Page 52 of A Duke's Christmas Carol
Her footsteps assured him that she was following, and when he opened the door to his study, he was relieved when she stepped in after him. What he didnotlike to see, however, was the pained expression upon her face, the look of someone who was lost, the sorrow in her eyes.
“We just wanted to make the castle cheerful,” she said thickly. “Everyone helped, but, please, do not be cross with them. It was me who suggested it, me who planned it. No one else is at fault.”
Adrian took a breath and carefully set the wreath down on the writing desk, unable to look at it for too long. “Mr. Jarvis and Mrs. Mullens should have dissuaded you against this endeavor. So, yes, there is some fault elsewhere.Youwere not to know that decorations are forbidden in this castle.”
“Forbidden?” A slight frown formed a line between her eyebrows. “Why on earth would you forbid decorations? They are harmless.”
He wandered to the fireplace and leaned there for a moment, his eyes fixed on the slithering light that glowed within the embers. Crouching down, he stoked it up and added some logs, using the task to gather himself.
“Because they are a reminder that I do not want,” he replied at last. “To you, they are decorations. To me, they are knives in my heart. A memory of what I have lost. A taunt of what I could not save.”
A soft, surprised gasp whispered across the stark room, but Adrian did not turn; he did not want to see pity on her face, any more than he wished to see the sadness he had inflicted.
“My mother would decorate in that same fashion,” he continued, desperate to fill that uncomfortable silence beforeshecould offer any sympathies. “Even then, I could not stand it. Not because of the decorations themselves, but because it was like a ghost had been through the castle, putting up such bright and cheery things. They would just appear one day, not so coincidentally while I was at my studies or had been forced to march ten miles by my father. I got to see what magic the ghost had created, but I never got to see the ghost. It was a most… painful kind of haunting.”
He paused, a great rock of regret sitting heavily in his chest, his throat so tight it was a wonder he could breathe or speak at all.“He told my mother that I died in battle.” His voice caught. “I did not tell you that part before. It was Mrs. Mullens who informed me of the truth. My father was angry with my mother for some reason or another and, out of spite, he told her I was dead. She took her own life not two days later.
“I suspect she had been holding on, all those years, because of me, because of our yearly rendezvouses at her beloved Christmas parties. She survived for those moments, and when she heard that I was gone, that she would never see me again, I suppose she thought there was no further reason to remain in the life that my father had made so miserable.”
Staring at the rising flames, he frowned; he had never been so forthcoming with anyone else about his history. Richard was aware of most of it, of course, but it was not something that was actively discussed. It was a silent stranger that sat with them sometimes, until the brandy made it disappear. Another ghost in a castle full of them.
Why is she not saying anything?
He did not know if the silence was good or bad, or if she was even still in the room with him. Perhaps, she had used his revelations as the perfect moment to slip out unnoticed.
Then, he felt her hand on his shoulder, and the rustle of her skirts as she lowered herself down beside him, kneeling at his side as if they were both at a confessional.
“You blame yourself,” she said.
Not a question, merely the echo of a certainty that had plagued him for a decade.
“I was not here,” he replied simply.
“You were at war.”
“And I was not here,” he repeated.
She did not look at him, but followed his gaze toward the flames. “If you had abandoned your post, you would have been punished severely for desertion.Thatwould have made your mother suffer more; I am certain of it. To watch her son be dragged through the mud of the scandal sheets and military judgment? Loving you as she so obviously did, I daresay that would have broken her heart.”
“I should have found a way,” he said darkly. “I was the sole heir to a dukedom; I had no reason to be fighting in a war. That would have been enough to see me sent home, or to avoid being sent to the Continent at all, if I had pleaded my case at the time.”
Valerie nodded slowly. “You do not think your father would have simply countered that hewantedyou to fight? It would have been easy for him to make up some excuse about doing one’s duty and moral righteousness. Who would have been listened to—you or him?”
Adrian sat back on his haunches, not at all certain that he liked her ability to pick apart all of the arguments he had had withhimself over the past ten years. All the things that had convinced him that hecouldhave saved his mother if he had tried harder.
“I wrote to her many times, but I know my father intercepted them,” he said flatly. “I could have sent them another way, so I could be certain they would make it to her. Then, she might not have believed that I was dead.”
“Perhaps, but you said your mother could not do anything without your father knowing of it. I find it highly unlikely that you could have gotten a letter through,” Valerie replied in a soothing, soft tone that seemed to warm him from within. “Indeed, as brutal as this may sound, and as much as you might not want to hear it, I do not think there is anything you could have done to change what happened.
“We all search for answers in situations where we feel helpless. Blaming yourself is a comfort to you, I think, because the truth is so terribly tragic.” She paused. “I believe that it soothes you to conjure up scenarios in which youcouldchange the outcome, if you had just done this or that or the other, because that—in a strange way—stops you from feeling as helpless.”
He turned and stared at her, feeling unanchored, his moorings cut. It was as if he had been peering through a fogged window for a decade, and she had just come along with a cloth to wipe it clear, allowing him to see everything as it really was.
Holding himself responsibledidcomfort him, in the most bizarre way, because it was the only thing he could control. Punishing himself for losing his mother was a choice that hecould still make, just as retreating from the society who had done nothing to help her was. Distractions, so he would not have to dwell too much on how much he missed her and how desperately he wished he had spent more time with her and how angry he was that he had not hugged her tighter on that last Christmas together.
Valerie shyly glanced back at him. “I am sorry I decorated without asking you first.” Her chin dipped to her chest. “I should have paused to think. I did not, and… I am sorry to have caused you distress.”
“I am not distressed,” he replied, meaning it.
