Page 13 of Scandalous Heiress
“You’re right, Ade.Damn it.I must make my mother happy and marry Richard.”
Fawkes led the way up the central staircase toward his father’s master chambers.
Delighted to be away from effervescent Ada Hanniford and her friend, Esmerelda, Victor wished to run up the steps.But Fawkes moved with such hesitancy that Victor’s sympathies went to the man who’d been a devoted servant all these years.Now was the time to offer him retirement to one of the little cottages in the village.
This house was a complex machine and Fawkes had organized it to the minute since a year before Victor’s grandfather died.Originally built by the fourth duke in seventeen ten,Brentwood Hall had been renovated in the early eighteen hundreds with Palladian influences by Robert Adam and landscapers who gave the old Bath stone beauty longer wings, more bed chambers and little nooks and crannies where one could escape.As a child Victor had charged through the empty bedrooms playing hide and seek with Richard and their sisters.Augustine and Catherine would wiggle into unique places like the plate cupboard in the still room or the linen cabinet in their mother’s downstairs bathroom.Richard was always easy to discover, huddled in a closet or storage room.
“Your father had a good night’s sleep,” the butler told him as he followed him down the hall.“He seems very alert this morning, so says his footman, Hanks.”
“Hanks is his caretaker?”That man, the youngest son of the previous vicar in the parish, was a bit slow but gentle and kind.
“He is, a good man indeed, sir.Takes care of every need His Grace requires.”
“I see.Thank you.I will express my own gratitude,” he said as the butler opened the door to his father’s sitting room.
The sixty-nine-year-old hunched into his overstuffed Chippendale close to the wine-red marble fireplace.His father’s hair, once coal black, was now white as parchment.His eyes, once forest green, stared up at him in faded jade.Sadness clogged Victor’s throat, but he grinned at the man who could be ridged as stone, but sweet as an Austen hero to those he loved.
“Good morning, Papa.”Victor took his father’s thin blue-veined hand and leaned over to kiss him on both thin cheeks.“I am so happy to see you so well.”
The man’s lips spread in a generous smile.“Rascal.Get on with you.I am not well.But you are.And I am glad of it.Sit.Sit.Sit.”
Victor dragged the nearest chair closer, a large upholstered piece that matched his father’s.In the morning light, Victor saw how much he’d changed since he’d left for China more than four years ago.His jowls sagged and his broad shoulders sloped into his thinning torso.
“Saw your mother, I imagine.”
“I did.”
“She told you I am not well.But I am.At least, this morning, I have my wits.Sharp as a bell.But.”He lifted a gnarled forefinger and it shook.“It goes.So we will do this quickly.Save the details of my infirmities for later when we’ve run the gauntlet.”
A tall dark man approached to stand beside his father.
“Hanks, come closer.Meet my second son.Victor Arthur Sunderland Cole.”
The man inclined his head and put his face into the sunlight.Both he and Victor gave no indication that they knew each other well.Had done all their lives.
But Victor warmed in satisfaction at the thought of Hanks as caretaker of his father.While the man had the battered face and crooked nose of a boxer, he was broader than Victor and had arms like tree trunks.He could easily carry his father from chair to bed or bath.
“How do you do, Hanks.Thank you.”
“Aye, my lord.”In his hands, he held a knitted afghan.“Would you care for this, Your Grace?”
“No, no, you may go, Hanks.I’ll have Lord Victor call for you when we’re done.”
With that, the big man bowed himself away to close the hall door behind him.
“Now.Tell me about Deirdre.She has recovered?”
Last summer, Victor’s youngest had suffered a life-threatening bout of typhoid fever.Careful nursing by his staff, most especially Wu-lai and her mother, had brought his daughter back from the throes of death.He was most grateful.His girls were his charms against fire, flood and disaster.Every time he suffered a setback, each of them had brought him laughter and release from pain.If he ever lost either, he would surely crumble to dust.Wu-lai’s mother said they were the reincarnation of his two grandmothers come to save him from himself.Privately, he laughed at that since only one person had ever bested him and she, thankfully, had gone to her own just rewards, fiery as they surely were.He also questioned much about religion so that the Buddhist principle of one returning to life as a higher or lesser being was difficult for him to accept.
“She has.She seems healthier than before.And Vivienne never showed any signs of the disease.I watch them closely.”
“You were right to bring them home.Here we have better sanitary conditions than in that hideous country.”
That was not necessarily true.Cities and villages here were still riddled with typhoid, a disease brought on by poor drainage of wastes.The disease that had felled Queen Victoria’s beloved husband Albert more than twenty years ago still raged in this country and in Europe.But Victor wasn’t about to argue with his father today or any day.He was too frail.Time too short.
“Your mother tells me you wrote that you visited with your staff in the City.”
“I did.They continue to do a superb job of records.Ordering.Invoices.I am pleased.”
