve my purpose. Please remove your foot from my dress.”

Bly stood his ground.

“I cannot stand if you do not remove your foot.”

His boot slowly moved to side before snapping back to her skirts. The devil!

“Bly!”

His foot moved to the side. She grabbed her basket and rose, setting off toward the house without a backward glance.

“Clara,” he called after her. “I thought we could walk in the other direction.”

“I never promised to walk with you. I simply asked for you to remove your foot.” Her breath shortened, but she pressed on. She did not need his sympathy as well. If she appeared weak, he would lock her back up in that sickroom to waste away all summer.