Page 33 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
It was Turner who had been calling him, shaking him. It could hardly have been anyone else. Lawrence’s skin still felt alive with Turner’s touch, and his head still swam with the strange wonder of last night. He rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows, trying to resist the urge to cover his chest with the sheet.
Turner was waving a piece of paper in Lawrence’s face. “You have received a letter from yourson,” he said, making it sound like an accusation. Turner was usually so equable, too languidly decorous to make a fuss. Lawrence felt himself greatly out of his depths. “Andsucha letter, my lord.”
“Why?” Simon never wrote. His aunt had insisted on caring for the child after Isabella’s death. “He’s at Harrow.”
“Quite! For the next week, at least. Then he’s coming here for his holiday.”
“Impossible.” Lawrence got to his feet and pulled on his trousers. “He stays with his mother’s family during his holidays.”
“Well. He writes that”—Turner glanced at the paper—“Cousin Albert and Cousin Genevieve have the measles, so he humbly requests to visit you. Tovisityou.” He poked Lawrence’s bare chest with a single finger. “Radnor, I was under the impression the child had died with his mother, or lived on the Continent, or . . . ” His face wore an expression of blank confusion. “I don’t know why I assumed any of those things. But you never speak of him.”
Lawrence disregarded everything but the essential fact he knew to be true. “He cannot come here. Write to the school and explain that he will board through the holiday, until next term.”
“I bloody well will not.” Turner looked so furious as to be hot to the touch. His hands were clenched by his sides, one of them clutching Simon’s letter.
“I fail to understand—”
“You fail to understand so damned many things, Radnor, but I will explain as clearly as I can that you must not refuse to let your child visit you.Visit, for God’s sweet sake.”
“Of course I can.” He pulled his dressing gown tightly around him. “The last time Isabella’s daft sister refused to take him, he went to stay with a schoolmate.”
Turner’s eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed. “Refuse . . . take . . . ” He shook his head. “This child is your heir. This is his house. You are hisfather. Radnor—hear me now—he signs his letter ‘Your Simon.’ ”
“My Simon,” Lawrence repeated, and it felt like the floor was evaporating under his feet. “Mine. Good God. He should be glad he is not.”
“Whatever nonsense you have in your head, get rid of it,” Turner spat. “He’s yours, he’s coming, and we have at most ten days to get this house into some semblance of habitability. Do you not understand? He has been with his aunt. He has been with his schoolmate. He will know how things are done and how they are not done, and the way we live at Penkellis is decidedlynot how things are done.” He poked Radnor’s chest on each of those words, brandishing the letter like a weapon.
Lawrence grabbed Turner’s wrist, stopping the assault. “I’ve made myself clear. He is not to come here. This house is no place for a child. I’m no company for a child.”
“Company? This is no question of company, my lord.” He twisted his hand free but didn’t step back. “You are his father.”
“No, I am not.”
Turner opened his mouth as if to protest but snapped it shut again.
“Isabella was with child when I married her. That iswhyI married her. She, for reasons you are well acquainted with, found me an unsatisfactory husband and Penkellis a highly unsatisfactory house. She took Simon and ran off with her lover. When she died, her family fetched the child from Italy and raised him.”
Turner’s mouth set into a grim line. “And you have not seen him since?”
“No.”
As Lawrence watched, Turner composed himself, his brow smoothing, his mouth flattening into a firm line. Lawrence had the sensation that Turner was resuming a mask, only Lawrence had not realized there had been any mask in the first place.
“Does he know?” All the usual cool polish had returned to Turner’s demeanor.
“Know what?”
“That he is not your natural child?”
“I should damned well hope not.”
“You prefer for him to believe that he has been abandoned by his own father, then. I see.” Turner’s voice was glacially cold.
“I prefer for him not to have anything to do with this place, or with me. The best thing I could possibly do for him is to keep him away from Penkellis and its master.”
Turner’s eyes opened wide. “No. You are wrong there. I have told you so many times that you are not mad. But what you have just said is the closest to madness you have ever come. You are . . . ” He gestured with his hands, as if physically grasping for a word. “You are a fine man. You will do admirably as a father.”
Lawrence gaped at his secretary’s wrongheadedness. “You have no idea what you speak of.”
