Page 65 of The Best-Kept Secrets
“I wish I could have seen you fight,” Duke said.
Uncle Niles grinned. “The Cornish Duke wasn’t half bad, if I do say it myself.”
“I don’t know how you kept it a secret from your family.” From what Duke had been told, not a single member of the enormous extended Greenberry family had ever discovered Niles’s alter ego.
“In the end,” Uncle Niles said, “I ran away from home.”
That stopped Duke’s pacing on the instant. “You did?”
“I realized that remaining at home meant abandoning the life I wanted to live. I did my best to try to make everything weave together happily, but in the end, it wasn’t possible. So I left and lived for a time with a friend.”
Uncle Niles had left home because living there hadn’t allowed him to claim the life he’d wanted. Of all people, Uncle Niles would understand why Duke needed to request what he’d come to Fairfield to ask.
“Did your family ever forgive you?” Duke heard the unease in his voice.
Uncle Niles clearly did as well. He stepped away from the hay bag and motioned to the sofa. “Have a seat, Duke. I know you think better when pacing, but I suspect you need to do more talking and less thinking.”
There was truth in that.
He sat, feeling nervous and hopeful.
Uncle Niles tossed Duke the shirt he’d pulled off upon arriving. “You’ll grow cold sitting there not moving about.”
Duke stood to pull it on, then dropped back onto the sofa. Uncle Niles sat beside him.
“What is weighing on your thoughts, Duke?”
“I can’t live at Writtlestone.” He slumped back. “I love my parents, but living with them is difficult at best. Whenever I am home, Father talks multiple times a day about his perceived ill-treatment and unfair life. Mother brings up equally as often how put-upon she is and how much happier life would be for her if Father hadn’t been so badly treated. And I have to try to soothe those battered feelings over and over again. And if I don’t do a good enough job of it, they grow petulant and sometimes insulting. The speed and aptitude with which I play the role of placater and ambassador is seen as not merely proof of whether I love them enough but also evidence of whether I am worthy of being loved by them. I can only endure that a few days at a time, but I no longer have Cambridge to escape to when it inevitably becomes too much.”
“Lud, Duke. I didn’t realize things were that bad.”
“I can’t do it every day for the rest of my life. I just can’t.”
“When Ballycar had to be sold, Penelope was heartbroken, but she was also furious. It was her childhood home. It had been the Seymour family home for three generations. It was her last connection to her father, an inheritance she had helped secure and build upon while she’d still been at home.” His eyes took on that far-off look of someone taking a moment to walk through the past. “Not long after that happened, she and I were here at Penfield.” With a besotted smile, he said, “Your aunt can throw a deuced great punch.” He lingered on that thought for a quick moment before returning to what he’d been talking about. “Penelope said she was afraid that if she dwelled on it, the loss of Ballycar and the blame her brother had put on her for it, would turn her bitter and angry. She’d lost enough, and she didn’t want to lose herself as well.”
“I wish I’d known my father before losing Ballycar. It would have been nice to be his son first and foremost instead of... whatever it is I am to him.”
“I wish, for your sake even more than his, that Liam had decided not to let that loss gnaw at him.”
“How often does Aunt Penelope talk about Ballycar or her frustration with my father or Grandmother’s treatment of her and Father?”
“Almost never,” Uncle Niles said. “She’ll sometimes talk about a horse she had as a child or memories of her father at Ballycar. And now and then, she’ll wonder aloud what her brother or mother are doing. But she’s managed over the years to create a separation between the difficulties in the Seymour family and her life from day to day. I think, in all honesty, it saved her.”
“I don’t think I could endure a lifetime at Writtlestone,” Duke said. “But though we aren’t poor, Father’s finances never recovered from losing Ballycar, though that happened before I was even born.”
“But you’ve been paying for that loss your entire life, in more ways than one.”
“I’ve spent many years telling myself that after I was finished at Cambridge, I’d find the resilience to endure a lifetime at Writtlestone.” But instead, he was giving up already, hoisting the white flag. “I never did have the fighting spirit that Colm has, as Grandmother has so often pointed out.”
“Do you know why she says that?” Uncle Niles asked.
“Does she need a reason?” Duke answered dryly.
“I thinkyouneed the reason. Your grandmother belittles you and offers unflattering comparisons to Colm because she knows it will hurt her son. It drives Liam to try harder to earn her elusive approval, not realizing even after a lifetime as her son that she approves of no one.”
Uncle Niles was usually rather quiet, keeping on the outskirts of family difficulties. This was blunt talk.
“She belittles Colm in her comparisons with you in order to punish her daughter. And ever since our Luke died, your grandmother has taken to unfavorably comparing Colm tohim. That change was not difficult to decipher; your grandmother realized it would hurt Penelope more.”
