Chapter Twenty-Three

In the absence of information about the noticeably thinner and paler Lord Dominic Kirke, more rumors sprouted like mushrooms. About his health and finances and love affairs and by-blows.

And even those who heretofore might have gloated over the notion of Kirke becoming a shell of a man were worried and disgruntled. Where would they focus all of their rancor now? It was much more fun when their opponent clearly held them in contempt, too. Where was the sport in resenting a clearly suffering man?

And there were those who rubbed their hands together gleefully. Bertram Rowley, for instance. "Kirke is a spent force," he declared to those who would listen. "His debauchery has caught up to him. Why would you want such a man representing you in the Commons?"

Dominic had friends of the sort who would politely inquire after his health at White's but not pursue the matter after he said, "I'm well, thank you, and you?" Friends of the sort who enjoyed and sought his company for a game of cards, or a good debate.

A determinedly friendly Mr. Delacorte tracked him down through his man of affairs and issued invitations to come and play chess with him in a noisy pub. He went. Paradoxically, the loud Mr. Delacorte was surprisingly soothing company.

But he had no real confidants. No friends of the kind that Hardy and Bolt seemed to have in each other, for instance.

None whom he would trust with his current torment, if even he'd been able to articulate it.

As it turned out, this very realization was like the rope thrown into the deep, dark well he'd been down for weeks.

Thanks to Catherine, he realized now that it was because he'd long held himself apart from allowing himself to be fully known.

And in so doing, he had only hurt himself and others.

That in a lifelong commitment to protecting the vulnerable, it had never occurred to him that he was one of them.

That he had constructed his life in such a way to protect and disguise the grave damage of an old shame. If he'd let himself be known, it had seemed inevitable to him that people would eventually discover how contemptuous he really was.

It was a bloody unwelcome thought, and it joined the rest of the delightful torment stew he was currently enjoying.

Because he realized it was the source of all his problems.

And then it brought an epiphany: it might also be the source of all the answers.

She can't hurt me if she doesn't know me.

He mulled this again.

He was not convinced life-ruining was his vocation. God only knew worse things had been said to him and he'd survived it. But the accusation had been a spear to the ribs because she knew where to aim. It was the best and most unnerving thing about her. And he'd given her the ammunition.

He'd apparently done a stupid thing by arranging for her to have the dress. He realized now it was his way of saying "I love you" before he'd even known he did.

He'd insulted her with the world's most stunted marriage proposal, a craven, strategic attempt to keep her while still shielding himself from the threat of grave pain if she did not, in fact, love him. Christ. He sucked in a breath.

Still, he was blackly amused at himself. He couldn't fault a man for trying. His own instinct for survival was clearly pronounced. Because he simply had ceased being able to imagine a life without her.

Then again, most of the things he did were not stupid.

Gingerly, he ran his thoughts over the wounds and errors of his past, inspecting them honestly.

Anna was content in her life now, surrounded by her family. Leo was thriving.

And even though Keating knew the messy truth of him...

She'd still done a mad thing, and climbed up on a desk in the hopes she could hear him breathing.

Hope stirred and needled him.

He refused to allow himself to dodge away from the exquisite terror of hope. He sat with it, even as it unsettled his breathing. He allowed himself to imagine joy. To feel it fill his body, unfettered. Told himself he was not a fool to do it.

How long had it been since anyone had truly known him—and loved him anyway? So long he had gone blind to the signs, like a cave creature?

Because he'd forgotten how the minutest detail about a loved one became a treasure to gather.

She'd wanted to hear him breathe.

On the hotel ceiling was a stain shaped like Italy, and he lay on his back on the (lumpy) bed and stared up at it for a time as if it was an oracle.

What he wouldn't give right now to hear her breathing next to him.

Finally he closed his eyes, and lost himself to the memory of the unguarded tenderness with which Catherine's fingers had landed against his face. She had from the first looked at him, and spoken to him, and touched him, with the courage born of an innocence that hadn't yet been hobbled by heartbreak. He'd been almost unable to bear it. He'd not wanted to accept how desperately he'd needed it.

What if you didn't fight everything? she'd asked, the night she'd worn a goldenrod dress.

Had she seen what he could not? That he'd been fighting against the tide of his feelings for her?

Had she seen his fear? His pride recoiled from this notion.

