Page 9 of The Wolf and the Wildflower
James did not voice the question, nor did he make a reply. There was simply nothing to say. Whatever they needed to feel comfortable, it was his duty to provide it. That much he understood, even if executing it was another matter entirely.
“You are always standing at a window or on a balcony looking toward the woods. What is out there?” his mother asked softly.
“Peace,” he murmured, mildly surprised at the answer.
“Is it so chaotic here with your family?” she asked with heightened color. “We are your family, and we allloveyou. Very much, James. Please do not act as if we are strangers!”
He turned slowly and stared at the mix of family members all heatedly discussing what to do about him, as if he were a rare creature that had upended their world. Uncle Hubert, his wife and two daughters were huddled in a corner furiously whispering and casting him quick glances. Other cousins and aunts were conducting their own meetings and his sister pounded away at the pianoforte with none of her usual skills.
“They are very…busy.”
Chaos. They represented chaos when he needed stillness.
“They only want the best for you…and that is what I also want.”
James looked down at her, noting the glistening of tears in her eyes. She clearly fought not to cry, and another odd and quite unfamiliar sensation wrenched inside him. “What does the family perceive that is best for me?”
A glint entered her eyes. Hope perhaps. He didn’t converse much with her, or anyone. Most of the time the family said too much and then waited for his replies to questions he had no wish to provide. The past had happened. He had left it behind him. Yet they wanted to wrench him apart to know what his life had been like for the last ten years. Those memories belonged only to him, and he did not owe it to anyone to share his private torment and endless unavailing hopes.
James owed the world nothing but the proof that, somehow, he had survived. In the place he’d lived for years, there hadn’t been any room to think about anyone else. Memories of another life; hopes and dreams had only been instruments of torture. A weakness to overcome, which in itself had taken him years.
His mother had many expectations and fluttered around him with constant reminders of what the world expected, of what she and his illustrious family expected without stating specifically what she desired. The duchess watched him daily with an air of fragile hope and hardened determination. James did not understand it, nor did he like it. “What do you want of me…Mother?”
“Thank you,” she murmured, smiling brighter than he’d seen since his return.
“For?”
“I never thought I would hear you call me mother again.” That bright smile remained on the duchess’s mouth. “The season has started. It is most important to find yourself a wife, and we must get you ready to go into the marriage mart.”
A wife…
This time his heart jolted. James had not thought of his future in such an explicit regard. The past existed in a tightly guarded space inside his mind and heart, and he did not want to visit it or share it with anyone. The present was a place he existed in now, and that space was merely to endure living as he came to terms with being back in a life he had long given up on.
It was each moment of the day that counted. Nothing else. A wife bespoke of a life that did not belong to him, a future that could vanish like wisps of smoke under the gust of a gentle wind. A deep cold wrapped around him. “Why is this important?”
“To marry?”
How aghast she sounded.
“Yes.”
“You are the duke!”
“I am aware of this. What does that have to do with a wife?”
Her swift inhale echoed in the space between them. “All of society knows you were missing for years. Though you have returned to us, and I have declared you are my son, our family will still dwell under the scrutiny of thehaut tonand the queen. We…youmust pass muster, and no one must be allowed to doubt that you are my son and the Duke of Wulverton. Especially the queen. Under the circumstances, it is perfectly permissible for you not to sit in this season’s parliament. You will be ready for the next one.”
There went that odd tug again. “It is fine to miss attending the house of lords, but it is not permissible to miss…”
What did they call it? His mind searched for the answer to only draw a blank.
The duchess nodded and supplied it for him. “The marriage mart—lavish balls, and dances, the theatre, and the opera, promenading down Rotten Row, or even visiting the amphitheater. Those areperfectlynormal, and I assure you, the first step in reclaiming your standing in society.”
“And if I have no wish to reclaim any sort of standing?”
An accusing look entered her gaze. “How could you say so? This is most important and that, my dear son, getting society to accept you, will not happen while you sit silently in the house unable to comment or debate on any matters of the realm. They will only seek to capitalize on your ignorance, and that will not do.”
Ignorance. The chill in his gut went deeper, as if it would pierce his bones. He understood nothing of the past and current political climate of the realm. His family had always been Liberals who supported bills and motions that advanced the poor and stabilized the economy of the realm. What those bills have been for the last decade he did not know. If wars had been fought and won, he did not know. He had no connections. He was a duke without political power. A restless energy shifted inside of James, and he turned to the dark of the forest, wanting to escape into its peaceful confines.
