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His mother cut him off with a contemptuous gesture. “What would she know about it? The nurse is far more expert about these things.”
That was probably true. Kenver’s throat tightened with pain. He turned away. “I must go and see him.”
“Later. We need to discuss how we will go on after you inherit.”
“Surely that can wait.”
“No!” She slapped a palm down on her desktop. “We will make matters entirely clear now! You will do as I tell you. I know how to manage Poldene. And I will not allow you to ruin what I’ve…your father and I have put in place.”
“I know a good deal about…”
“Nothing!” She made a slashing gesture. “You will listen to me! And do as I say.”
The cold glare in her eyes was unnerving. She must be very upset about Papa, Kenver told himself. This ferocity was a form of grief. Must be. He nodded to show that he had heard her. They would work out the sad details, if indeed it came to that, later on.
She took this for agreement and allowed him to go to his father. He found him inert and ashen. So still and pale, in fact, that he might have been gone. But his chest rose and fell with a soft wheezing sound.
Sarah sat beside his bed with a book in her lap. “The nurse gave him another dose of laudanum to ease his coughing,” she told him. “He will sleep for some time.”
“You really see no hope?” Kenver asked the nurse.
The woman slowly shook her head, not as if she relished the terrible news, but as if she had no doubt. Kenver sat down opposite Sarah, on the other side of the bed, took his father’s limp white hand, and blinked back tears.
“We had our disagreements,” Kenver murmured, speaking to the unconscious man and to Sarah at the same time. “Especially if I annoyed Mama. But when we rode out over the land together, tending to Poldene, it used to be different.Hewas different.” Kenver looked into the distance. “He told me stories of his boyhood on the estate. He had them for every age—eight, eleven, fourteen. They were like mine, and unlike.”
Sarah nodded, her heart aching for him.
“He showed me his secret hideaways,” Kenver went on. “He said he didn’t need them anymore, and they should be passed down like the house and the title. There is a huge hollow oak in a dip between three hills. Old as the Crusades, Papa said. Generations of boys have fitted it out with castoffs and treasures. I found a metal box my great-grandfather had buried in the floor. His name was scratched onto it. There was a lock of hair inside. I don’t know whose.”
“Kenver,” Sarah whispered.
“That was when I was younger,” he added. “It doesn’t happen anymore.”
“I’m glad he told you those things.”
He looked at her. “Papa taught me to cherish this place. And he had memories of the tenants too. I used one of those recollections today when I was settling a dispute. It swayed them when nothing else had done so.”
Sarah wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him. But what comfort was there?
“I wish our last days together had not been so…contentious.” Kenver bent and rested his forehead on the coverlet.
Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She was sorry about Lord Trestan, but she wept for Kenver. It was so hard to see him like this. She loved him, she realized, with all her heart and soul. Her accidental husband had come to mean everything to her. “He could still recover,” she said.
In the corner, the nurse made a dissenting sound.
Kenver sat up. He cleared his throat and blinked rapidly. “Yes. Things may look…bad.” He glanced at his inert, ashen father. “But we must not give up. You are an angel, Sarah.”
The tender, trusting look in his hazel eyes tore at her. If there was anything that could be done, Sarah vowed she would find it and do it!
That afternoon when the doctor called, Sarah followed him out of the sickroom and a little way down the corridor. “How did the earl seem to you?” she asked him.
The gray-haired man merely shook his head and started to move away.
Sarah persisted. “The nurse seems to have little hope of his recovery.”
“There is always hope.”
“Yes,” Sarah agreed. “But Mrs. Dillon told Lady Trestan that he is dying. Do you think she should have said that?”
