“I have never known you dance like this before,” Lady Rebecca whispered as the music began to close.
“Like what?” Timothy asked, knowing with sadness that he would soon have to release her.
“As if you are afraid to part from the moment,” she murmured, those blue eyes never leaving his.
“That is because I am, Lady Rebecca. I do not want it to end.”
Yet with those words, the music did what he didn’t want. It ended, urging the two of them to step away from each other, bowing and curtsying. Lady Rebecca blushed all the more as she curtsied.
I am not blind. Something is happening!
As Timothy took her hand, leading her away, he was thinking hard. Surely he had to say something? He could feel something between him and Lady Rebecca, there was something there, even if it was unspoken of. Was now the moment?
“Timothy, my boy,” George appeared at his side, with a spent glass of port in his grasp. Before Timothy could say anything to Lady Rebecca she curtsied, taking her leave of them both and hurrying off to her mother at the piano.
“What, Uncle?” Timothy asked, trying to keep the resentment of George’s interruption out of his voice.
“I have discovered something.”
“What is that?”
George drunkenly leaned on Timothy’s shoulder, whispering in his ear.
“The way you look at Lady Rebecca. It reminds me so much of your father.”
The words made Timothy flinch in surprise.
“What do you mean by that?”
Chapter Seventeen
Timothy kept staring at his uncle, waiting for an answer as George began to sway.
“The way you look at her…” George was rather mystified. “It could be all those years ago again, a different room, but it is the same.”
“Uncle, you are making no sense.” Timothy took George’s arm and looked around the room, rather glad to see that everyone was either too busy dancing or talking to notice the state George was in. He led his uncle to a chair in the far corner of the room and urged him to sit down, whereon George pointed between the carafe nearby and his empty glass, clearly desiring more port. “Why do I remind you of my father?”
“It is just the same,” George said, staring at the carafe, his mind barely in the room at all. Timothy felt he was talking to a different man, for his uncle was so in his cups, he was making no sense. “The same reputation, the same wandering with women, then the same longing look…at one lady alone.”
Timothy jerked in surprise, standing to his feet sharply. The insinuation was a shocking one. He had always been told by his mother and uncle that his father married his mother when they were both young, that was the end of the matter. George was the rogue, yet his father was a one-lady man.
“Uncle, what did you say about my father? The same reputation and wandering? You mean he was…” He trailed off, looking back to the room. He was wrong-footed, and the world seemed to be slipping sideways, at a different angle to how it was before.
“You are so like him,” George said with a sigh, his eyes half lidded as he slipped toward sleep.
Timothy couldn’t handle this anymore. Perhaps George was merely murmuring nonsense in his cups, but that hardly made any more sense than this. Timothy needed some space, and a chance to breathe.
He crossed the room as quickly as he could, aware that his mother looked up from her conversation with Lady Esther and the Countess, surprised at his parting. He shook his head at her, unable to utter words as he parted from the room, closing it behind him.
Not knowing where his feet were taking him, he wandered the corridor for a minute before he took the stairs. Halfway up, he stumbled, not paying attention to what he was doing. Catching himself, he half fell on the steps, turning to sit down and stare through the candlelight down the staircase.
Blinking, confused, he stared at a space on the wall. Had he been in his own country seat, he knew at the bottom of his own stairs was a portrait of his father. Tall, with a small smile creeping into his features, and the same dark hair as Timothy’s coiffed on his head.
Timothy hung his head forward, steepling his hands over his nose as he thought of what his uncle had said.
“The same wandering with women…the same reputation,” he repeated the words, trying to make sense of them. The inference was clear, it suggested that his father had wandered between women, earning the same reputation that Timothy had.
“Timothy? Is something wrong? Why have you left us?” Catherine’s voice found him, prompting him to lower his hands and peer through the candlelight to where his mother appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you well?”
