Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(82)

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—”

“Then a birthday party it will be,” he said. “My fortieth. As you planned it originally. With a grand guest list of neighbors and valued house guests from farther away. A lavish and precious and quite undeserved gift from my children.”

Or so they must make it appear to their guests.

It was Bertrand who answered him, his voice firm and dignified but with more than a tinge of bitterness. “Perhaps love does not have to be deserved, sir,” he said. “My sister has always loved you regardless.” He swallowed awkwardly, and his next words seemed grudging. “So have I.”

Marcel closed his eyes briefly and grasped his temples with a thumb and middle finger.

“I am sorry, Bertrand,” he said once again. “I am sorry, Estelle. So very sorry. I do not know what else to say. But let us put a good face on the rest of today. And let me try to do better with the future. Not to make amends. That is impossible. But to . . . Well, to do better.”

“There will still be a party, then?” Estelle asked. “But a birthday party instead of a betrothal party?”

“It had better be the best party ever,” Marcel told her. “A man turns forty only once, after all. But I am sure it will be. You have worked hard over it, Estelle. So have you, Bertrand.”

He gazed at his children, and they gazed back, one of them wistfully, the other troubled and still faintly hostile. None of the three of them were happy, but . . .

“But our family?” Bertrand asked. “And hers? And Miss Kingsley herself?”