'Twas the Night After Christmas (26 page)

Before Fowler could answer, Pierce said, in a tone that brooked no argument, “Fowler has a great deal to do for me this evening, since he’s been busy elsewhere today.”

“But, Pierce, surely it can wait until tomorrow,” his mother said.

“No, his lordship is right,” Fowler said smoothly. “I’d already planned to return to Montcliff Manor for a couple of hours before I headed home.”

It was clear from the quick glance he shot Pierce that the two of them had worked that out before they’d entered the coach. Camilla stifled a sigh. It was going to be a long night.

“Oh, very well,” Lady Devonmont said, clearly unaware of the ambush being prepared for her.

As soon as they arrived, Jasper woke up enough to climb down from the carriage. While the rest of them headed inside, Mr. Fowler rode off in Pierce’s coach-and-four to Montcliff Manor.

The footman took their coats, and Camilla told Jasper to go upstairs with Maisie to have his supper. “I’ll be up in a bit to tuck you in, muffin,” she said. He looked too tired to complain that she wasn’t joining him.

“I’m sure they held dinner for us,” her ladyship said as soon as Maisie and Jasper left. “It may be a bit cold, but—”

“Mother, I wish to speak to you in the study,” Pierce interrupted.

Her ladyship blinked. “In the study! About what?”

“About something we should have discussed years ago.”

That put her fully on her guard. “I don’t think this is the time or place.”

“It’s either in the study now, Mother,” he said firmly, “or else here in front of the servants.”

The two footmen who’d been helping them with their coats exchanged furtive glances, and the countess paled. With a tight nod, she swept ahead of him down the corridor that led to the study.

Camilla stood there, uncertain what to do.

Pierce turned to her. “I want you there, too.”

“Are you sure? She might be more honest with you if I’m not.”

“I doubt that. She told you more of the truth the other night than she’s said to me in my entire life.” He offered her a rueful smile. “Besides, if you’re there, I might actually keep my temper long enough to get at the truth.”

“If she’s being her usual stubborn self, I may not keep my own temper.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.” He held out his arm. “Come, it’s time to ask her the hard questions. I don’t think I can do it alone.”

“All right.” She took his arm, but her heart flipped over in her chest. What did it mean, that he wanted her with him at such a moment? She tried not to read anything into it, but it was hard not to.

As they walked down the corridor, another thought occurred to her. She’d never been in his father’s old study. She’d asked her ladyship about it once, and the countess had said she didn’t like to go in it. To her knowledge, Pierce never went in it, either. So why had he picked it for this discussion?

When he opened the door and they walked in, Camilla felt an instant chill, and it wasn’t just from the lack of a fire in the room. What little furniture there was lay under canvas cloths, and the place looked as cold and barren as a mausoleum. His mother stood with her back to them, staring at the shrouded desk. Pierce visibly stiffened and cast a quick look around, as if even being in the room caused him pain.

Apparently the same was true for his mother, because as soon as he closed the door, she shuddered before she faced them.

When she saw that Camilla was with him, she gave a start. Avoiding Camilla’s gaze, she said, “She shouldn’t be here.”

A dark scowl knit his brow. “I wouldn’t be in this house at all if not for her. I wouldn’t have spent the past week here, nor would I have considered, even for a moment, dining with you or spending
time with you or even going to the bloody—” He caught himself. “She has championed you and fought for you from the beginning. So she at least deserves to know why.”

His mother swallowed hard. “Pierce, I do not wish to—”

“Why did your cousin come to the fair to see you twenty-three years ago?” he asked bluntly.

The color drained from his mother’s face. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.” Pulling away from Camilla, he approached the countess. “I remembered something today at the fair. I remembered seeing you argue with Gilchrist. Barely two days later, he was here at the house and Father was arguing with you about it. And not long after that, I was banished.”

He stared her down. “So I ask you again, Mother, why was he here? What did you argue about? What did he tell Father that day?”

She tipped her chin up. “Nothing. Not a blasted thing.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “Gilchrist obviously knew
something
about you—or perhaps about
me
—and whatever it was held enough power to give Father a hold over you that caused you to give up your only son. So damn it, I deserve to know what the man said!”

“I did not give you up!” she cried. “Not in my heart. Not for one day.”

His eyes were ablaze. “It certainly felt that way to me.”

Her face crumpled. “I know. But we can start anew, forget the past—”

“Not until I have the truth from you.”

“My cousin said nothing, I swear! You know how your father always was.”

“Yes, but he only banished me from this house after Gilchrist came here. That can’t be a coincidence.” Pierce set his shoulders. “So tell me this. Am I really Father’s son?”

Camilla groaned. Pierce knew nothing about subtlety, at least when it came to his mother.

Her ladyship gaped at him, then lowered her brow to a fierce glower. “If you are implying what I think you are—”

“I’m not implying anything,” he snapped. “I’m trying to get at the truth. And it seems to me that the one thing Father could hold over your head, the one thing that would make him banish me from this house, is that you bore him some other man’s child!”

“Some other man’s—” She muttered an oath under her breath. “Anyone can look at you and tell that you’re his son!” She drew herself up with all the dignity a countess could muster. “And how dare you accuse me of . . . of . . . ”

“I wouldn’t blame you for marrying with a babe in your belly, especially given what I’ve learned of your situation. I only seek the truth—the reason for why Father hated me so much that he sent me away. The reason for why you
let
him send me away, and keep me away until his death. And the only reason I can come up with is that I wasn’t his.”

Casting him a blistering glance, she turned for the door. “I’m not going to stand here another moment and be accused of such a thing in my own home.”

