Page 31 of The Virtues of Christmas
Whose fault was that? “And now?”
“I’ve sent her off to her brothers. She tarried here for five days, made lists for the housekeeper, the maids, the footmen, put together menus, hung blasted greenery and mistletoe from—she’s no longer here, and I doubt she will be ever again.”
Her name is Henrietta.Henrietta Eloisa Gaye Whitlow. “If you’ve driven her from her only home permanently, then you are a judgmental old fool who deserves to die of loneliness.”
Whitlow turned from the portrait, his magnificent scowl ruined by a suspicious glimmer in his eyes. “Do you think I haven’t died of loneliness, young man? Do you think I haven’t worried for the girl every day for the past ten years? And what business is it of yours? You seek to entice her back to wickedness, no doubt, as if coin can compensate a woman for discarding her honor.”
Michael advanced on Whitlow. “Your oldest was born six months after your wedding vows were spoken. Your first grandchild arrived five months after his parents’ union. I stopped at the church and leafed through the registries. If I’d had the time, I’d have gathered similar information on half your neighbors. Order a tea tray, Mr. Whitlow, and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a hypocrite at best, and possibly a poor father as well.”
“You are a very presuming young man.”
Stubbornness must be a defining trait of the Whitlows, but the Brenners had clung to life itself on the strength of sheer stubbornness.
“I will not lie—ever again—and say that I’ve been entirely honorable where Henrietta is concerned, but I promised her I’d do what I could to atone for the wrong I’ve done. She seeks a rapprochement with her family, and I’ll see that she gets one.”
Whitlow hobbled over to the desk and dropped into the chair behind it. “I cannot condone immorality, you fool. So she sits down to Christmas dinner with us. If she takes up with the likes of you again, then I want no more to do with her. She deserves better than you strutting young popinjays with your coin and your arrogance. If she can’t see that, I’ll not stand by and smile while she waltzes with her own ruin.”
Michael’s father would have understood this version of love.I’ll shame you to your senses, the argument went. The difficulty was, two people could engage in a mutual contest of wills that had nothing of sense about it.
“Henrietta never wants to see me again,” Michael said. “And from everything she’s said, she feels similarly about the popinjays, dukes, and even the king.”
Whitlow put his head in his hands. “Theking?”
“Turned him down with a smile. Wouldn’t do more than share his theater box for any amount of money.”
“Good God. My little hen… and the king.” Whitlow’s expression suggested he was horrified—and impressed. “She wasn’t just making talk about dukes, then?”
“She had her choice of the lot,” Michael said. “Dukes, princes, nabobs. She never had dealings with men who were married or engaged. Not ever, and she demanded absolute fidelity from her partners for the duration of any arrangement. The titled bachelors of London will go into a collective decline at her retirement, and she gave up all that power and money just so you could behave like a stubborn ass yet again. I’ll not have it.”
Whitlow produced a plain square of soft, white linen. “Who are you tohaveanything? Henrietta made choices. She was stubborn. You don’t know how stubborn. I had a match all picked out for her. A decent chap, settled, respectable. She flew into hysterics, and then she was gone.”
Michael appropriated the chair opposite Whitlow’s desk, because the man apparently lacked the manners even to offer a guest a seat.
“You chose one of your widowed friends, I’d guess. A man at least twice Henrietta’s age, with children not much younger than she. Her fate would have been to give up drudging for you and her brothers for the great boon of drudging for some middle-aged man and his children. What sixteen-year-old girl with any sense would be flattered by that arrangement?”
Elsewhere in the house, a door slammed, though Whitlow didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps he was hard of hearing as well as of heart.
“She was growing too rebellious,” he said. “I had to marry her off, or she’d… Sixteen isn’t too young to be engaged. I’d talked Charles into waiting until she was eighteen for the wedding, and that would have been in the agreements. Henrietta said in two years the damned man would probably have lost the last of his teeth. She cursed at me. My own daughter, cursing.”
“And because even cursing didn’t get your attention, she ran away rather than bow to a scheme that would only make her miserable. What else was she to do?”
Whitlow had had ten years to convince himself that he was the wronged party, and yet, Michael still saw a hint of guilt in his eyes.
“In time, she would have been a well-fixed widow,” Whitlow said. “Many women would have envied her that fate.”
“In twenty or thirty years? Assuming your friend and his children didn’t spend his every last groat first? You are blind, Whitlow, and Henrietta was too. She went to London, a complete innocent, a young girl who thought men were selfish, irascible, and high-handed, but not her enemies. She went into service, glad to have employment in the house of a titled family, prepared to work hard for a pittance.
“She had no inkling that her virtue was at risk. She’d been trained to wait on the men of her family, to see to their every need, to put their welfare before her own, and by God, you trained her well. She had no grasp of her own beauty, no sense of what men might do to possess it, or how to defend herself from them. That is your fault as well, and no other’s.”
Whitlow erupted from his chair, bracing his hands on his desk blotter. “How dare you lecture me about the daughter I raised in this very house? How dare you presume to make excuses for a girl who knew right from wrong as clearly as I know noon from midnight?”
“Better you should ask how dare her employer ruin her and suffer no consequences for his venery,” Michael said. “Read this.”
He tossed Beltram’s letter onto the desk, where it sat like a glove thrown down to mark a challenge.
“What is it?”
“A letter to me from the man who destroyed your daughter’s good name, but not, fortunately, her self-respect. He plotted, he schemed, he lied, he charmed, and he made empty promises of matrimony. He behaved without a shred of honor and left Henrietta broken-hearted, ruined, and alone at the age of sixteen. She took the same risk her mother did—granted favors to a man promising matrimony. Her mother is enshrined over your mantel for that decision, while Henrietta was banished from your household.”
