Chapter Thirty-Two

A lex couldn't remember ever being so furious. Clarity had run away like a child. He'd done the same when he was six or seven years old, departed the Hollidge country estate with a bread roll and a piece of cheese tied up in a kerchief. Their old Cook had given him the food, and he later found out his parents had watched him go about a furlong, keeping an eye on him until he sat down under a tree. They'd brought a picnic and joined him. He couldn't even recall why he'd run away.

Clarity was not six or seven, and she was carrying his child. She'd left London with two of her siblings, sending a short missive sealed with a purposefully large glob of blue wax, delivering the wretched message by way of one of the Earl Diamond's footmen.

Opening it in his study, Alex felt a surge of anger, followed quickly by his least favorite emotions — fear and loss. At least she'd bothered to write the note herself this time.

Before he knew where he was going, he'd left the sanctuary of his study and wandered upstairs to Clarity's bedroom, hoping against hope that this was all a dreadful dream. She would be in the chair by the window with her lap-desk situated on her knees, either writing or reading.

She wasn't there. What's more, the room exuded a profound emptiness, reminding him of when his parents had died. In a way, it had been a relief to live at school until he was better able to deal with being in the house without them — or at least until the last of his mother's perfume and his father's tobacco scent had faded.

Soon, he would be the parent with a little one depending entirely on him and on Clarity for everything. How bloody odd!

Closing his wife's door against the stillness, Alex went upstairs to the room that had allowed the robber entrance into their home and had taken up much of Clarity's time.

Pushing open the door to the nursery, which still smelled of fresh paint and lemon oil, Alex entered the newly decorated room. Seeing it in daylight, he was unable to keep from smiling. Any child would love the room. Blazes! He wouldn't mind it for himself.

Cheerfully painted from floor to chair rail in pale yellow with a bird-and-butterfly wallpaper for the rest of the wall up to the ceiling, it made him want to sit in the rocking chair and read a book from his own childhood. More than that, it made him want to hold his baby in his arms and rock him or her to sleep. He couldn't wait for the infant to arrive. The room would be a place to sing that damned song, which if he thought about it, would be stuck in his head all day. Too late!

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells of St. Clement's.

You owe me five farthings,

Say the bells of St. Martin's.

When will you pay me?

Say the bells at Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,

Say the bells at Shoreditch.

Humming the tune, he examined the crib — his own — that had been brought down from the attic and refinished. A new blue and yellow rug rested underfoot. Under the window, ready for the baby to become a toddlekins, was a rocking horse with a soft woolen mane and a real leather saddle molded to its wooden body. And on the sill, as if Clarity had been reading it, was a book he'd never seen before.

Picking it up, he examined the thin volume. The Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear, it had been published a mere few months earlier. Flipping through the pages to see entertaining illustrations and silly verses, Alex smiled.

How he wished his parents were there to meet their grandbaby. He could easily imagine them sitting in the nursery, reading aloud the funny poems. He would do it in their stead.

Proud of what Clarity had created with this now-perfect room, he couldn't fathom why she hadn't done over the whole house. Touching the window curtain, a cheerful gold-colored damask, he recalled Lady Diamond saying something he didn't want to dwell on, that Clarity had been discouraged from making this house into her own home.

There was only one person who might have done that. And he had turned a blind eye, allowing it to happen right under his own nose while he was too busy worrying over things he could not control.

Putting the toe of his boot to one of the hobbyhorse's rockers, he sent it teetering gently and left the nursery. Finding his aunt in the drawing room, reading the morning papers, he sat down at one end of the sofa. Clarity once said the room looked as though it had been decorated when the last king was a baby, and she had been correct.

Aunt Elizabeth gave him an inquiring look, and he filled her in on Clarity's unexpected trip to the countryside of Derbyshire.

She pursed her lips and set her newspaper down.

"At least your wife saved you the humiliating scene of returning to her parents' house again to collect her and finding her gone."

Alex didn't give a fig about humiliation. He wanted Clarity home with him where she was safe.

"Anything could happen to her out on the road. Lord and Lady Diamond should not have let her go."

Aunt Elizabeth folded her arms, looking disapproving. "I doubt they had much choice. Lady Hollidge is a grown woman."

"She is not acting like one," he fumed, then instantly felt disloyal for speaking ill of his wife to his aunt.

However, Aunt Elizabeth overlooked his unkind words. "I had no idea the two of you were unhappy," she continued. "Lady Hollidge must have been extremely forlorn to leave behind her new life as your viscountess."

