Chapter Thirty-Four

The sway of the traveling coach was not soothing enough. Niles had been uneasy and nervous throughout the days-long journey from Yorkshire. Now, mere minutes from his parents' home in Cornwall, he was struggling to keep his anxiety at manageable levels. If not for the peace and comfort of Penelope leaning against him, asleep with his arm around her, he would have been hard-pressed to keep his composure.

Something Aldric said to Henri—the two of them were sitting on the opposite bench with Nicolette—pulled a laugh from him. Penelope startled awake. For a moment, she looked extremely confused.

"I told them they were going to wake you," Nicolette said, reaching over and squeezing Penelope's hand. "These misbehaving Gents owe you an apology."

Niles tucked Penelope closer. She sighed, the sound both one of lingering sleep and what he'd come to recognize as tranquility. Even in difficult moments, Penelope had a way of bringing peace.

"Are you Gents causing trouble again?" Sleep hung heavy in her words.

"Again?" Henri objected. "We have never caused trouble in our lives."

"Puppy, your Archbishop is lying," Penelope said.

"How shall we punish him, Penny?"

Niles was less startled by the gorgeousness of her smile than he had been when they'd first met, but the sight of it still set his heart fluttering.

"Leave him to Le Capitaine," she said. "She'll sort him."

"Yes, she will." Aldric chuckled.

"Laugh all you want," Niles said. "The raisins have predicted you are the next Gent to fall."

"I make a point of never listening to raisins."

"Your true difficulty," Henri replied, "is that the raisins make a point of never listening to us. Some lady will soon claim your heart, and you will have to acknowledge how wrong you were to doubt."

Aldric shook his head. "There is no lady on earth the raisins would doom to that fate."

"But there are plenty your father would," Henri said.

"The duke has his heir, and his heir has an heir. I assure you, neither could possibly care less about my marital status."

"But the rest of us care a great deal," Nicolette said.

Aldric didn't allow that thread to be followed any further. " Niles and Mag's marital status is the one we're supposed to be focusing on."

Both Aldric and Digby had painful relationships with their fathers. Henri's connection to his father had also been difficult. It made Niles all the more eager to repair his relationship with his parents. He didn't always appreciate them as much as he ought to.

"How long until we reach your parents' home?" Penelope asked.

He swallowed down a sudden lump of nervousness. "A matter of minutes."

Minutes. He released a tense breath. Minutes away from a reckoning.

Penelope sat up straighter, her posture taking on a bit of tension as well. "I hope Liam hasn't already left for Ireland. What if we've missed him? What if he won't sign the marriage agreements? What if your parents and grandparents don't welcome you back?"

"Take heart, darling," Niles said. "We can endure the coming storm." He was reassuring himself as much as her.

"At least you look a little less like you've just lived through one," Penelope said.

His eye was still a bit dark from the bruising, and the scab on his face was plainly visible. Digby had provided him with a wig that was not highly powdered, which looked a lot like his hair had before cutting it. His appearance would not pass close scrutiny, but he looked enough like himself to be able to offer an explanation other than "I participated in a prizefight under a pseudonym and got pummeled."

"Is your family going to be very angry with you?" Penelope asked.

"I suspect they will be, but they'll behave with company about."

"Is that why we're here?" Aldric asked. "To be a buffer between you and the anger of the entire Greenberry clan, all three or four thousand of them?"

"I thought we made that very clear." Niles made a show of being confused. "Most of you will die, but your deaths will be heroic."

"I will be certain to write a very moving poem honoring that sacrifice," Henri said.

"What makes you think you are going to be one of the survivors?" Aldric shook his head. "I intend to rush in shouting, ‘Target the Frenchman!'"

"You will do no such thing," Nicolette said fiercely.

The Gents and their ladies were godsends. From the moment Stanley had greeted him in that Cambridge courtyard so many years earlier, Niles's life had been changed for the better. He had been helped through heartbreak and misery; he'd been uplifted by their laughter and friendship. And he thanked the heavens again for them in this moment.

"I don't want your family to be unkind to you, Niles," Penelope said.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "They won't be unkind. Upset and disappointed, yes, but I've not known them to be truly cruel."

"Requiring you to marry where you didn't wish to is not precisely a kindness."

"Perhaps not," he said, "but it is such a common unkindness that it doesn't overly matter to most people."

"Your unhappiness matters to me ." She spoke every bit as vehemently as Nicolette had a moment earlier.

"A mutual sentiment, my Penny."

"Now I almost hope they do target the Frenchman," Henri grumbled before pretending to be sick to his stomach.

"First lies and now insults?" Penelope shook her head. "I begin to think your moniker was given ironically."

Through the carriage window, Niles spied a stately Cornish elm, one he knew well. He grew very still. "This is my parents' estate." His stomach tightened and twisted painfully. My parents' estate. He couldn't even bring himself to call it home, no matter that it had been his home all his life and was still where he returned every time he completed a journey. "I can't remember ever feeling so unsure of my welcome here."

Penelope leaned against him once more.

"Take courage, you two," Aldric said. "Remember, you've come bearing good news."

That was true. But would it be enough to overcome what he'd done and the hurt he'd caused his family?

Penelope lightly touched his cheek. "Aldric is entirely correct. While the timing was not what your family wanted, the outcome is precisely what they all wished for."

"Perhaps rather than begging for forgiveness," he said, "we should saunter in, bold as brass buttons, and declare that we've come to make all their wishes come true."

The carriage came to a stop. Beyond the windows was his childhood home.

