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Not to his childhood home. Not to the land that his family had held for so many generations. And never, ever into his grandmother’s orbit.
When he had conceived of marrying to please hisabuelita, he had imagined that after the birthday party, the wife he’d chosen would take herself off to one of his properties elsewhere. He hadn’t minded which one. He had expected he would need to trot out the wife on special occasions, and would otherwise plead his busy life.
His grandmother would have seen through him, but that hadn’t worried him. Doña Eugenia knew better than most why her grandson was the way he was. Lionel had been sure that when she saw how easily he planned to get along with the wife he bought—and he’d planned it that way, so he knew it would have been that way—she would come around.
He had not been prepared for the Cartwright heiress to be stolen out from under him or for Geraldine to laugh her way to the altar.
But then, Lionel also would have said that he had no interest in spending time with an infant. He’d never been all that interested in having babies, even though he was well aware that he was required to procreate to keep the fortune in the family.
That had always seemed to be a problem he could deal with far off in the future, if at all.
Now Geraldine was his wife. She lived in his house. She slept in his bed. And she would have spent every minute of every day with little Jules if she could, which meant he spent time with her too.
And somehow none of his rules seemed to apply to either one of them.
“Have you spoken to your mother?” Lionel found himself asking one evening, which was in and of itself astonishing.
He assumed that all the women he’d been involved with before had also been in possession of mothers, but he had never inquired. It had never occurred to him to wonder about people so wholly distant and unconnected to him. Yet here he was, the very picture of domesticity all of a sudden.
He was sitting in that great room of his, before the fire. He was gazing about warmly as if it had always been his dearest wish to spend his evenings with a woman he had already explored thoroughly and a happy baby that was not his own.
What he should have been, he kept telling himself, was outraged, for Geraldine had clearly cast some kind of spell on him.
But he could never quite work himself up into any kind of outrage, no matter how he tried. And if Geraldine thought the question about her mother was strange, she kept it to herself. “I speak to my mother all the time. At least three times a week.”
That surprised him. Maybe that was the reason Geraldine was so firmly lodged beneath his skin—he never knew what she was going to say or do. She had never bored him yet.
“Even after she left here the way she did?” he asked.
Geraldine was sitting on the rug the way she liked to do, supervising Jules as she gurgled with delight and flung the toy she was holding as far as she could. Over and over again. Every time, with a patience that Lionel could only admire, Geraldine would pick up the toy, smile at the little girl, and hand it back to her.
And when he asked her that question, Geraldine laughed. “My mother and I have always had a peculiar relationship. It’s almost as if neither one of us can bear how much we care for the other. We do better when we are simply discussing our lives with each other, not looking for support, just sharing the details. It’s when there are expectations of particular emotional responses that we are less successful. But my aunt and my cousin never really got along at all, so believe me, I can tell the difference.”
She smiled down at the baby with such joy that it made something in Lionel seem too tight. He found himself pressing the heel of his palm to his chest to dissipate it.
But Geraldine was still talking. “I think my aunt was always afraid of Seanna’s beauty and what it would mean. And I suppose you could say she wasn’t wrong, given how it ended up. She ended up blaming Seanna, as if she’d meant to be that beautiful and therefore meant everything else to happen too.”
“My mother took it as a personal affront that she was ever expected to pay any attention to me,” Lionel told her, and shrugged when she looked at him, her eyes wide. “She had already suffered through the pregnancy. And the indignity of a lifelong scar on her abdomen, forever ruining her figure.”
“Lionel...”
“In truth, I was always grateful that she did not pretend otherwise. It was easier.”
He meant that, but the words hung there in the room, seeming heavy next to the way Jules laughed and clapped. And Geraldine looked for a moment as if she might cry.
And this, Lionel told himself, was yet another reason he avoided feelings at all costs. He preferred that he always knew precisely what went on in the rooms he inhabited. That there were clear agendas to follow and obvious signs indicating what was happening and to whom.
Allow emotion in and there were undercurrents and uncertainties. There werekind eyesand overbright glances and too much he did not want to think about, like the mother who had excluded herself from consideration years ago.
“Some say she deliberately infected herself with the bacterial infection that killed her,” Lionel found himself saying. “I doubt that, but she certainly did nothing to protect herself against it when she could have. It’s not as if it was an easy thing to catch. What I do know is that all she cared about once she was ill was the planning of her funeral. She wanted to make sure that it was a grander function than any party my father might throw to celebrate himself, in life or death. That was their primary relationship, you understand. Base competition.”
“Surely not.” But she wasn’t arguing, Lionel saw. She onlywantedwhat he was saying not be true.
“She could have gotten treatment,” Lionel said, and he didn’t know why reciting these facts made his ribs ache. “She knew she was ill. She might even have suspected what it was. Instead, she died within the week, though she did make certain to tell me that she was delighted she wouldn’t have to pretend to care about any children I might have one day.”
That sat even more heavily in the middle of the room, filling it up until he was surprised that the glass ceilings didn’t crack and rain shards down upon them.
“My mother and I get along marvelously, really,” Geraldine said softly, and the wideness in her eyes turned to a kindness that he did not wish to see. Or feel behind his ribs. “But she didn’t want me to take care of Seanna either, if for different reasons. Everyone else in the family thought we should let Jules get adopted and pretend Seanna had just...gone off somewhere. My mother didn’t think that, necessarily, but she was concerned at what nursing Seanna would do to me. Personally. And what taking on a child on my own might do to me, also personally. It’s a critical distinction, you see.”