He disliked how she always referred to Clarity as Lady Hollidge . While accurate and even respectful, it put up a barrier to true familial affection, which he'd hoped would have already bloomed between the two women.

"Clarity never cared about being a viscountess. It takes more than that to impress an earl's daughter," he said. "But you're correct about her not being happy, and I believe it was all my fault."

"Yours?" his aunt seemed confounded. "What did you do? Nor did anything occur in the household that would warrant your new wife being discontented."

"That's exactly it," Alex said. "Nothing changed, yet she believed I would be like the youth she remembered."

"That's absurd. You're a grown man with responsibilities. And usually, you behave appropriately."

"I do, don't I?"

Why, then, did he feel as if he'd failed the most important person in his life?

"I led her on by behaving as ..." He tried to come up with who he was when he was with her. "I was my old self, meaning my young self, when we were at her parents' country party. We fell in love over fishing and climbing trees and laughing until we cried. She believed I would keep behaving in the same manner because I all but promised her I would."

His aunt shook her head. "Then Lady Hollidge was naively holding on to unrealistic expectations. It is obviously easier to be carefree when away from the demands of running an estate and handling a vast fortune with staff and farmworkers and millers and brewers and herdsmen and the like, all depending upon you."

At that moment, Alex would trade it all for a glimpse of Clarity. His Diamond was worth more to him than any fortune or title. Even her smile was precious beyond jewels.

"I know you are correct," he said, "but I should be able to handle both my viscountcy and my marriage. My wife makes me happy."

"Then why have you become increasingly cross and doleful?"

"Wasn't I as I've always been?" he asked, wondering at his aunt's characterization of him.

"No," Aunt Elizabeth declared. "Naturally, you grew serious once you took up the mantle of your father's title, but you never seemed particularly dispirited. I thought you had grown into a mature, responsible young man, satisfied with your lot in life. I am proud of you."

"I honestly didn't realize how unhappy I was," Alex admitted, "until I renewed my acquaintance with Clarity. In fact, I believe I would have been happier if I had never stopped visiting with the Diamonds."

His aunt shrugged, glancing away. "All in the past," she said.

He might as well tell her what he had learned months earlier.

"It has come to my attention that my parents didn't want to send me away to school, at least not at that age. Instead, it was you who wanted me to go."

Aunt Elizabeth hesitated, her lips pursing as her cheeks paled. Then she nodded.

"It's true."

"Yet you told me not to visit with the Diamonds, neither here in Town nor in the country because seeing me would upset Lady Diamond in particular. That she blamed me for their deaths."

"Well!" she said with exasperation. "I guess I have been the topic of much tongue-wagging."

"Some perhaps, but mostly because I was trying to explain to the Diamonds last autumn why I had never returned to Oak Grove. They were astonished that I might think they held my parents' death against me."

"And they blamed me," Aunt Elizabeth concluded.

He remained silent. After all, while his loss of both parents was devastating, she had also lost her beloved brother. There was no reason to dwell on the why of it.

"They were right to blame me," she added, surprising him. "Your mother hugged me before you three left. She thanked me for the advice and said even if you didn't end up attending the school, you would have a cheerful time on the trip. But my brother rolled his eyes and was far more frank. ‘We're only doing this to appease you, Elizabeth. We want to keep our boy home.'"

Alex's mouth fell open, even as an enormous weight lifted from his shoulders. As it did, the room tilted around him.

Dear God! It truly wasn't his fault. They hadn't wanted to send him away. They hadn't been disappointed in him for being something of a madcap.

"You should have told me," he said, unable to keep the hurt from his voice.

All the years of guilt and pain had been unnecessary. What's more, he'd nearly missed out on loving Clarity Diamond.

His aunt hung her head. "I know," she whispered. "I was ashamed. But then I tried to ease your pain by sending you away to avoid living in this house without your parents."

"I hated it," he told her.

She gulped in air, and he had to soften his tone for fear she would dissolve into sobbing.

"Although I learned a great deal," he added, trying to think of some benefit to being tormented daily by those who were either cruel, jealous, or both, and seeing himself as the recipient of too many flogging-day Fridays, not to mention being disciplined by the senior boys who were heavy-handed. "And you brought me home for the holidays."

She nodded, her eyes large and sorrowful.

"I did feel bad for Lady Diamond," his aunt confessed. "It was as if she'd lost a sister. But that's not why I kept you from them. You are my primary concern. I didn't want you to go back and be reminded of all you had lost," she said. "Amongst the happy Diamond children and their parents, I thought it would be harder on you."

"Consequently, you made me want to stay away from them, as if it were for their sakes?"

She raised her chin unapologetically.

