Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(81)

“I thought I was not worthy of you,” he said. “I was afraid of . . . hurting you.”

They were both looking pale. Bertrand stood very straight, a hard look about his posture and face, the sort of look Marcel had seen sometimes in his own looking glass. Estelle lifted her chin, her face troubled.

“Not worthy?” she said.

He turned and strode across the ballroom floor to sit on the edge of the orchestra dais. He set his elbows on his knees and ran his fingers through his hair. “What do you know of your mother’s death?” he asked.

“She fell,” Estelle said, coming to sit beside him. “Out of a window. It was an accident.”

Bertrand had remained where he was.

“I had been in the nursery with you through much of the night,” Marcel said. “You were both cutting teeth and were cross and feverish and unable to settle to sleep. I held you in turn and sometimes both of you together, one on each arm, one head on each shoulder. I adored you. You were the light of my life during that year.”

Good God, had he just spoken those words out loud? He could not look at them to see the effect his speech was having, not if he hoped to continue.

“Your mother adored you too,” he said. “She played with you endlessly whenever we were at home during the daytime. We both did. We loved your smiles and your giggles when we tickled you or pulled faces at you, and we loved your excitement when you saw us, your little hands and feet waving in the air. But she was cross with me that night for staying up with you. That was why we paid a nurse, she told me. But I had sent your nurse to bed because she was on the verge of exhaustion and complained of a blinding headache. I had just got you both to sleep when your mother came into the room at dawn. She snatched you away from me, Estelle, to lay you down in your crib, but you woke up and started to wail again. She came for you, Bertrand, but you had woken up too. She was annoyed. She wanted me to summon the nurse and come to bed and reminded me that we had a picnic to attend later in the day and I would be too tired to attend.”

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.”