And yet. She was the one person in the world he would trust with his fear.

Had she been trying to tell him then that he was free to love her, because she could love him, too?

He breathed as the impossible beauty of this possibility flowed through him like a sweet drug.

And yet. He wasn't certain she would even speak to him again.

It remained more than possible he'd botched things utterly.

But he saw very clearly now that the only chance he had of salvation was to lay himself bare. And in so doing, even if he never saw her again... he knew, somehow, he would at last be free.

His pillow at this hotel wasn't soft. It was no hardship to leave it, light a lamp, and settle in at the desk, which suffered from the absence of blossoms in a vase.

And he settled in to write a speech like no other he'd ever written.

It was time to let himself be known.

St. Stephens Chapel at the Palace of Westminster, where the House of Commons met, was stuffed cheek by jowl with members of Parliament from both the Lords and the Commons that day.

Word had spread that after weeks of silence, Lord Dominic Kirke was finally going to speak.

The speaker in question paced, as he always did before speeches, taking long deep draughts of the air breathed by centuries of MPs before him. His palms were damp. There was always a moment—and it was brief—where he felt almost lifted out of his body with unreality as he took in the hundreds of eyes fixed upon him. A euphoric sort of terror. The first words were always the hardest, but he gathered strength from each one he said, until speaking was as innate as breathing.

He knew his audience was expecting to be stirred. And usually he complied, with fire and passion.

Today, little did they know, they would be offered something completely new.

A love letter.

"When I was a boy, in Wales..." he began, conversationally, "I grew up in a tiny house of nine people. Yes, I had six brothers and sisters. I know what you're all thinking: thank God there are more Kirkes, because we cannot get enough of the one we have." He paused for scattered laughter, good-natured theatrical moans. "My childhood was chaos. Crying, screaming, arguments, laughter, wrestling, chasing, nothing but noise all day long. There was seldom enough to eat, and never a moment's peace, not even at night, when the whole of my family, parents and children, were all stuffed into two beds. The snoring. You could not hear your own thoughts, gentlemen. And I had a lot of them, as you can imagine."

Many faces were smiling; many remained impassive, or merely alert. But he had fully captured their attention now. He had never begun a speech quite like this.

"How did I survive? I had a secret." He paused, knowing the power of this word, and the power of silence, like a rest in a composition. "And my secret was this: I had a refuge. Whenever I wanted a moment alone, when the noise and bickering and babies became more than even a saint could tolerate—I am no saint"—he paused for a heartbeat to allow the chuckles to subside—"I would sneak out to a scrubby little hill near my house. It was as unprepossessing as a place could be. It had as its crowning feature: a large gray boulder, which obscured me from anyone who might be hunting for me.

"And this hillside was covered in the most heavenly carpet of clover."

He let the word linger in the air, like a caress.

"Like an embrace, that clover was. I never wanted to leave it. It was there, on that hillside, that I felt like my truest, freest, safest self. When I shuffle off this mortal coil, if I through some miracle make it past the gates, I'm certain heaven will look like that clover-covered hillside, scented with little purple blossoms. And instead of harps, I'll hear the hum of bees and the wind moving the long grass.

"So what does ‘clover' mean to me? Refuge. Paradise. Peace. And I sometimes think that if anyone could peer at the contents of my heart—well, frankly, you'd find clover. And I will confess something, gentlemen. To this day, when I'm having difficulty falling asleep, I imagine I'm back on that hillside. It's my heart's true home."

It was absolutely silent. It was a silence created by motionlessness. Not a paper rustled. Not a bum shifted in a seat. Not a head turned away from him. He could not yet ascertain whether the quality of silence was uniformly rapt, or uneasy, or confused, or appalled by the spectacle of Lord Kirke ripping away the veil, so to speak, over the contents of his heart. They had never before heard him wax sentimental. But they were all enthralled because they wanted to see where this story was going. He suddenly felt like Scheherazade, waiting for her verdict.

He let the silence stretch a bit.

"And it's the English way, isn't it?" he said almost offhandedly. "When most of you were still small boys, I warrant, you were taken away from your homes and families and sent off to school. It will make a man of you, you were told. And you believed it because children believe what the adults we love and trust tell us. That is the nature of a child. What choice do we have?" He paused again, and his next words were almost intimate, a gentle question, as if they were all sitting across from each other at White's. "Do you remember that day? Think about it now. Did you wonder why your parents could so easily do without you? Did you long for home? You were only children. Small, innocent boys." He allowed this to settle in. "Did you feel... abandoned?"

