A Lady of Persuasion (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #3)(91)

But not today. Today, she was a pale, teary shambles.

“Mother, why did you never tell me?” Toby sat at her side, holding one of her hands while she pressed a handkerchief to her eyes with the other. The two of them were tucked away in the corner of Mr. Yorke’s parlor. The room was filled with visitors, come to pay their respects before his body was taken to Surrey. People came and went, seemingly at a loss as to where to direct their condolences, considering the deceased’s lack of immediate family. His mother wiped her eyes and whispered, “Should I have told you about my lover? Really, Toby, I know we are close. But there are some conversations a mother does not wish to have with her son.”

She had a point there. “How long had you been …”

“A very long time.”

“Years, then?”

“Decades.”

Decades. Toby frowned at the carpet, trying to decide whether he wished to know how many.

“Not for that long,” she said, reading his thoughts. “I was never unfaithful to your father.”

“I’ve no memory of my father,” he said. He glanced up, toward the bedchamber above-stairs where Yorke’s body lay. “All my memories are of him.”

“He loved you, Toby. He told me he would have left his estate to you, were it not entailed. I know he thought of you as the son he never had.”

“Why not the son he did have? Why did the two of you never marry?”

His mother shook her head. “We would have killed each other, had we lived under the same roof. No, I was accustomed to my independence, and we were both simply too stubborn.” She released Toby’s hand and blew her nose. “His health had been failing for some time. The doctors told him to slow down. For years, I begged him to resign his seat in Parliament, but the mule-headed man wouldn’t hear of it.”

“That’s why you’ve been after me to run against him?”

She nodded.

“Mother, you should have just told me the truth. I would have—” Toby clapped his mouth shut. There was no way to complete that sentence without indicting himself as a complete and total fraud. I would have kept the spirit of my promises. I would have accepted the duty that accompanies my fortunate birth. I would have put someone else’s needs above my own, for a change. All things he should have done, regardless.

“Perhaps I should have told you,” his mother said. “But again, there’s that uncomfortable matter of discussing one’s lover with one’s son. At any rate, he came around in the end. He told me just last week, he’d decided to let you win. You were ready now, he said. He thought you and Isabel made a good team … something about lambs.”

Toby felt a pinch in his chest. So that was why the polls remained so close, and why Yorke had been in Town the other day. Toby had been right—the old man hadn’t been campaigning at all.

Just then, Jeremy entered the room, accompanied by Miss Osborne. Toby stood to greet them.

“Jem, Miss Osborne. Good of you to come.”

“We just received the news,” Jeremy said. “Lucy wanted to join us, but—”

“No, of course she couldn’t,” Toby replied. “Not with a week-old infant at home. How is little Thomas Henry Trescott, the fifth Viscount Warrington?”

“Living up to his aristocratic lineage,” Miss Osborne answered. “He has the whole house hold at his beck and call already.”

“I can’t claim to be surprised,” Toby said with a smile. He indicated chairs nearby and invited them to sit. “You’ll remember my mother.”

“Had Mr. Yorke no family?” Miss Osborne asked, scanning the room, presumably for black armbands or mourning gowns.

“No,” Toby replied. “No close family, at any rate. There are some cousins, I believe, but—”

“He had us. We’re his family,” Toby’s mother interrupted, beginning to cry anew. “Don’t make it sound as though he was alone.”

“No, of course he wasn’t.” Toby grasped her hand again. To Jeremy and Miss Osborne, he explained, “Our families have always been close. He and mother were … good friends.”

“We were lovers,” she said, impatiently wiping her tears. When the other three simply stared at her, she said to Toby, “I’m an old woman, and now he’s dead. It doesn’t matter who knows. We were lovers.”

And now Jeremy and Miss Osborne stared anywhere but at her. His mother’s outburst, however, would not be subdued. What ever dam she’d built to restrain her grief had cracked, and a tide of emotion flowed forth.

“You were right, Toby. I should have married him. He asked me, you know. So many times, but I always refused. And now”—her speech caught on a sob—“now I’ve no right to claim him. I’ve no right to wear mourning for him, no right to be buried next to him. No right to go upstairs and make certain his valet dresses him in his green striped waistcoat, not that horrid blue.”

“Mother, please don’t cry,” Toby said. “I… I’ll speak to his valet.”

Good Lord. Of all the lame attempts at comfort. His mother was falling to pieces before his eyes, and Toby hadn’t the slightest clue how to hold her together. Normally, this was his forte, making women feel better. Ladies crossed ballrooms, streets, even lines of propriety just to exchange a few words with him, because they all knew: a girl could always depend on Sir Toby Aldridge to put a smile on her face.