He drew a deep breath and let it out on a sigh.
“I was frustrated,” he said. “It had taken me several hours to get you both to sleep. I shoved her away with my free hand. Her foot . . . I think her foot must have caught in the hem of her dressing gown. I think that is what must have happened. She staggered backward and reached out a hand to steady herself on the wall behind her. Except that it was the window, and I had opened it wide earlier because you were both feverish. I tried— I— But she was gone. She fell. She died instantly. I was unable to grab her. I was unable to save her. She was my own wife, but I was unable to keep her safe. I caused her harm instead.”
“And so you went away,” Bertrand said after a short silence. He had come a little closer, Marcel could see. His voice was cold and hard. “And you stayed away. You left us.”
“Bert,” Estelle said, distress and reproach in her voice.
“No,” Marcel said. “It is a fair comment, Estelle. Yes. I went away immediately after the funeral. Your aunt Jane and uncle Charles and the cousins were there. So, I believe, were your grandmother and uncle André and aunt Annemarie. I left.” There were no excuses. “I left you. I was unable to keep my own wife safe, even though I loved her dearly, because I lost my temper with her and pushed her. How could I be sure I would keep you safe?”
“I hope you have been happy,” Bertrand said with stiff sarcasm.
Marcel raised his head to look at his son—tall and hard and unyielding and hurt to the core of his being. By an absentee father.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I know those words are easily said and entirely inadequate. But I am sorry. No, I have not been happy, Bertrand. I have not deserved to be. In punishing myself, in fleeing from myself, in convincing myself that I was doing what was best for you, I committed perhaps the greatest wrong of my life.”
He lowered his head into his hands.
“I loved your mother,” he said. “She was vibrant and pretty and full of fun and laughter. We quarreled frequently, but we always worked out our differences without really hurting each other. Almost always. We were over the moon with happiness when she discovered she was expecting the two of you. Two! Oh, the joy of your arrival, Bertrand, after we thought the labor safely over with the birth of Estelle. I already thought I could well burst with pride, and then . . . out you came, cross and squalling.” He swallowed once, and then again. “And then she died in an accident I caused, and I fled and left you to the care of people who would raise you to be better than I was.”
There was a lengthy silence. Estelle slid her hand through his arm and hid her face against his shoulder. He could hear her breathing raggedly. Bertrand had not moved.
“Papa,” Estelle said, her voice trembling with emotion. “It was an accident. I shove Bert all the time and he shoves me. We do not mean anything by it, even when it is done in real annoyance. We never mean to hurt each other, and we never do. It was an accident, Papa. You were not a violent man based on that one incident. You are not violent. I am sure you are not.”
He closed his eyes. Was she offering him forgiveness? For depriving her of her mother? Could anyone do that? She had called him Papa.
“And now you have fallen in love again,” Estelle said after another silence. “Your life will change again and you will come home to stay. And next year or the year after—I am in no real hurry—my stepmother will sponsor my come-out in London. In the meanwhile, Bert will come home from Oxford between terms, and we will be a family.”
And live happily ever after.
“I will indeed be coming home to live,” he said. He had decided that during a largely sleepless night. He did not know if it was going to be possible to turn his life around at the age of forty, but he did know something with absolute certainty. He could not go on as he was—or as he had been two months or so ago. It was strange that he could know that with such certainty, but he did. That life had come to an abrupt end. “And when I do go somewhere else—to London or Brighton or wherever—I will take you with me, Estelle. Until you marry and set up your own home, that is. You too, Bertrand.”
His son had still not moved. By neither word nor gesture nor facial expression had he indicated how he felt about all this. Not since his sarcasm of a few minutes ago, anyway. He was not so ready to forgive, it seemed. Justifiably so.
Estelle squeezed his arm. “Or to Bath,” she said. “Mrs. Kingsley lives there as well as Camille and Joel and the children. They will be my nieces and nephew. The baby, Jacob, is such a—”
“Estelle,” Marcel said, cutting her off. “I will not be marrying Miss Kingsley.” The final hammer blow.
Estelle leaned away from him to look into his face, though she did not relinquish her hold on his arm. Bertrand did not move a muscle.
“I forced the betrothal on her,” Marcel explained. “She had just informed me that she was going home, that she wished to return to her family, when Riverdale arrived at the cottage with his sister and Viola’s daughter and son-in-law. And you two were not far behind. I acted upon impulse and announced our betrothal—without any consultation with her. She protested as soon as we were alone together and again before we all left Devonshire, but I remained adamant. She has not changed her mind since then.”
“But—” Estelle began. He held up a staying hand.
“And to be quite frank,” he said, “I do not really wish to marry her either.” He was not at all sure he was being frank, but he was not sure he was not either. His mind and his emotions were a jumble of confusion.
“I thought you loved her,” Estelle cried. “I thought she loved you.”
He drew his arm free of hers in order to set it about her shoulders. “Love is not a simple thing, Estelle,” he said.
“Just as it was not in our case,” Bertrand said, his voice quiet and flat. “You adored us but you left us. You love Miss Kingsley but you will repudiate her. Or she will repudiate you. Which is it to be?”
That was the thorny question and the main cause of his sleeplessness last night. If a betrothal was to be broken, it must be done by the woman. Honor dictated that on the assumption that no true gentleman would break his word and in the process humiliate a lady and quite possibly make her appear as damaged goods in the eyes of the ton and other prospective suitors. But was it always fair? His family and hers were assembled here at his home to celebrate an event that was not after all going to happen, and he must force her to explain? Merely because it would be ungentlemanly for him to do it himself?
Estelle had just realized the implications of what he had told them. “Oh,” she cried, jumping to her feet. “I brought her whole family here as well as Aunt Annemarie and Uncle William, and I have invited everyone from miles around, but there is to be no betrothal after all. Oh. Whatever am I going to do?”
Bertrand stepped forward at last to wrap an arm about her shoulders and draw her against his side. “You did not know, Stell,” he said. “No one told you. You did not know.”
“But what am I going to do?” she wailed.
“Did you announce the celebration to our neighbors as a betrothal party?” Marcel asked.
“N-no,” she said. “Bert is to make the announcement at the sit-down supper later tonight. Everyone believes it is a birthday party. But—”