Page 56 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
Henry said nothing. What was there to say?
His father sighed again. ‘I will not force you to take Alethea. That would not work for either of you. I married your mother for love. You ought?—’
‘I know?—’
‘If there is no feeling there, then we should make it clear to her and Casper that you are unable to fulfil our hopes. I know he only wishes Alethea happy too, he would rather you were not forced.’
‘I know you will not force me, Papa.’ If he was going to back out of their arrangement then Alethea ought to be the first to know, not his father.
‘Then when the hell will you accept some responsibility, and cease this behaviour?’
Henry put down the glass of water and rubbed his temple. ‘When I do not have a thumping headache. Must you shout?’
His father stared at him. ‘Will you come back to London with me?’
To face the mess he had made of things… ‘Yes.’ He had to face it at some point.
There was a knock at the door. His father walked over and opened it, then held it open. It was a footman with a table for them to eat at and the maid with the meal his father had ordered.
‘What am I to do to get through to you?’ his father asked as they sat down to eat.
‘Nothing, Papa, I must get through to myself. I am certain no one else will achieve it.’
‘Am I to give up on you then, and wait for Percy to leave university to have a sensible son?’
‘Have no hope of Percy, he is as bad as me, and you know it,’ Henry said as he spread golden-yellow butter on the soft sweet-scented bread that had suddenly made his appetite roar.
‘Then perhaps I should wait for your younger brothers. Perhaps Stephen will step up to the mark.’
‘Except he looks up to Percy as Percy has always looked up to me.’
‘Then I will move Gerard and William to a different school, so they cannot be tarnished by stories of your antics, and send them to Cambridge not Oxford. There, so now the situation is resolved,’ his father said with his more usual note of satire. He had no intention of doing any of it.
Henry smiled. ‘You have good odds, with five sons, that at least one of us will meet your expectations. Perhaps William as the last will be the best of us all.’
A note of humour rumbled in the back of his father’s throat.
His father might frequently express his anger and annoyance, whenever he and Henry were in a room together they seemed to rub each other up the wrong way, and yet, despite it, they were still close. He liked, nay, loved, his father. Love. The emotion stirred inside him, topping all the others. The intensity of his feelings for Susan resembled the clasp of love.
15
A swift knock on Susan’s door gave her a moment’s warning before Alethea burst in.
Susan turned.
‘Henry has come,’ she breathed excitedly. ‘He is in the drawing room, you must come down and give me some solidarity. I cannot stand up to him alone. He must understand his disappearance was unacceptable, and Mama will not let me be mean to him, as I wish to be.’
Susan had been tidying her drawers, merely to have something to occupy her mind. She could not concentrate on a book as Henry interrupted her thoughts too regularly. ‘As he deserves for you to be,’ Susan answered when she crossed the room.As I deserve for you to be.
Yes, she would go down with Alethea to see his expression when they walked into the room – and she would not admit that her heart had leapt at the news he was here, nor that she wanted to be in the room to hear what he said to Alethea.
Susan’s heart whipped up into a hearty gallop when she walked along the landing with Alethea’s arm threaded throughhers. She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. They barely moved; the action was merely a nervous habit.
Alethea let go of Susan’s arm and ran down the last few steps of the stairs.
Nausea clasped tight in Susan’s stomach.
‘Henry! So you have finally crawled out from whatever stone you have been hiding under!’ Alethea said as she entered the drawing room ahead of Susan.
