Page 22 of Enticing Odds
“You need not recount the entire sorry tale right now.” She extended an arm, beckoning him forth.
Henry hesitated, but his desire for comfort outweighed his scorn for all things he deemed childish. He walked slowly into her embrace, not returning the hug but allowing it, a very thirteen-year-old compromise.
“Does it smart, the mark upon your cheek?”
“What mark?” Henry protested.
“Come on, now,” she said fondly, reaching for his face, wanting to wipe the hurt away with a gentle brush of her thumb.
“Mama,” he huffed, batting her hand away.
“Right, right, of course. Forgive me, darling.” A tiny pain stabbed at her. Sometimes it was hard to remember that he was no longer a little boy, but a young man.
Once inside she sent him down to the kitchen, trusting he’d find something there to eat.
Cressida washed up and donned a tea-gown; she would finish her garden tasks tomorrow. It appeared that Henry had been sent home from Harrow for good. Just as the headmaster had warned he would be, were he not to improve his behavior. Arthur’s early education had been conducted at home, with a tutor; this whole public school business was relatively unfamiliar to her and, truthfully, quite ghastly.
She pulled a face in the looking glass. A line appeared between her brows. With a sigh, she relaxed her expression, then smoothed the wrinkle with a finger.
Perhaps she ought to concede it all, and retire to some country house in a better climate, where her peonies would flourish. Unfortunately, the Caplins’ country seat, Birchover Abbey, was a garish old heap in the gloomy and sodden northwest, where nothing ever grew. She’d once managed to coax a patch of hellebores to bloom there, but only for an afternoon, for a terrible storm blew in and destroyed the flowers almost immediately, scattering their petals in the wind. Cressida hated the place nearly as much as her husband had adored it. She’d suffered from terrible chilblains that first miserable winter they’d spent there as a married couple. She could still hear Bartholomew’s bored dismissal in her memory.Don’t whinge, Cresto.
He’d always insisted upon that crass nickname he’d invented. It had made her want to remove her shoes and hurl them right at his overlarge head.
Back downstairs, Henry had taken a plate piled high with an assortment of buns and settled into a tufted sofa in the drawing room.
Cressida swept in with a genuine smile, hovering over her son as she examined his selection of treats before pilfering a rock cake.
“I was going to eat that!”
“Were you?” she said mildly, smoothing out her skirts as she took a seat across from him. “Now. Tell me what happened, please. And do not give me a biased account, for I will have every detail even if I have to go drag it out myself from whichever snotty schoolboy it was this time.”
“Mama.” Henry blanched. “You wouldn’t dare. You’d humiliate me!”
“Oh, but I would. In fact, I would relish the opportunity. Far too many of these spoiled little bantlings tear about all puffed up and drunk on their own self-importance, when only a scant few years ago they were babes in short pants.”
She took a small bite. Delicious and buttery, with the perfect amount of currants.
Henry slumped further.
“Well?”
He muttered something under his breath.
Cressida said nothing, took another bite, and waited.
Finally, her younger son, the one who most resembled her with his dark eyes and winning smile—when he deigned to show it—set his plate on the cushion next to him and crossed his arms angrily.
“I was fighting again.”
“That much is apparent,” she said, nodding toward his discolored cheek.
“It wasn’t my fault though, not this time!”
Cressida held the remaining half of the rock cake between two dainty fingers, bringing it up to her face as if to examine it.
“Explain then, please.”
Henry leaned forward and blew out a massive sigh.
