Esther’s heart quickened at the severity in Lawrence’s tone. His palpable anger tinged the air around them like a thundercloud. Coldness seeped along her spine. For all the hurt she’d suffered by her father’s incomprehension over her passion for women’s rights, Esther still loved him. Witnessing Lawrence’s taciturn, unmoving expression and the piercing ice in his words told her that he might believe he felt no love for his mother, but he most definitely felt something for her.
Full detachment meant the heart had closed, but the depth of his anger towards his mother showed she continued to dwell deep inside him. Even if she’d been buried to the lowest levels of his affection.
When she saw him behave this way, Esther realised just how much healing he still had to do to move past the cruelty he’d been subjected to. He needed to seek within himself and find the strength to forgive his mother and turn his love and trust to his sisters and children.
She desperately wanted to help him. Desperately wanted to be there for him, but how could she when she felt so woefully inept in that moment? Could she convince him that seeing his mother a final time might be good for him? That when he saw her, it might not become the confrontation he anticipated?
Clearing her throat, Esther braced for his reaction. ‘Lawrence?’
He snapped his gaze to hers, his beautiful blue eyes alight with fury and his jaw a hard line. She glanced at his sisters and they stared back at her expectantly, tension etched on their faces.
Turning to Lawrence, Esther prayed he listened to his head rather than his heart. He might mistake her care for interference, but all she longed to do was calm his rage. ‘Your mother is dying. If you don’t visit her now, you risk regretting that decision for the rest of your life. If my father summoned me to his deathbed, I would be there in an instant, regardless of what has happened between us. Don’t let her grasp on you continue forever. If you don’t at least try to find some peace—’
‘Peace?’ He huffed a laugh. ‘My mother wouldn’t know peace if she were alone in a meadow with nothing more for company than tweeting birds and blooming flowers. The woman is poison, Esther. She not only allowed my father to treat me the way he did, but she actively encouraged it. Look at her daughters. Harriet becomes thinner every time I see her and Cornelia is dreading going home to the one place she should always have as a haven. This is who my mother is. She’s our enemy, not our damn mother.’
Esther flinched and turned to Cornelia and Harriet. Their gazes had dropped to their laps, their expressions hidden but for the identical flush at their cheeks.
Everything pulled at Esther to flee this horrible situation and she would, once she’d made some way towards soothing a little of Lawrence’s shock and pain. She met his penetrating gaze. ‘My estrangement from my father and my dislike for Viola doesn’t mean I love him any less, Lawrence. He is old and wanted a wife beside him who had no need or desire to rally, lead demonstrations and so forth. He is not necessarily weak in not standing up to Viola. As he nears his twilight years, he clearly wants something different from what he once had with my mother.’
He carefully watched her. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because…’ She glanced at his sisters. ‘Because it could be your mother wants something different now, too. Your sisters have come to draw strength from you. That tells me more about you than anything could about your childhood. You’re a good man, Lawrence. A strong man who still cares for his sisters despite how you were raised. Harriet has done nothing more than your mother’s bidding. Why would you send her back to your family home, her mission failed, knowing your mother as you do?’
His gaze held a dangerous fire and Esther’s face heated. She’d overstepped an invisible boundary. Barged in where she was neither wanted, nor needed. She briefly closed her eyes before opening them again and standing.
‘I apologise. I shouldn’t…’ She raised her hands in surrender. ‘This has nothing to do with me. I’ll leave.’
She picked up her purse and stepped towards the door, but, as soon as she brushed past Lawrence, he gently gripped her elbow. ‘Wait.’ He drew his gaze over her face. ‘You have to understand what my mother is like. How she can say words that slice a person’s soul. How just a single look from her can make a person wish to be anywhere else but in her presence.’
In his saddened eyes, Esther saw the true depth of how his childhood still affected his thoughts and actions. A prisoner held behind bars by severe and cruel parenting which only convinced her that now, more than ever, he needed to go home and face his mother a final time. How else would he heal and move on if he did not tackle one half of the parental duo that had caused him such misery?
She cupped her hand to his jaw. ‘You must go. Not for your sisters or on your mother’s command, but for you.’
The silence lingered, intensifying as Esther’s pulse pounded in her ears, her heart aching for Lawrence and every ounce of the pain he suffered.
A light, feminine cough broke the stillness and she and Lawrence turned, her hand falling from his cheek.
Cornelia crossed her arms. ‘We should go home, Lawrence. This may be the last time either of us sees Mama alive.’ Her gaze was soft with pleading. ‘Did you not say you’d accompany me, anyway? Papa might have given the estate to Mama over you until she died, and you’ve made it clear to her you don’t want to inherit it, but she is bound to want you to. Why don’t you at least come back and hear what she has to say?’
His jaw tightened. ‘I don’t want Culford, Cornelia.’
‘I know and, God willing, she’ll see that myself and Harriet are just as capable of inheriting it as you. If that’s the case, this could be the last time you have to set foot on Culford land. I promise, neither myself nor Harriet will ask you to come there again.’ She glanced at Harriet, who continued to study her lap. ‘If you wish to visit sometime in the future, then we will welcome you, but it will not be demanded of you.’
‘Visit you? Surely, you’re not forgoing your plans to stay in Bath because of Mother? This is what she does, Cornelia. She manipulates and bends us to her will.’
‘I have no idea what my future holds, but going home now is the right thing to do. Deep down, I think you know that, too.’
Esther stood stock-still as realisation of Lawrence’s legacy dawned. He was heir to a vast estate. Surely, with his mother dead, he would not turn his back on such an inheritance? Surely, he’d choose to stay at the house and run the estate as he saw fit? He might come back and forth to Bath for his business, but with his parents gone, he might easily decide to return to his rightful home in Oxfordshire.
Whatever her doubts about her strengths to support him, Lawrence had responsibilities beyond her and their growing feelings for one another. She could not be the person that made him turn his back on the people and tenants who needed him.
She wouldn’t.
There was every possibility this could be the beginning of the end of their relationship, but she was willing to surrender all that grew between them. The thought of losing him, having only just found him, twisted at her heart and sadness pressed down on her. But if it meant Lawrence finally laid the demons that hovered over him to rest and resumed his duty at the helm of his family’s estate, walking away was the right thing for her to do.
He walked to the window and stared towards the green outside. Esther glanced at Cornelia and she tilted her head towards Lawrence’s back as though asking Esther to talk further with him.
She shook her head. Whatever happened next was Lawrence’s decision. She might love him but… She stilled. She loved him. Her heart burned like an ember in her chest and icy-cold perspiration broke on her forehead as certainty of her feelings for him and of how she would suffer if she lost him bore down on her, but he had to be where he was most needed.
‘Lawrence?’ Harriet stood and approached him at the window, her face pale and the hand she touched to his back ever so slightly trembling. ‘I can’t do this alone. Mama…’ She dipped her head, a tear rolling over her cheek. ‘She is little changed. I need you.’
With potential loss squeezing her heart, Esther held her breath.
At last, Lawrence slowly turned and studied Harriet with a renewed affection in his gaze. He opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace. He closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to her hair. ‘I’ll come. Of course, I’ll come. How can I not be there for you at a time like this after my desertion all those years ago? I will see Mother. I feel too duty-bound in my love for you and Cornelia to do otherwise.’
Cornelia’s exhalation whispered beside Esther as she released her own breath.
It was done.
Lawrence would go home, and she prayed with all her heart he would find his healing.
Tears burned her eyes. But, oh, how she’d miss him.