“I was worried.” His mother dropped her fork and leaned back in her chair. Was it his imagination, or had her face gone whiter in the few days he’d been away?
“A boy must venture off sometimes,” Papa said. “After all, I did the same a time or two when I was your age, I did—”
“You might have told us.” She grabbed her napkin, dabbed both eyes. “A mother endures horrid things. Imaginations of her son lying beaten and bruised in some heaven-forsaken village alley or worse.”
“Er—yes, yes. You are right, Martha. Best to make apologies, Son, and then we shall speak of it no more.”
Felton rose from his chair, bent next to his mother, and pressed a kiss to her cold cheek. The act warranted him a smile, if not a teary one. She was beautiful, his mother. Even after forty-six years of age and many years of illness, her skin was still smooth, her lips still full and shapely, and her chestnut-colored hair still just as perfect and shiny as it must have been in her youth.
“Off to see a few good mills, did you, Son?” The older man, smaller than Felton in both height and frame, stabbed his fork into roasted fowl decked with watercresses. Contrary to his wife, his bronze skin radiated with health, and his voice boomed loud and strong against her frail one. “Nothing like a good fight, eh wot?”
“Richard.”
“I’m sorry, my dear. I did not mean it, of course. Fights are, er, rubbish and that sort of thing.” He glanced back at Felton, who had claimed his chair again. “If not there, pray, where did you go?”
“To retrieve Eliza Gillingham.”
The room stilled.
His mother’s glass, which she’d raised to her lips, clinked to the table.
Felton was tempted to stare down at his empty plate or reach for his own fowl to distract his hands. But instead, he took turns looking from his father’s face to his mother’s.
Both stared back without expression. Maybe without hope too. Didn’t they realize what this could mean for them?
“She is bound to remember. We have always thought so.” Felton rose, put distance between himself and the table. “If anyone can set things right, she is the one who—”
“Richard, tell him he should not have done this.”
“Your mother is right.” Of course Papa would fail to see reason. Had he ever gainsaid his wife in his life? “The matter is over and done with. There is no sense in bringing it all up now when the hurt—”
“The hurt continues, and I for one do not wish to live in it one moment longer.” Fury kicked his blood into faster motion. “You may be fine with walking about the village hearing people whisper about the bloody woman murderer—but I am not. You are innocent, and I have every intention of making every last fool in Lodnouth see the truth.”
“But it will all start over again.” Tears were already leaking down her cheeks. Had she always cried so easily? Had she always been so weak and frail and worrisome—or was this just another thing taken from him fourteen years ago?
Papa circled around the table and scooted back her chair. “Let me help you upstairs, my dear. You appear most unwell. You do not feel faint, do you?”
“No, Richard.”
“Just say the word, and I shall hail Dodie for the smelling salts.”
“I do not need them. Just help me upstairs, and I shall lie down.” Leaning heavily on her husband’s arm, she shuffled to the door and glanced back only once. “Felton?”
“Yes, Mamma?”
“A wife endures horrid things too. Imaginations of her husband finally being free, of his guilt being over after all these unbearable years.”
“That is what I am trying to give you, Mamma. Can you not see?”
“You are a good boy, Felton, but I can only bear so much pain.” Her voice quivered. “I fear I cannot live through yet another disappointment. God knows I cannot bear it all yet a second terrible time.”
The door was locked.
Felton Northwood had forced her through the imprisoning double doors of Monbury Manor, down the entrance hall, and up the giant, sweeping stairs that smelled of linseed oil.
He’d said nothing until they reached a glistening mahogany door. One he swung open with fervor. One that chilled her soul when he urged her inside. “As most of your five years were spent in this nursery, there is no doubt you shall be comfortable.”
Then he’d yanked the door shut.