And he could feel the emotional tenor of the place shift.

"How did you comfort yourself on those first long nights away from home? What did you think about? When did you begin to feel safe again? Some of us, in some fashion—well, I warrant, we never really felt safe again, knowing that life could take us from the things and people we love."

Finally a sound, the best sound of all under the circumstances: a stifled sob.

Oh yes. He would ever so softly break them, he thought, with a warm surge of triumph.

He saw a man passing a handkerchief to Farquar.

"So where did you go in your heart to feel safe when you were a child? What, to you, is your clover-covered hillside? Who were you, gentlemen, when you felt your best, your safest, your truest self, at peace with the world? How often do you feel that way now? Because I will tell you: the only way any living thing can bloom is if it's given the slightest chance to grow where the elements can't destroy it. Some measure, some shelter, some small moment of safety and peace. I would not be standing before you now if I had not found my own. Think of me what you will, but all of us, together, shape history."

And because his senses were so heightened, he saw it: tears shining in the eyes of the most cynical bloody men. He was speaking to some painful part of them that they had never dared visit or mention. That had been forgotten, abandoned, or buried. Laying himself bare and laid them bare, too, and they were all taken off guard.

"In the workhouse of Bethnal Green. In a dormitory attached to a textile mill. In orphanages. There are children who didn't ask to be born. Children who are as innocent as you or I were. Who began life as hopeful, and as trusting."

His voice rose and rose, subtly, gradually, until it was soaring. "Can you—CAN you—imagine the loneliness? The fear? The heartbreak? When a mill owner tricks them into signing a paper that says he essentially owns them for decades? The hope they felt, the joy, at finally belonging somewhere? A place of safety and refuge? And then to have that trust betrayed so brutally when the hours are inhumane, the food is inadequate, the conditions so often abusive.

"I think you can." He said it softly. Tenderly. Regretfully.

Ever so slightly accusingly.

He paused to allow this to settle in.

"We can be their refuge. And no—we might not be able to give all of them a clover-covered hill. But we can make them that much safer. We can create in their lives a space for peace and comfort and safety, so they can bloom. So one of them one day might stand before you and give a speech like this one. We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to England, we owe it to the future of this great country. Together we can give that to them, gentlemen."

He went on to tell them how.

Through changes in laws. Through better enforcement of current laws. Through apprenticeship programs. And more. They listened to every single word because they were absolute captives now; they were inhabitants of the world of his speech.

He had often questioned why he'd been fortunate enough to be born with this gift, but today he felt he finally knew the answer: so that a doctor in Northumberland could read it aloud to his daughter at the breakfast table, and she would know that a man from Wales had given her his heart.

The following day, Dot, Angelique, Delilah, and Mrs. Pariseau gathered in the kitchen around the newspaper and breathlessly listened while Angelique read the speech aloud.

They all sighed and murmured.

"My goodness. One of his finest," Mrs. Pariseau declared, brushing a tear from her eye.

The Timeshad, in fact, called it "ruthlessly sentimental, incisive, informative, personal, and moving—a tour de force."

"And to think he made Mr. Delacorte say ‘defecate' out loud in our sitting room only recently," Delilah mused.

"Mr. Delacorte brings out the best in all of us," Angelique replied.

(Personally, they secretly thought this was true.)

Mr. Delacorte greatly missed Lord Kirke. "He's eloquent and a bit of a rude bastard," he'd mused admiringly, in the smoking room. "You wouldn't think those two things would go well together, but they do." He'd pressed Lord Bolt, who was a member of White's, to inquire about Kirke's man of affairs, and he'd tracked him down via a message. "You can run but you can't hide, Kirke. I can still beat you in chess."

"He called her Clover," Mrs. Pariseau said quietly. "In the sitting room."

They all exchanged glances.

Angelique extended her arm for them all to see. "Goose bumps."

They all knew who "she" was. The girl who wore the beautiful blue dress. They all missed Catherine, too. She had fit in so happily at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

"I wonder if we'll learn what happens next," Delilah mused.

It was a fair question. Interestingly, the newspaper had printed an actual retraction of the spiteful gossip about the dress. This was unprecedented.

