Page 87 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
‘And as boring and dull as Rob,’ Harry countered.
The teasing and debating continued as Rob took exception to the charges against him.
Henry looked at his uncle. He drank the last of the tea then set his cup down on its saucer. ‘May we talk, Uncle?’ he said over the others’ conversation.
Edward smiled and set his cup down too, even though it was half full. He stood. ‘Shall we walk outside?’
Henry’s father was full of mocking humour and sharp wit – much like Harry, or himself. Uncle Edward was more serious and measured.
When they left the table he lifted a hand, directing Henry towards the door into the hall.
In the hall, he told the footman who had followed they did not need him, then looked at Henry. ‘If we go out the front door the others will assume we have gone to look at horses or something else more business-like. Shall we do that?’
This was how his uncle was – always insightful.
Once they were outside, he did not turn towards the stables, but away from them, crossing the gravel frontage. Henry walked beside him.
When they entered the yew-lined avenue leading to the garden at the rear of the house, Uncle Edward stopped, turned and his arms wrapped about Henry’s shoulders. The comfort gripped at Henry’s heart. It was what he had needed his father to do – but then perhaps his father needed to be held too… He would never accept that gesture from Henry. Would he?
Henry sighed.
Uncle Edward’s arms slipped away. ‘Tell me how I may help,’ he said, walking on.
‘It is Papa.’ Emotions pressed at the back of his throat. He swallowed as he tried to speak. ‘I would be grateful if you spokewith him…’ His words dried, strangled by the grief he battled with.
‘Why?’
He coughed into his fist, clearing the pain from his throat for a moment. ‘He has become withdrawn. He barely speaks, and Stephen and Gerard are not coping, and Mama…’ Henry had to swallow. ‘She cries all the time.’
‘And you?’ his uncle asked.
I need help. I wish to grieve and I cannot because I need to help them and I am not succeeding.
‘I will speak to him,’ his uncle said without waiting for Henry’s answer. ‘Robert has always run from grief.’ He stopped walking and turned to look at Henry, then clasped his upper arm. ‘He will recover, Henry, time will pass and then things will go back to a normal life of some description. Never the same, but normal. The loss of someone never heals over completely, yet the rift in life knits back together with time.’
Henry’s thoughts turned to himself; he could not imagine the slashes of guilt and grief healing.
22
The coffin was far too narrow and light to contain William. Henry, his father, his uncle Edward and Percy carried it among them, on one shoulder, walking in even steady strides as they entered York Minster.
The ginormous height of the decoratively carved stone walls swallowed him, suffocating him, as he helped carry William along the aisle. The minster’s height, breadth and grandness, and the beauty of the carvings on the towering columns and the ceiling above, made William’s life, that ended in this narrow coffin, appear an insignificant moment in time. Henry wanted William’s life to have been an outstanding moment that would be forever remembered. But William had no time to create a legacy.
As they walked along the broad aisle, the sound of the people in the full pews either side of them, sniffing, whispering or sobbing, followed them. People from the higher and middle classes had come to say farewell to William – faces he recognised from the assembly he attended. There were others too, who worked in service to his father and others from the city who supplied his father’s estate.
Henry did not look at anyone, but stared ahead at the altar, and at the wooden trestles where they were to rest his brother’s coffin.
He swallowed.
A heavy scent of incense hung in the air when they reached the trestles. Once they had put William down, Henry bowed to the altar before turning to find his seat in the front pew.
Edward nodded at him.
Henry let Percy enter the pew before him. He took the seat beside his brother and let his uncle sit next to his father.
Gerard and Stephen sat on the far side of Percy, they had come into the church with Harry. In the pew behind them were Drew, Rob and John, and behind them were his father’s friends, including Uncle Casper and Lord Wiltshire and some of their sons, his own friends with them.
Henry leaned forward to look at his younger brothers. Gerard was biting his top lip and his eyes glowed with the sheen of tears in the flickering light of a candle which burned on a pedestal near the pulpit.
