Page 34 of The Butler's Forbidden Fancy
Now she smiled. “I knew they would not deny you your loan.” But a trace of sorrow lined her brow.
“What is it? Why are you upset?”
“I had a letter this morning from my agent in London.”
That brought him to attention. The man, Sebastian Rawley of Rawley and Sons, wrote every two or three months to notify Eliza of her bank balances and transfer to her Baltimore bank her incomes from shares in the stock companies her mother’s family had invested in decades ago.
Octavian pulled over a wooden chair and sat to face her. “What did he want?”
“Nothing.” She brushed hair from Nate’s round little face and bit her lower lip.
Octavian put his hand to her cheek and led her to look up at him. “And?”
“My father died November ten. A mix of conditions. Rawley did not mince words. It was age, gout and syphilis.”
“I see. I am sorry he is gone.” Octavian did not lie. After his marriage to Eliza, he had learned a greater measure of tolerance for the man he’d always hated. Distance aided him in that remove. And he was sad at the death of a man who might have improved his character. As it was, he would honor the man for what worth he had contributed to the world: He had sired his intelligent, beautiful daughter who had the grace to become his wife. Yet, truth was necessary. The Earl of Leith had lived life exactly as he pleased. His affairs with women, his mistresses and casual dalliances with whores, his gambling, his racing debts, his duels had marked his name as a licentious bastard of the first water. “Do you have duties to the tenants or land?”
“Not to them, no. The title was entailed. All such land, houses, and tenants go to my oldest cousin in Norfolk. He is, last I visited with him, a good man and I know he will do us all quite proud. However, Rawley tells me my father left me an inheritance. I had no idea there was anything he wished to give me. And had I any idea, I probably would have told him…or rather told Rawley to do something obscene with it.” She gave a little laugh.
Octavian tried to smile. Instead he squeezed her hand and took his son from her arms. He could see she had to walk. Pace, really. And she had to let go her frustration…and perhaps even her sorrow. Because after all, her father, no matter his heinous crimes against her or her mother or others in the world, had been her parent.
She strode to face the fire and she kneaded her hands. “I hated him. He was the very devil to me. To my mama. But I do have pity on his soul that he died alone and unforgiven.”
Octavian sighed. And danced the toy dog before his son’s eyes.
“My father has given us a gift.”
He froze. Land? Houses? Factories? Responsibilities?Please god, no.He didn’t want to return to England. To the false bravado of class and money and endless false posturing. “What is it?”
“Twenty thousand pounds.”
His mouth fell open. A fortune in England. And here? Here it was the equivalent of a universe of wealth.
Still she stood and talked to the fire. “Enough to buy land here, Octo. To build the school you want. A fine school for boys and girls. One big one made of brick and stone. Fine classrooms and good books. Books, Octo! Enough for every student. Ten, twenty, thirty students!”
He could find no words.
She whirled to face him, her sweet features alight with possibilities. “Think of it, my darling!”
“I’m trying,” he said. “Though I do doubt I want you to use it for that. It is yours and—”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I am quite serious.”
She grew rigid…and he saw that he had offended her. That, he never wished to do, for he loved her beyond words.
She stared at him. “Will I have problems with you about this money?”
“I hate that it is his.”
She raised her shoulders. “I don’t. I will take it and call it his apology. Whether he intended it that way or not, I wish to think he had some shred of decency and that he wished me and you well.”
Looking down at his son, Octavian considered her declaration as her forgiveness of her father. Even if the earl’s crimes against his daughter could never be worthy of complete absolution, the man was dead and gone. It was best for Eliza and him that they move past the anguish. If he himself could not forgive the earl his ways, he thought it useful for Eliza to have a resolution. Was it not wise to face the future with some reconciliation of the past? “He should have loved you, as you deserve anyone’s praise and devotion.”
“He should have, Octo, but he didn’t. In fact, I doubt he knew how to love. Anyone. Any time. At any cost. He had not been born into a society that taught him that first and foremost. Now all of that possibility for him is finished. And I will gladly take this money. Not because he owed it to me. Not because I earned it in any way. Not because we need it to live happily and well. But because we can use it to build a better future for many children. Our own and hundreds more.”
He winced, not wishing to argue. But his pride was involved here.
