Yet there had also been reminders that, in the sixteen months he’d been in Ireland and in the year of lost memories before that, he’d missed so much.
The daughter he recalled had been theatrical and exuberant, never fretting over muddied hems to her skirts. She’d wished to be a famed actress upon the stage and have an audience throw pink roses at her slippers. Now she was…subdued, even wrinkling her nose at the prospect of visiting London, but he supposed at sixteen years, she had shed her youthful ways to become a proper young lady.
He mourned the loss but accepted the change.
Indeed, so much had changed but so much had not.
The wall of the games room still held their father’s trophy of a three-foot trout yet a new billiard table sat gleaming. The fifth tread of the staircase still groaned but had a different carpet atop. To his eye, the gardens had not altered and yet Kendrick, their venerable gardener, who’d been with Tristan to pick roses for his wedding to Sarah and then lilies for Mother’s funeral, had died six months past…
His breath caught, was too hot under these damn blankets he’d been swaddled in and–
“Should I fetch you honey, my lord?” asked a footman. “For your cough?”
Tristan glanced up.
Because as it happened, he was far from alone in the library this morning.
Maids fluttered about, ostensibly dusting dust-free shelves, and footmen loitered in attendance, eyes fixed to the ceiling plasterwork though seemingly able to sense when he so much as twitched a finger.
“No, thank you, Aled,” he rasped. “Just…a lump in my throat.”
“Of course. I’ll just be…” He motioned to the bookcase three foot from Tristan’s chair. “Should you need me.”
How could he not be grateful for all this care lavished upon him. Two sennight’s past he’d been a carpenter in Micklow. Now he’d returned home, a duke’s brother, and no longer would he have to sand wood till his eyes became blinded with dust or his hands cramped with pain.
Nevertheless, and not for the first time, he felt a certain sense of…suffocation.
“Aled?”
“Yes, my lord. How may I be of assistance?”
“You’ve all been most kind but perhaps… Could I have a little time to myself, do you think?”
“By all means, my lord.” All of a sudden, the footman grinned, revealing a gap in his front ivories. “Our Mrs Pugh said you wouldn’t last a half hour with us fussing around, she did. We’ll be in the hall.” And showing all the aptitude of a future butler, he ushered everyone out.
If not the housekeeper, then who in the hell had instructed them to attend his every need as if he was some invalid?
He nodded his gratitude as Aled closed the door, threw aside the blankets, rose and limped to the window.
Leaden grey greeted him.
At this time of year, the sun solely ambled along the horizon before sinking back down again as though the weight of the clouds above could not be borne.
The library window overlooked the rose garden, forlorn and naked, but beyond it, in the distance, was the sea.
It reflected the sky, hues of ash, granite and fog. Sleeping and dangerous.
But curiously, it lured him still.
On a few occasions in Ireland, he’d ventured out with fishermen from the village, never straying too far from shore, but as he’d sat on the harbour wall in Dublin, waiting for the packet boat to bring him home, trepidation had risen within.
Would the dusk voyage across a winter’s Irish Sea rouse a latent fear? Resurrect that stormy eve when he’d nigh lost his life?
But instead, he’d observed the beauty of the waves, felt the draw of the indigo blue as he had done since childhood. Then he’d focused his thoughts on his precious daughter and dragged his cursed leg up the gangway.
The night had been bitter cold but the wind light, a perfect crossing made in twelve hours, the sea at dawn a shimmering enchantment as they’d sighted the black rocks of Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey. The short crossing to the Welsh mainland town of Caernarfon had been more perilous, the Menai Straits with its treacherous currents pitching the boat like a bee-stung stallion.
But it had brought him safely hom–
