The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(30)

If he would not let her touch him, then she might as well go north. But she would not be happy about it. “I will go, since it seems to be in everyone’s best interests—except possibly mine.”

“Lucie—”

“If I am to set out with my siblings tomorrow, I must give instructions as to packing now. Go tell Felix that he shall have you to himself for a time.”

She knew she was hurting Julien. The fact that he allowed her to do so without protest only increased her need to lash out. Just as well they separated, before her wish to hurt could do permanent damage.

Thinking the worst encounter behind her, Lucette forgot that there was another man in her house at the moment who knew all too well her instinct to push everyone away when she was hurting. As she made up lists for the smooth running of Compton Wynyates while she was gone—though her staff could very well have run the entire estate without direction—she was interrupted by her father.

“Walk with me,” Dominic half asked, half ordered.

With a sigh, Lucette agreed. Better to have this conversation away from the house. Not that she was sure what he wanted to talk about. Her failings, probably, being that they were so very obvious just now.

But he had a habit of neatly surprising her. Instead of asking about her health or Julien or the obvious tension in their home, her father mused, “Did you know there was a time that I left your mother? I don’t mean the short separations of travel or of business necessity—I mean I left your mother and very nearly never went back.”

She could not have been more stunned if he’d struck her in the head. “What?”

They skirted the perimeter of the formal garden and strolled silently across the turf edged with wildflowers before her father answered. “It was after Stephen’s birth. He was meant to be born at Tiverton, but like you, he was in a hurry to get here. We were still at Wynfield Mote when he came. Once Christmas had passed and your mother was on her feet again and doing well, I traveled to Tiverton to ensure the estate and its people were not suffering from the deep cold.

“Or at least,” he continued, “that was what I told myself. I may even have believed it—but your mother did not. I think she knew from the first.”

“Knew what?”

“How very much Stephen’s birth had shaken me.”

“Stephen? But he was undoubtedly…I mean, there could be no question…”

“That he was my son?” Dominic asked with irony. “Of course. It was not logical. I understood that at the time. If I were going to be hurt by any child, it should have been you.” He slid his gaze sideways to her. “I trust I no longer need to assure you that was never the case. From the first moment I laid eyes on you—all plump and fierce at a year old—I not only loved you absolutely but had not the slightest misgivings about my ability to do so.”

Lucette shook her head. “I think Mother must be right. You think too much.”

“Yes, well—I went to Tiverton in January and kept making excuses why I could not return to Wynfield. The weather, the servants, the state of the tenants’ holdings…I exploited every single thing I could. Your mother did not press me. She continued to write, and I continued to reply in increasingly fewer words. Stephen’s birth, it seemed, had opened every wound I’d accumulated for years. I had spent most of that time blaming no one but myself. And I was not wrong to do so. But that meant I had neglected to face the fact that I was also angry with others. With the king, of course, but also with Elizabeth for not restraining Will, and most painful of all, I was angry with your mother.”

Lucette wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more. What use was it to discover that her parents’ marriage had almost shipwrecked on the shoals of pain? If two such nearly perfect people could barely make things work, what chance had she and Julien?

Her father seemed to know precisely what to share and what to gloss over. “After six months, the cracks in our marriage began to be obvious to others. I knew I could not wallow any longer. I must learn to forgive…everyone. I just didn’t know how to do it. And then I spent an afternoon helping a farmer repair the roof of his barn. He was an old man—seventy if he was a day—but still insisted on clambering up and down ladders and scampering at heights that made me uncomfortable. And he liked to talk.”

He drew a breath and let it out, then smiled at Lucette. “For all my reputation, I seem to be talking quite a lot myself at the moment. I’ll try to get to the point. The farmer had lost his wife the year before and he talked mostly about her. Not all of it complimentary, but with deep affection. And then he said something that made me pause. ‘The young are too apt to confuse love and worship. God and saints and angels are meant for worshipping—people are meant for loving. In the good and the bad, so the Church tells us. But I think it matters more in the bad.’?”

After that remarkable quote, her father fell silent and they walked together for a further ten minutes while her own mind fell surprisingly quiet. For no apparent reason, as she still didn’t know how to reconcile love and grief and passion and fear.

Maybe she wasn’t supposed to know. Maybe she was simply supposed to muddle through.

“Thank you,” she said finally, and slipped her hand into her father’s.

“Don’t thank me,” he said calmly. “Thank the farmer. Well, he’s dead now, of course. But I made certain I would have cause every day to remember him.”