"Then you don't dislike the Diamonds or disapprove of Clarity," he concluded.

His aunt's pinched visage didn't alter, and it dawned on him her usual severe expression had been forged through the tragedies of life, and not necessarily indicating peevishness at all.

"I feared your particular choice of a wife would drag you back into the dangerous waywardness of your youth," she said.

"I believe I was the one dragging her into trouble when we were younger, but now, I am beyond grateful she's helped me to feel happy again."

Aunt Elizabeth lowered her eyes. "Seeing how things turned out, I might have handled some things differently," she allowed. "At the time, since I was your only family, I didn't want you to hate me for your parents' accident. Then you would have felt alone, indeed."

"We shall muddle through," he said, using an old saying of his mother's.

Also at that moment, he was also struggling to determine if her disclosure did make him hate her, even a little. But he didn't. She, too, had suffered. Moreover, for the first time, he could accept that the carriage accident had been precisely that, an unforeseeable twist of fate.

Aunt Elizabeth sighed softly. "I told you I lost my Henry," she said.

His aunt rarely mentioned her late husband, Lord Aston, but Alex knew she'd been a young, childless widow.

"Henry Aston was a joyful creature," his aunt stated softly, "but very careless. Reckless, even. Not a day went by that he didn't seem to have a mishap. I believe he needed spectacles," she added.

"One day, he went riding, which he loved to do." She sniffed. "When it grew dark, I sent our footman out to find him. He'd fallen off his horse and broken his neck."

This shocking statement was almost as bad as reading Clarity's letter. No one had ever told him how his uncle died, nor had he thought to ask.

Reaching an arm out, he touched his aunt's shoulder. "That must have been dreadful for you."

"Yes, it was." She sniffed again, drew a handkerchief out of the pocket of her skirt, and dabbed at her eyes. "After my brother let me become a close part of his young family, I'm afraid I grew more and more concerned by your mischievous ways."

"I was merely a boy," Alex reminded her gently.

"I know. But I feared you would grow up to be reckless and die tragically. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, not on your parents, but then..." She paused, looking past him into the distant long ago. "Then tragedy happened again, anyway."

His stomach twinged uncomfortably.

"We both lost everyone," he said.

"Untrue," she protested. "You always had me, and now you have a wife. At least you did until you chased her off with your churlish behavior, like a wild boar."

He crossed his arms. Her attack would not stand.

"A wife whom you have disapproved of from the beginning, I must remind you."

"Nonsense," his aunt declared. "I was trying to spare you the heartache of loving the wrong person and enduring future loss. If you had married Miss Brambury, your heart would have barely been engaged, certainly not shattered should anything happen to her."

Alex gaped at her twisted logic. "You hoped I would have a loveless marriage in order not to endure any more pain?" That was a topsy-turvy way to look at life. Then he recalled that had been his precise plan before meeting and falling in love with Clarity.

His aunt gave an awkward shrug. "I acknowledge how pushing you in Miss Brambury's direction was a mistake. Instead, you followed your heart. I warned you on the night of your engagement how such a course of action could lead to misery. You cannot go back and fall out of love. However, you also cannot go forward as you are, with both of you so miserable."

Damnably miserable, Alex thought, longing to see his lovely wife again.

Aunt Elizabeth shook her head. "Your parents would be most disappointed in what has occurred. Don't forget they liked your Lady Hollidge. Your mother even wanted you to marry her, if I recall."

"She only knew her as a child. And I doubt my mother was doing anything more than lighthearted matchmaking with her friend."

"Perhaps," she agreed. "Regardless, you liked the child Lady Hollidge was, and you liked the woman she became well enough to marry her. Now she's expecting your baby. What do you intend to do? Let her leave you on a whim while you hide in this house until the babe is old enough to come see you?"

"Of course not!"

What did he intend to do?

"I shall give Clarity some time to regain her happy disposition, considering how Oak Grove Hall and being with her siblings always put her in a good mood. Then I will ask her forgiveness. Somehow, I got it into my head she wasn't up to the challenge of running this household or even of looking after herself competently. I can't even imagine how I got it all cocked up, can you?"

His aunt widened her eyes, looking innocent. He wondered if she would accept some of the blame, but she said nothing more.

"When she returns, Auntie, I intend to give her full head to be lady of the house. You can no longer be its mistress. Will you be able to remain living here while behaving thusly?"

Her eyes widened farther, then she added, "Once Lady Hollidge has proven herself able to run this household, I will bow out gracefully. I may continue to live here if I feel welcome, or I may set up my own residence."

That had gone better than Alex expected. Now he simply had to get his wife back.