LITMIR.BIZ

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seeming to regain her courage. ‘Won’t your mother miss you?’

      ‘No.’ Gregor let go of the silver before his tight grip bent it. ‘I wasn’t her favourite son, as she insists on reminding me every time she tells me it should have been me and not Stanton who died of smallpox.’

      ‘How can she be so cruel?’

      ‘She didn’t want me. She barely wanted my brother, but Stanton was her duty. I was the spare my grandfather, who controlled the money at the time, demanded. My mother is none too happy about Stanton’s death proving my grandfather right.’

      ‘I’m sorry she’s so severe.’ She touched his arm, the sweet care which had first drawn him to her years ago filling her round eyes. He stared at the creamy hand resting on the dark blue of his coat, the pressure of each fingertip as vivid as if she’d touched him naked. As if feeling the spark, and remembering their place among so many people, Miss Rutherford withdrew her hand and folded it with the other in her lap.

      ‘They were as severe as yours are amiable…’ Gregor breathed.

      She settled her shoulders and glanced around the table, pursing her lips in disapproval. ‘My parents are too amiable. As you can see, they allow everyone and everything to run wild.’

      ‘Don’t wish for too much discipline. My father was a man of stern self-control who expected obedience from his wife and children. He demanded we always behave in ways which would instil awe, if not fear, in those around us. It’s why we didn’t get along. I didn’t hold with his notions of our importance because I knew it was a lie. My parents put on a façade of unity and strength in public. In private, they were bitter, miserable people with no love or real purpose in life except to make everyone around them wretched. We never celebrated anything like your family does, or enjoyed a house filled with such laughter. Your parents love each other and you, as do your siblings. Learn to embrace it, Miss Rutherford.’

      * * *

      If only it was so easily done. All her life, she’d stood in the midst of her family’s chaos, attempting to carve from it some tranquillity, yet they kept intruding, laughing and calling her dour when she asked them to understand. They didn’t, they couldn’t and they never would. Even when it came to Lord Marbrook, they didn’t see things the way she did. Once when Lily had asked her mother why she continued to encourage Laurus’s friendship with Lord Marbrook, her mother said if he was Laurus’s friend, then he must be good and it was only Lily taking things much too seriously which left her tainted by the ball. Lily had tried to make her mother see how Lord Marbrook’s actions had influenced others against her, but it was no use. Her mother agreed he’d behaved poorly, but thought there must have been a good reason for it, though Lily could never guess what beyond Marbrook arrogance it might have been. Her mother failed, like the rest of the family, to realise the damage the viscount had done, though recognising reality was never a Rutherford strength.

      She looked around the table at her sisters and their husbands. Rose’s hand rested lovingly on Edgar’s forearm as she smiled at her sons where they sat at the end of the table. James smiled back, but John was too busy stroking Toddy, the second-smallest dog and the most docile, the one he liked to carry around whenever he was here. The dog would muddy up the boy’s bed later and track in more dirt than was already soiling the carpets. Yet Lily seemed the only one to ever notice or care. Even Lord Marbrook was taken in by the charm of it, but he couldn’t see the extra work it meant for the servants or how yet another set of sheets would be stained beyond repair, money paid to replace them.

      Nor could he see how far outside the circle of love and contentment she sat. While her sisters enjoyed the comforts of husbands, homes and children, she was left to grow old with nothing but her paintings. She was fast becoming a spinster aunt.

      ‘Miss Rutherford, our conversation in the greenhouse—I wish to discuss what happened between us at your sister’s wedding,’ Lord Marbrook cautiously began in a low voice, drawing Lily from her gloomy musing.

      ‘Now you’re threatening the merriment of the evening by bringing up such a distasteful subject.’ She tried to laugh, but her throat was so dry it hurt. She reached for her wine, the indignity of her current situation, the one he had no small hand in, burning like the brandy-soaked raisins in the pudding.

      ‘I don’t wish to upset you, but I feel I must apologise for what happened.’

      Lily jerked around in her chair so fast, she thought she might split the silk seat covering. ‘Why? What can your apology achieve except an easing of your own conscience? It can’t undo the opinion your behaviour created of me, or force the gossips to take back every nasty thing they said about me.’

      Her voice rose, briefly attracting Aunt Alice’s attention before Laurus drew it away.

      Gregor stared at his plate and the half-eaten slice of pudding covering the fine rose pattern of the china. His jaw worked, but he said nothing and regret began to creep up Lily’s spine. He’d been humble enough to apologise and she’d thrown it back in his face, but there was truth in her accusation, one they both couldn’t ignore.

      At last he let out a long breath to make the candles in front of his place dance. ‘You’re right, but I don’t know where else to start. I’ve regretted what I did from the moment my father escorted me from the ball. It was he who ordered me to cut you, who insisted I act like a Marbrook. I wanted to please him because I thought it would make a difference in how he regarded me and convince him not to send me to France. It didn’t. I should have ignored him and helped you, the way you’d helped me in the alcove.’

      So Mother was right, there had been a reason beyond arrogance to explain what he’d done and it was a good one. It eased a portion of her anger, but didn’t banish it. In the end, no matter what his motives, he’d attempted to relieve his problems at her expense.

      ‘Lily, what is Sir Winston’s daughter’s name?’ Petunia asked from across the table, watching her with a strange little frown, as though something about Lily’s conversation with Lord Marbrook didn’t sit well with her.

      ‘Catherine Fordham,’ Lily replied and Petunia resumed her conversation with Rose and Mama, though not without casting more curious scrutiny in Lily’s direction.

      Lily picked up her napkin and raised it to her mouth, whispering to Lord Marbrook from behind it, eager not to attract any additional attention from anyone else in the family. They weren’t known for their discretion. ‘Why apologise now when it no longer matters?’

      As if sensing Petunia’s scrutiny, he turned slightly in his chair to face Lily, looking at her from beneath his brows with an intensity to make her shiver. ‘Because it does matter, I see it in your eyes when you look at me, I hear the pain in the few barbs you’ve allowed yourself, every one of which I deserve.’

      ‘Lord Marbrook, do you have any experience with water dogs?’ Charles asked, leaning around Lily to address him.

      ‘I’m afraid not,’ he politely answered, as if he and Lily were only discussing the weather and not her disgrace.

      An answer received, Charles returned to his discussion with Edgar.

      Lord Marbrook leaned closer to Lily, his voice heavy like distant thunder. ‘I’d intended to visit your home the day after the ball and apologise, but I couldn’t. The next morning my father packed me off to France. With little more than an hour’s warning, he sent me away to a hell I wasn’t prepared for. Now it’s over and I wish to make right the wrongs my family has done to its tenants, to other families and you.’

      Lily took another sip of wine, struggling through the confusion of her feelings to think and breathe. She didn’t doubt his sincerity, or his need for absolution, yet she withheld it like Pygmalion had gripped her paintbrush, unable to let go of the pain and embarrassment she’d endured in exchange for something as wispy as words. It was wrong and she knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘What do you possibly hope such a belated apology can achieve?’

      He was about to answer when Daisy called out from across the table in a voice

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