The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(82)

How he could smile, when Minnie’s heart was breaking, she didn’t know.

But he shook his head in what looked like quiet amusement.

“Apparently, that was slathering on the need for pity a little too thickly, because she shook her head and then said that today, we would not be learning the alphabet any longer; she had some very important, very private letters to write, and I was going to have to play quietly by myself. She handed me some paper and a pencil, and told me to amuse myself drawing.”

“I can’t believe that didn’t melt her heart.”

“Oh, no. By that time, my mother was a hardened soul. And she knew just how to appeal to me. Very important, very private letters—she repeated that twice. Naturally, I could not resist the urge to get a peek at them. She wrote them sitting next to me, while I pretended to sketch birds. Her very important, private letter said, over and over again, ‘Clermont should go bugger himself.’”

He grinned at that memory—of his mother writing profanity about his father—while Minnie looked on aghast.

“Of course I asked her, ‘What is a bugger?’ Thus was my childish attempt at fraud revealed. I had just proven that I could read. She didn’t say a word. She simply stood up and left the room. She and my father had the most frightful row after that. I believe that she actually threw things at him that time around. And I didn’t see her again for almost eighteen months.”

Minnie didn’t know what to say. He stood there, smiling, as if he’d just related a funny little story—like the anecdote Minnie might have told about the time she got lost when she was seven and put her hand in another man’s pocket, thinking he was her father.

“God,” he said, “I can’t believe what an unworthy little cad I was.”

How could he smile about his father conscripting him at the age of six, using him as a weapon against his own mother? How could he laugh about his mother walking away from him? How could he pretend there was anything amusing about the fact that his father took a newborn babe away from its mother in order to get more money out of her?

“You know, Robert,” she said, choking on the words, “there is really nothing funny about that story. Nothing.”

Slowly, the smile on his face faded. “You didn’t think so? But…” He frowned and rubbed his chin. “Not the first part, I understand that. And…and I suppose it’s not precisely a story that ends happily. I hadn’t thought of that, but I’m so used to the ending that I think nothing of it. But the middle bits—surely those were funny. Weren’t they?”

“When you changed the primer to M-is-for-Mama, did you mean it?”

For one second, there wasn’t the slightest hint of amusement in his eyes. He looked so old, the tiny lines at the corner of his mouth gathering as his lips pinched together. And yet he also looked young—impossibly young, as if his six-year-old self were still looking out from behind his eyes, watching his mother walk away.

“Maybe.” He looked away from her, and then looked back. That urbane amusement was back on his face now, but it looked lopsided on him—as if he were trying to wear a hat that didn’t quite fit.

“That’s why it’s not funny.”

“There are funny elements to it,” he protested. “Adding five and six and getting thirteen?”

His hand had cinched itself more tightly about her elbow. He didn’t throw the next piece of bread to the ducks so much as hurl it so hard that one of them quacked in surprise and darted away before realizing that it was fleeing food. And perhaps that was when she realized how much it meant to him. It had to be a funny story to him. This little tale about telling lies at his father’s behest and wanting, so desperately, for his mother to stay—this was a story about the breaking of his child’s heart.

This was the man who had understood that marriage to the expected noble’s daughter would end in regret and recrimination if it came out that he intended to abolish the peerage. He knew in his bones what it meant to have a wife walk away from him, and he’d rejected the possibility—rejected it, even though it would mean gossip and scandal, even though it would certainly mean that the highest sticklers in society would never accept his family.

He didn’t look at her. “That bit about skipping portions of the alphabet? Surely that’s at least a little amusing?”

This was a man who wanted his wife to love him, but who would not even allow himself to hope for it. And that was when Minnie realized that she had something he’d never had. She’d been loved. Her father had adored her up until the moment when his pending conviction had broken his spirit. She had happy memories, years of them, with him. After he’d disappeared, her great-aunts had swept in. She might not agree with everything they’d told her, but they’d loved her. They’d treated her as if she mattered. She took love for granted.

Lucky her.

He had to laugh at what had happened. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry. She couldn’t have understood it until just that moment—because at that moment, she knew that she had to laugh, too, or burst into tears on his behalf. He looked at her with such urgency that she could not bear to force the issue.

“Yes,” she said quietly, entwining her fingers with his. “I do see that, now. It is funny.”

THOSE FIRST DAYS IN PARIS seemed like jewels to Robert. As if he’d lived all his life behind clouds and the sun had come out in blinding force.