“Harriet’s death was a hard blow to him.” Mrs. Dowling withdrew a handkerchief and dabbed at her nose. “She was his only daughter, and they had a special bond.”
“Surely his granddaughter must be a comfort to him then,” Rory said with steely calm.
At those words, Mrs. Dowling gave Rory a look so curious he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was it pity? Or perhaps it was disappointment?
“She was, yes, but now Harold’s health is such that I cannot care for the child. It will be better if she is with you. She needs her father.”
Rory snorted. “I’m sure that is the last thing she needs.”
“Well, perhaps you can be a better father to her than you were a husband to my daughter.”
Rory stiffened. He drew in a slow breath and waited for Mrs. Dowling to apologize, but she glared at him defiantly. It was a look he’d seen on her daughter’s face many times. “Mrs. Dowling, you know as well as I do that I tried to be a good husband to your daughter. She wanted nothing to do with me.”
“That’s not true—”
“It is,” he said, louder than he intended. “She tricked me into marriage at your urging, and then, after we were wed, she told me she all but loathed me.”
“You left her and the child.”
“In a luxurious town house in Mayfair. Better for Frances to grow up in a household where her mother didn’t curse her father and rage at him for not being the man she truly wanted. Even so, I tried to win Harriet over. Even after years of mistreatment, I tried.” He gestured to the grave of his infant son as proof of hisefforts at reconciliation. “Your daughter never wanted me, and now my own daughter is a stranger to me.”
Mrs. Dowling pressed her lips together. He thought she might protest or even argue, but she didn’t gainsay him. Finally, she straightened her shoulders. “We should not have insisted on the marriage,” she said. “What’s done is done, and I have brought Frances with me and left her in the care of your housekeeper. We have said our goodbyes. If you don’t want her, perhaps your parents would take her in.” Mrs. Dowling turned. “Good day, my lord.”
Rory watched her for a long moment, fist clenched to keep from calling her back. He wanted to rage at her for showing up, unannounced, and thrusting a child upon him. But because he wasn’t a complete dolt, he kept his mouth shut. After all, he’d been the one to thrust the child into the arms of his late wife’s mother before walking away just moments after the first shovel of dirt had been thrown on Harriet’s coffin.
It seemed fitting that she should thrust the child back at him.
Rory gave the gravestones one last look before following his mother-in-law out of the cemetery gates. He took the long way back to the house, wanting her carriage to be away before he reached the estate. She’d blamed him for Harriet’s death. The entire Dowling family had blamed him, though how he could be responsible for a carriage accident when he’d been seventy miles away was beyond him.
But then, Harriet wouldn’t have been racing from London to Devon to see him if they hadn’t been estranged. If he hadn’t ordered her to come. No point in mentioning that he’d wanted her to come because he’d been trying, once again, to reconcile. That he’d sent for her and their newborn son in an effort to repair the marriage.
Now he’d never have that chance.
And Frances would never have a mother.
Rory stopped at a row of lilac bushes still in full bloom. Strange for the flowers to be blooming this late in the year, but the winter and spring had been unusually cold in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fourteen, and he’d been told the flowers hadn’t bloomed until July. The estate was awash in lilac bushes, so many that they had given the estate its name. Harriet had loved lilacs and fallen in love with the place upon first sight all those years ago. Rory had bought it for her—rather, he’d used some of her dowry to purchase it. He’d hoped it would bridge the distance between them, a gap that had widened from the first days of their marriage. At two and twenty, he hadn’t understood that the divide was insurmountable. When he’d proposed, he’d thought their marriage would be a perfect union. She was the heiress with the money. He was the lord with the duke for a father and the old family name.
But nothing had been perfect. As soon as they’d exchanged vows, Harriet became someone he didn’t recognize. He’d thought her a lush violet when all along she’d been a rose with toxic thorns. When the truth had come out—she’d been in love with another and never wanted him—Rory had felt betrayed and used. He’d tried to forgive her lies and deceit, but Harriet made it quite clear she didn’t want Rory and did not care whether he forgave her. By the time Frances was christened, he was living here, Harriet was in London, and the two rarely met.
Rory thought he could count on both hands the number of times he’d been in the same room with Frances, his only child and the only survivor of that fatal carriage accident.
Rory heard the wheels of a carriage fading away and decided it was safe to return to the house. If Frances was in Mrs. Mann’s care, then perhaps he need not see her right away. What was he supposed to say to a—was she six or seven now?—to a little girl?
But as he approached the front door to the house, he heard a voice that could only be his daughter’s—high and childish. “I won’t go inside, and you can’t make me!”
Rory raised his brows at her tone of voice. Something in it was vaguely familiar. He hadn’t realized little girls spoke like that. He thought they were supposed to blush and speak in whispers.
“Miss Frances, don’t you want to see the nursery? We have toys there,” the housekeeper said patiently.
This information was new to Rory. He hadn’t been in the nursery since—well, he’d never been in the nursery.
“No. I want to go home!”
Rory rounded the edge of the house in time to see his daughter kick Mrs. Mann in the shin. Rory’s brows went up again. It had been a rather impressive kick. But he couldn’t have his child—or anyone, really—abusing the staff. “Now, see here!” he bellowed, making Mrs. Mann, a maid, and the child jump and turn to look at him. “There will be no abuse of the staff,” he said, voice stern.
For a moment, the little girl looked at him, and Rory saw in her face his own eyes. Like him, she had dark hair and slanting eyebrows. He had a flash of himself as a child, and he knew why her tone of voice had been familiar. She was a female version of the child he had been—willful, stubborn, and recalcitrant.
She narrowed her eyes at him, stuck her hands on her hips, and tossed her hair. “And who are you?”
