“What has brought on the change in you?” she asked again.
“I was told I was dying, and I wished to alter my ways before I met my maker.”
His mother gave him a doubtful stare. It was unnerving to be known by this difficult woman, and yet she did know him. It was impossible to be his mother, and not have an insight into Silverton and his faults. The problem, he feared, was that she could see only the darkness that lingered in his chest, and none of his thirst for light.
It was with that impulse, a drive for his mother to know the softer, warmer, kinder side of him, that he made the admission. “I got married. I am married, I should say.” The words pressed out into the sparse and lonely kitchen, as if by alluding to Maeve and her beguiling kindness, he would bring her forth. The image of her played before his eyes, and he smiled, unbidden.
To his surprise, his mother snorted. It was hardly ladylike, nor was it drawn from amusement. “You always were romantic.” It was odd how derisive she sounded.
“Me?” he asked in surprise.
“As a child. I always thought you the sensitive one compared to Charlie. He was the bold brother, you the softer...” Their eyes met, hers grey and unyielding, then she sliced through the cured meat and handed him a plate. “I would have thought time would alter you. Or that witnessing what happened to me should have toughened you up.”
“Marriage has not done that.” He took a bite; the meat was dry and chewy. Clearly the money he had been sending had not been spent on food, either. He swallowed a draught of the stout to wash it down.
“Give the institution a few more years in that case.” Her cynicism turned his stomach. “What is the poor woman’s name?” his mother probed.
“Come up to London and meet her. I think you would like Maeve. Everyone does.” Anyone who had half a brain would be charmed by her winning smile and bright, enlivening spirit.
A fleeting roguish look dashed over his mother’s face as she considered his request, which Silverton could not quite read. “Maeve?”
“Yes?”
“What brought on the union?” his mother pressed, an unpleasant tinge to her face as she lowered the food and came around the table towards him. “You have never struck me as a man overly interested in the matrimonial state, nor in what comes afterwards.”
“I thought all mothers wish to see their children wed.”
“Wed for good reasons,” Lady Silverton said. “But you cannot have known this lady long since you have never mentioned her to me. That, and her Irish name, makes me think she is not worthy to be your viscountess.”
She was pressing closer to Silverton now, and a queasy odd feeling of weightlessness was entering his head. The vision of his mother’s face floated oddly before him, as if suspended in mid-air. He tried to push himself to his feet using the table, but his mother gripped his forearms and held on tight. “Well, speak. Tell me why you seem so romantic towards this Maeve.”
“Can a man not change?” his question came out abruptly. The tongue in is his mouth was heavy suddenly, and his knees weak. Unthinkingly, Silverton looked towards the partly eaten food on his plate and then raised his head, frowning at his mother.
He had been drugged.
“It was in your drink,” she snapped. “Sit down, if you fall on the cobbles it’ll hurt.”
“What?” the blackness was crowding in on all sides now, and Silverton knew he would be unconscious in just a few minutes. Why his mother had done this was beyond him, and he simply had to know.
“Why?” the question blurted out between them as his feet slipped on the kitchen titles, and he juddered to the floor.
“That is my own question, why have you wed?” His mother crouched down in front of him, her face blurring, but her bright eyes unnaturally animated. “Surely you knew how angry that would make him.”
“What?” Nothing she said was making sense, but then again everything was being fogged over and vanishing into darkness.
“That’s why you did it, I assume, got married to some girl. A defiant gesture can be the only explanation, as if you mean to defy the law… inheritance… boys always play with each other, against each other, don’t you know how much that breaks your mother’s heart?” As Lady Silverton spoke, her voice was moving from a faint noise to a sing-song defiance as she folded Silverton’s hands in his lap and pushed his head back to rest against the table leg. “The pair of you never did grow up. You’ll always be my little boys. That’s why I wanted you here, with me, as we used to be.”
He fought against the growing darkness, desperate to stay awake. Lady Silverton held his arms down—her strength kept him in place despite how valiantly he struggled.
“Hush, hush,” she soothed with a cooing noise that made a mocking of true maternal sentiment as she leant Silverton back and stroked his curls of his head. He tried to speak, but the words died on his tongue, and blackness claimed him.
CHAPTER16
It would not be fair for her not to wait for Silverton’s return. Maeve knew that as soon as he left. However, on the tenth of March, something rather pressing had happened, and she desperately wanted to see her husband.
Her second monthly course had been missed.
With all her focus being paid to Silverton’s health and wellbeing, it had taken Maeve longer than she would normally have done to look at a calendar. She realised something rather important had happened, or indeed not happened. She did the calculations…. she had bled close to the start of her honeymoon in January, but not since then. How she could have missed such an obvious sign baffled her, although in fairness February had been something of a distracting month.