They were met by the expected bevy of servants. The coach door was opened and the step put in place. Everyone inside the carriage alighted in silence. They were ushered as far as the entryway but were then told to wait while the butler took word of their arrival to Niles's parents.

"Being made to wait does not seem like a good sign, does it?" Niles rolled his neck, working very hard not to simply start pacing.

"It could easily be the fact that you have arrived with so many guests," Aldric suggested.

"Let's tell ourselves that." But Niles felt certain the others were as doubtful about the explanation as he was.

The butler returned. "This way, please."

Niles desperately wanted to hold Penelope's hand as they made the trek to the drawing room, but knew he would do best to keep strictly to the expectations of propriety. They needed to give his parents no further reason to think poorly of him.

He stepped over the threshold. How was it a room could be so pleasantly familiar and so uncomfortably uninviting at the same time?

"Lord Aldric Benick," the butler began his introduction as soon as he stepped inside the drawing room. "Mr. and Mrs. Fortier. Miss Seymour. Mr. Niles Greenberry."

His parents stood inside, watching their arrival. Unfortunately, Niles could describe them the same way he'd described the room. Achingly familiar. Heartbreakingly uninviting.

Still, he knew what civility required of him in that moment. "Father, Mother, I believe you know everyone in the group other than Mrs. Fortier"—he indicated Nicolette—"who now resides in Suffolk but is originally from France. Mrs. Fortier, this is my father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Greenberry."

" C'est un plaisir de vous rencontrer ," Nicolette said with a curtsy.

" Le plaisir est pour nous ," Father returned with a bow.

Mother was never one to neglect her social obligations, but she did not offer a greeting or welcome of her own. In fact, she was not paying Nicolette the least attention. Mother's unwavering gaze was on Niles.

His heart dropped. He'd caused his mother pain. That was not something he could ever feel good about.

She moved toward him. Niles held his breath. He would endure whatever castigation she delivered. And somehow, he would find a way to mend all this.

"Niles." Mother spoke his name quietly, barely louder than a whisper. But he didn't hear any anger in her tone. She wrapped her arms around him as she'd done so often over the course of his life.

He embraced her in return. "I am sorry for all the difficulties I have caused you these past weeks, Mother."

"You told me often enough that you dreaded the very idea of an arranged marriage," she said, holding him tight. "I am your mother; I ought to have listened."

This was not the reception he'd anticipated. He didn't quite know what to do.

"And I ought not to have placed you in the position I did," he said. "I admit I panicked a little."

She stepped back. "You set off a bit of a panic here as well. The family is divided on this matter: some insist that you were entirely in the wrong, while others have begun to declare that they will follow your lead should your grandparents arrange a marriage for them."

That was not at all what he had intended. He glanced very briefly at his father, who was offering greetings to the new arrivals. "Where does Father fall on the matter?"

"At the moment, I believe he feels conflicted."

"That is far better than livid, which is what I had anticipated."

She patted his arm. "Make no mistake, he is not best pleased with you. But we've also spent a lot of time since your defection discussing what we might have done differently, and he has begun to realize, as I have, that as your parents, we should have given more importance to your happiness and less to the demands of tradition."

"Thank you." His growing amazement rendered the words a little breathless. He'd expected denouncement but was receiving compassion and embrace instead.

"You look as though you had an accident," Mother said. "You're bruised, and there's been a cut on your face."

He gave a reassuring smile. "I grew a little too enthusiastic during a game of sport."

"You do have a tendency to do that." Mother leaned in a bit, lowering her voice. "You and Miss Seymour do not seem to be at odds."

"We aren't," he said. "Quite the opposite, in fact."

Mother turned wide eyes on him. "That is unexpected."

"It certainly was."

She shook her head. "That will make this evening very interesting."

"How so?"

"We are to have supper at your grandparents' house, and neither of them has reached the place of equanimity that I have on the matter."

This welcome reception, then, was not an escape from the reckoning he'd anticipated but merely a delay.

"Niles." Father's greeting was not nearly as tender as Mother's had been. He didn't pull Niles into a hug, nor say his name in the same soft way. But there was no obvious animosity in his eyes. If anything, he looked as uncomfortable as Niles felt. "It is good to have you home again."

"I am sorry my original letter went astray. It was not my intention to cause the distress that I did." But that wasn't entirely forthright, and he thought it best not to add to his deceptions. "I knew staying away would cause difficulty, of course, but I hadn't meant to leave you guessing what happened to me."

"Mr. Seymour wrote to us after finding you in Yorkshire. He explained that you said you had been unwell."

That you said you had been unwell. Not that Niles had been unwell. That he had said he had been. There was significance to Mr. Seymour's explanation but even more to Father's recounting of it.

"Lord Aldric's letter was far more eye-opening," Mother said.

"Lord Aldric wrote to you?" Niles hadn't been informed of that.

Mother squeezed his arm. "He said you were more yourself than when he had first arrived at Pledwick Manor, which set my mind at ease. He also said we were fortunate to have a son like you, and that far too many people don't treat you as they ought."

"I believe," Father said, "his admonition was that too many people don't listen to you as they ought. It was not difficult to understand what he was telling us."

"I didn't ask him to write to you."

Father reached out and set a hand on Niles's shoulder. "I know you didn't. But I'm glad he did. It forced me to look at things a little differently."

"But Grandfather doesn't see things any differently?" Nervousness trickled over him once more.

His parents exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"Mother said our time at Ipsworth tonight will be interesting."

Father raised an eyebrow. " Very interesting."