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“What? No.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Corentine, my sister, was staying here at Wolfbridge when she gave birth to Vicky and then died a day after. It was after she and her husband had both left for India to visit lands he acquired. My sister realized a month after they departed she was with child, so she came back directly to Wolfbridge to stay, as neither of them wanted the child born anywhere but in England. My brother-in-law was supposed to follow her back in three months’ time. He never did.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what delayed him. I don’t know why he stopped returning Corentine’s letters. We feared his death, but never heard word of what happened to him. I sent missives to him of Corentine’s death and Vicky’s birth, but I’m not positive he received any of them. The only thing I discovered was that the last ship he was seen on was lost in a storm.” Reiner ran a hand through this dark hair. “Had he been here—Corentine may still be alive.”
Sloane shook her head. “How can you say that—the danger of birthing a child does not discriminate between who is in the room.”
“Ah, but it does. If he had been here, they would have been in London near her midwife. Corentine knew her babe was turned wrong inside of her—the midwife had told her that and was to flip the babe before she came. Corentine asked me to have her midwife brought from London, but I didn’t do it soon enough. If I had sent for the midwife even a day earlier…everything would be different. The midwife wouldn’t have…” His head tilted back and he shook it, trying to clear the memories.
It took several breaths for his gaze to drop to Sloane. “The midwife would have made it here in time. She would have turned the babe. But instead all I had to offer Corentine was a decrepit old midwife and an inept doctor that had no business birthing babies. Corentine died sixteen hours after Vicky was born. My fault.”
“You don’t know what would have happened if her midwife had made it here.”
“Exactly. Corentine could have lived. Vicky could have her mother.” His words stopped, his lips pulling inward for a long moment. “Vicky looks just like my sister. Sounds just like her.”
Sloane twisted the tumbler of brandy in her hands, staring at it for a long moment. Her look lifted to him. “Do you ken she carries about a letter from her mother?”
“What do you know of it?”
“You’ve seen it?”
“I wrote it.”
“You did?”
“I had to. Corentine was dying and she wanted to leave Vicky with something of her—something of her mind, words of hers. But she couldn’t lift her hand because she was so weak at the end.”
“So you wrote those words about how cantankerous you are?”
A sad smile lifted the right side of his face. “I could not refuse her. I’d never seen my sister so happy as when that child was born. Those few minutes she had with her daughter—they were everything to her. Her life well lived for those few, precious seconds when she could hold her babe. Vicky was everything to her.” He nodded. “So she dictated the letter. I wrote the words as she spoke them. Though she did manage to sign it.”
“You loved her deeply, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It was always just my sister and I until she married and left Wolfbridge.”
“That explains why Vicky’s singing makes you sad.”
He turned from Sloane and walked over to the sideboard, then poured himself a tumbler of brandy. “Maybe it does. She sings exactly like her mother. My sister was only a year younger than me—there wasn’t a time she wasn’t with me. Corentine was always singing—always—and she had the most beautiful voice. She was the one bright light in my life.”
He took a healthy swallow of the brandy before walking across the room to Sloane and stopping by the fireplace. “I was devastated when she left for marriage, even though I knew it had to happen. But I would get letters from her telling me how much she missed me and England—she never wanted to be away.”
“What of your parents?”
He turned to her. “My mother died when I was three. We rarely saw our father. He died when I was sixteen.”
“Why did you not see him?”
“He enjoyed life in London far more than here at Wolfbridge.” He dropped his gaze to the fire for a long moment, thinking he could cease the conversation. Again, his mouth opened on its own accord. “He was a cold man. Any time that we did spend together he was grooming me for the future. ‘Crush those that cross you. A man of your stature needs no one. Emotion is weakness.’ Dictums that were drilled into my head ever since I could understand words. But then I had Corentine and she buffered all of what he was.”
With a slight shake of his head, he looked to her. “And your mother and father?”
She shrugged. “They died of consumption when I was three. I don’t remember them. Jacob and Lachlan—my brothers—raised me. And my cousin Torrie is the same age as I and always lived with us, and we raised each other. She’s my sister for all purposes. Those three, they are my family.”
“Not your grandfather?”
Her lips drew inward for a breath. “My grandfather is…difficult. Demanding. He has always been so. But it has been easiest for me. I wasn’t the heir or the bothersome spare. I have been useful as a pawn for alliances—that is all.”
