Page 58 of A Duke to Undo her
“Should…” he mused. “It was neither your fault nor mine, but life had other plans, didn't it?”
While he still spoke with control, a moment later he shuddered despite himself and Nerissa squeezed his arm.
“What is it, Cassius? Can you tell me?”
Could he? Was it safe to tell his mother that he had just remembered the sound of her scream when she found his father dead in their shared suite? The former duke had only gone to lie down with a headache and had never risen again.
There had been talk in the household of some bad seafood at luncheon and a recent fall from a horse, never mind a recent flu that all the family had suffered, and many of the staff too. Therehad even been a physician in the house when his father died, although Cassius could no longer recall why.
He did recall the chaos of grave physicians, agitated servants and a hysterical mother threatening to do herself harm if her husband could not be restored to life. He certainly remembered physically picking up Benedict and carrying the distressed child out of the house in order to calm him.
No, he could not tell his mother of these things and shook his head. Still, she did not back away.
“I am strong now, Cassius,” she tried to reassure him, sensing the cause of his reticence. “This is all in the past. Whatever you have to say, I can hear it and not crumble.”
“I have still never felt such pain in my life as I did that day,” the duke whispered at last in at least partial explanation. “The only person who might have helped me was dead. My grief was never assuaged by hearing from so many that I had ‘coped magnificently,’ upheld our family name, or shown ‘judgment beyond my years.’ I only wanted Father. How ridiculous that must sound!”
God, now his flow of memories had reached the funeral. That was when it became clear that Nerissa’s condition was something more than a normal widow’s grief for a beloved husband. Well-grown for his age, Cassius had held her back bodily from throwing herself into the open grave while she wailed her husband’s name and the other funeral attendees only looked on in horror.
“Help me, damn it!” he had sworn at some distant cousins, his anger covering his grief, fear and the chilling understanding that he was now the responsible adult in his family.
For the first time in his life, those relatives had jumped at his command, and helped him bear the dowager duchess back to their carriage. Leaving her there with the physician and her maid, luckily both at the back of the funeral party, Cassius had had to return to the interrupted service.
Benedict had run to him and refused to let go. He had held the boy close while the vicar intoned the final words and then led him away from the graveside as relatives and friends gossiped in hushed but awful tones about the family’s fate.
“You were magnificent, possessed of good judgment and a credit to your family name, Cassius, but you were also a boy, even though you took up a man’s responsibilities.”
Yes, he had done that. What choice had he? None.
“They wanted to take Benedict away,” he recalled to his mother. “Aunt Helena and I talked with my godfather after the funeral, and agreed it was best for you to be nursed away from Ashbourne for a time. After that, everyone assumed that some relative or other would take Benedict, some distant cousin or uncle he barely knew.”
“Your father never wanted his boys sent away too young,” Nerissa remarked. “You didn’t go away to school until you were thirteen, for that reason. Henry himself was sent away at sevenand never forgot his unhappiness. He said that young children needed their families and I was glad of it.”
“I know. I couldn’t have let let anyone take Benedict. He was so frightened by what he heard people saying at the funeral reception, Mother. I had to promise him over and over again that I would remain at Ashbourne Castle and he would stay with me. He even slept in my room for a time, afraid that someone would try to snatch him away in the night.”
“My poor boys…”
“I refused to hear a word of Benedict’s removal, any more than to listen to those ignorant voices who thought you should be declared insane. By the funeral, I had already written to my school with news of my departure and set out a plan for Benedict’s education with his tutors. My godfather found no fault in my reasoning and no one else was willing to argue.”
For a moment, his mother’s deeply moved expression made Cassius think he had said too much. Duchess Nerissa already obviously knew of the machinations of certain relatives who would have been happy to see her permanently locked up and abandoned to keepers of the insane. Still, hearing the words spoken so starkly was something else.
She did not however, quail or shed any tears. Instead, her expression smoothed and calmed.
“It is because of you that Benedict is the carefree, happy young man we see today,” the dowager duchess observed. “If you’d lethim go, how hurt and fearful a personality like his could have grown among strangers and without love. Like me, he is a simple and homely soul at heart.”
“Yet now he chafes at me and demands that I let him alone,” the duke remarked with as much of a smile as he could summon, more in hope of lifting his mother’s spirits than his own.
“As he should at his age,” Nerissa returned with a more genuine hint of smile herself. “That Benedict should reject your guidance now is a measure of your success in raising him to manhood, Cassius. You would not want your brother to have become some pliable milksop without thoughts and feelings of his own, would you?”
The Duke of Ashbourne shook his head, recognizing the mild reproof in her words.
“It is time that I let Benedict go his own way. I accept that. Was this your design in bringing me here tonight, Mother? If so, your work is already done.”
“That was not my intention, no,” she said gently. “It is you I am concerned for now, not Benedict.”
“You need have no concern for…”
“Cassius, you are deeply unhappy.”