And not one scrap of gossip about Lord Kirke had been printed since.

Dominic's speech resonated throughout London, and the House of Lords—through all of England, eventually—for weeks thereafter. (It would, in time, be printed in history books.)

He did not yet know whether its echoes were felt in Northumberland. He did know it sometimes took weeks for the papers to arrive in the outer reaches of the countryside. And he didn't know if it would do anything to influence the immediate vote for limiting the working hours for children.

But in its immediate aftermath, he felt spent and almost peaceful. He had done what he felt he could. In light of this, he would accept his fate, whenever it was revealed to him.

Meanwhile, it bought him a measure of goodwill that manifested in surprising ways. He received invitations to events he had not anticipated. Cricket matches. Family dinners at colleagues' homes. More donkey races.

He went. He liked all of them much better than balls.

It brought him a fresh measure of resentment, too, because his political foes felt both reluctantly moved and sympathetic, and also foiled. As though he'd revealed yet another new weapon. He remained, as ever, the candidate they probably could never beat. Rowley looked like quite a fool for even considering a run against him.

And astonishingly, Farquar had sent to him an abject written apology for punching him in the face and for his underhanded dealings with Marie-Claude, and had made an enormous donation to an orphanage. Farquar clearly loved his wife. Even odious people could love and be loved, Dominic thought wryly.

But Farquar still owned his damned mill, however, staffed with children.

Dominic had assured him he would never, ever stop attempting to end this.

And then he received a letter he would cherish for the rest of his life:

Dear Lord Kirke,

I do not know yet what to call you. I contemplated Father Kirke, but it is the name of our very pious and judgmental vicar in Yorkshire and from what I understand the two of you have little in common. I hope you will forgive me if "Father" does not quite roll off the quill pen easily.

I should like to thank you for the books. I liked Rob Roy very much. The Ghost in the Attic is a trifle confusing, as the peril awaiting the heroine would seem to be in the title. I look forward to discovering how it ends. Mr. Miles Redmond has had an envious life, and I am enjoying his adventures, too.

I read your speech in the newspaper. My secret place is beneath an oak tree one mile from the home in which I grew up. I hope one day to visit your place in Wales.

I hope this letter finds you well, which is perhaps how I should have begun it. I am well.

Leo Jenkins Atwell (Kirke)

Sardonic and funny, polite and articulate, grateful and vulnerable.

That is indeed my boy, he thought, with a lump in his throat. God help the lad.

While all of London was introduced to the softer side of Kirke, some people in London had been reintroduced to... another side.

"While I'm conscious that a certain benefit to both of us occurs when my name appears in any capacity in your newspaper, whether the mention is flattering or not," he said very pleasantly to Mr. Barnes, The Times publisher, over drinks at White's, "I have decided to sue you into oblivion over the latest item. The public does not take kindly to the cavalier destruction of a young woman's reputation."

Barnes took this in thoughtfully and stared back at Kirke. He had an admirable game face.

Finally, he decided to adopt a wounded expression. "I thought we were friends, Kirke."

Kirke sighed heavily and tilted his head in a "come now, do better" gesture.

He waited in silence until Barnes was a little sweaty with nerves, then idly added, "I might be inclined to be more charitable if you tell me the source of the gossip."

Shortly thereafter, a retraction was printed. And every merchant in the ton ceased extending credit to the Hackworths, who had always lived on the teetering edge of ruin. Their furniture and carriage were repossessed, and two months later, their town house was seized by the bank. For Kirke had amassed plenty of credit in the form of support and goodwill of his own with merchants of the ton, and one subtle suggestion to a carriage maker about the likelihood of him ever recovering his money from the Hackworths spread to the others.

And as the builders steadily put his home back together, he stared at his hotel ceiling at night, and surrendered to, glutted on, in fact, the constant dull ache in his heart. Because that was all he currently had of Catherine.

All he might ever have of her.

"You'll have your memories," people liked to say about lost things.

And yet his memories were both bliss and torment.

But he would not yet go in pursuit of her. He simply could not be certain it wouldn't appall and distress her. He wanted to cause her no further suffering.

But he had sent out a signal. And if nothing else, whatever befell the two of them, at least hopefully she would know for the rest of her life that Dominic Kirke had loved her.