“It’s
my
home now, remember?” he cried as he followed her, his face alight with righteous anger. “Mine. The house is mine.
The estate is mine. It’s
all
mine. You may be queen of this particular part of it, but it’s only because
I
allow it. So the least I deserve from you is the truth!”

She paused in her march to the door to glare at him. “And the least I deserve from you, as the woman who brought you into this world, is a modicum of respect.”

That seemed to stymie him. He stood there a moment, his jaw taut and his manner stiff. When he spoke again, his voice was laden with pain. “I’m not asking this because of the years that you left me in the care of my relations, nor even because of the letters I wrote to you that remained unanswered.” There was a sharp hitch in his tone. “I’m asking because ten years ago, I stood in this very room and told you and Father that I wished to come home so I could learn how to run the place that would one day be mine.”

Her face turned ashen.

“I see that you recall that day, too. You may also recall his response.” He glanced over at Camilla with anger glittering in his eyes. “My father told me that if I didn’t get my ‘damned arse’ out of his house and his sight, he would have the footmen forcibly remove me.”

Camilla’s heart lodged in her throat. She could easily imagine a twenty-one-year-old Pierce, determined to demand his due, being confronted by such a blatant rejection from his own father.

How had he stood it? How could he even stand to speak of it now?

With his hands curling into fists, he turned back to his mother. “If you recall, I told him I wouldn’t leave unless he let me speak to you alone. He laughed, but he allowed it. He walked out
and left us together.” His face darkened. “Because he was sure of you, wasn’t he? Sure of his hold on you even then.”

“Pierce, don’t,” her ladyship whispered. Her gaze, torn with agony, flitted briefly to Camilla. “Please don’t talk about this in front of her. Leave it between you and me. I beg you.”

“I won’t leave it,” he said hoarsely. “Not unless you tell me the reason for all of it. That’s the only thing I want. An explanation.
Any
explanation.”

Camilla’s heart sank. He’d brought her in here only to use as a weapon against his mother. “Pierce, leave it alone,” she said in a low voice.

“She won’t tell me!” His gaze locked with his mother’s. “So I have to
make
her tell me.”

“Not like this,” Camilla begged.

“If you insist on revealing to her the awful things I said that day, then go ahead.” His mother’s shoulders were shaking. “But I won’t stay here to witness it.”

As she turned again for the door, Pierce cried, “If you walk out on me again without giving me an explanation, Mother, I swear to God, I’ll leave for London in the morning, and that will be the end of anything between us!”

She halted at the door to glance back at him with a look of pure torment. “All I can tell you is this,” she choked out. “I love you, son. No matter what I did or said during all those horrible years, no matter how things might have appeared to you, I never stopped loving you.”

And with that, she walked out.

Camilla whirled on him, unable to blot out his mother’s
tortured expression. “How could you be so cruel? Clearly she can’t talk about this, and you only make it worse by bludgeoning her with words and accusations!”

With her heart in her throat, she headed for the door, wanting to do something, anything, to help his mother face her pain.

“Cruel?” he called out as she reached it. “You have no idea what cruel is.”

When Camilla glanced back at him, his face had gone dead and cold. And when he spoke again, his voice echoed hollowly. “You find her words of ‘love’ convincing because you don’t know what went before.” He fisted his hands at his sides. “But the last time I stood in this study, the woman you’re so eagerly defending told me to my face that she never wanted to see me again.”

P
erhaps Pierce shouldn’t have revealed it, but right now he would say almost anything to keep Camilla from running to Mother and pandering to the woman’s refusal to face up to what she did. And where else should he say it but in the place of his shame? The place where his parents had both demonstrated how thoroughly they hated him.

Camilla eyed him warily from behind her spectacles. “Your father must have forced her to say it.”

“How, damn it? She was alone with me, right here in this study. She looked me in the eye, her face as cold as a corpse’s, and said that if I ever came within a mile of the estate, she would have me thrown off of it. She told me I wasn’t welcome here and I wasn’t to come back. Ever.”

He saw the shock on her face and felt a moment’s guilt. But damn it, it was time she recognized that he wasn’t at fault. Mother had
chosen
to evict him from her life. And he had every bloody right to hate her for it.

Except that he didn’t.

Bile clogged his throat. He’d thought he did. He’d thought he had shut Mother out of his heart completely. But now he realized he’d left a window open somewhere, and she’d found it and was trying to crawl back in.

All these years, he’d fought so bloody hard to protect his heart. To be as cold as Mother was. Yet all she’d had to say was “I love you, son. . . . I never stopped loving you,” and the wound was torn open again.

How dare she spout such a lie? It wasn’t true. It
couldn’t
be true. Because if it were, if he’d been unfair to her, if he’d been wrong to despise her . . .

“Perhaps your father was listening, and she knew it,” Camilla said, obviously desperate for a way to vindicate his mother. “Perhaps he was waiting in the hall.”

“I considered that at the time.” He stared at the window, remembering the agony coursing through him when he looked out of it and realized . . . “But then I saw him riding away, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, even as she said those horrible things to me.”

His throat felt raw. He couldn’t stop the words from flowing as they never had before. “So I took advantage of his absence. I just couldn’t believe that she wasn’t the same mother who had . . . held me as a boy and comforted me when I suffered from asthma and—”

He choked back a vile oath, struggling to gain control over his riotous emotions. “I grabbed her by the arm and said, ‘I can protect you. I have the inheritance left to me by Grandmother. Come with me now, and we’ll say to hell with him.’ ”

Camilla approached him, but he couldn’t look at her. He hated her pity almost as much as he hated this weakness, this need to unburden himself to her. To show her what a pathetic excuse for a man he was, that his own parents could toss him aside like so much rubbish.