With the subtlety of a tree crashing at the edge of a glen, Oldston had put plans in place for Addison to reach the heights of society.
‘Why did you ask me to visit with you?’ Sophia twisted in the carriage seat.
‘Because I’m considering moving my household. More than considering it.’
‘Relocating? All of us?’ Sophia’s head lowered.
‘Yes. Of course.’ He could not leave her, or Cook, or the stableman behind. ‘My household. Everyone.’
‘Oh...’
‘Don’t look so dismayed,’ Addison said, interlocking their fingers. ‘It’s little bigger than the space we live in now and the garden suffers by comparison. I was pleased to leave the town house behind, but after my father offered me a chance to return and said I could the use the money I’d given him to repay the debt for my education as the cost... He said he and I both would benefit from the transaction.’
When the man of affairs had informed Addison that his father had decreed his son would conduct business better from the lavish town house, Addison had been surprised, but then pride had invaded his body. And a sense of power. Acceptance.
The carriage ride with Sophia would be brief compared to the steps home from the gaol with the offal scent he’d worn, trapped in his nostrils. His clothing did not reflect the short time they’d been unwashed, but the years of trapped people within the walls.
The garments had been cleaned, but he’d never been able to wear them again. He’d not even wanted the buttons kept. A coat made by the finest tailor in London and he’d demanded it destroyed.
‘This time, when I return to the town house, I’ll be arriving in my carriage, specifically invited by Oldston. A first for me.’
A town house his father was going to sell since his wife’s aunt had vacated it—or he claimed he might let Addison have it...if he would live in it.
In the past few days his father had, for all intents and purposes, put an arm around Addison’s shoulders and introduced him to the upper reaches of society, and said he trusted Addison with all his funds.
‘I am going where I belong. The world I was born into.’
‘I like the world you live in now.’
‘But you’ve not seen this one. Not from the inside.’
She didn’t answer, but he could sense her trepidation.
He took her other hand. ‘Wait until you see it to form an opinion. And you’ll like it just as well. Even better.’
Cook had said Sophia would never be comfortable among the society world Addison needed to reach the height of success, but he would prove her wrong.
Then the carriage stopped and he appraised everything with a fresh perception. He would have to get a grander vehicle. The one he had wouldn’t do now. Caldwell would be pleased.
He led Sophia from the coach and kept a hand on her arm. ‘It’s fine,’ he reassured her, sensing her unease, but then his own apprehension invaded him when he studied the familiar façade. He’d not before considered how stately it appeared.
He remembered his first view of the house he lived in now and how decrepit it had been—with the only thing agreeable being the size and price. But over time he’d altered it to suit him and the changes made it a comfortable home.
Yet, it was not the structure rising in front of him.
He told himself it was just a home. Walls. Windows. Doors.
He squared his jaw. Years had passed and he had changed and everything was different—but not. The house spoke of grandeur he’d taken for granted.
‘Do not let it intimidate you,’ he said to Sophia when he saw her face. ‘It’s only my childhood home.’
The instant he said the words, he knew he’d made a mistake in speaking them.
She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before.
The door opened and the butler, Wooten, greeted him and his stoic expression gave away nothing. Wooten hadn’t changed except the creases in his face were deeper. Addison imagined the man had so perfected his station in life that he didn’t feel emotions until he was alone, if then.
Addison paused and introduced Sophia as his housekeeper, and the word was bitter in his mouth. She stepped away from him. He could not introduce her as such ever again.
Quickly, he continued speaking, wanting to erase the moment.
‘Are you the solitary person remaining?’ Addison asked. ‘Of Mother’s servants.’
‘Yes.’
‘If I were to live here again, would you stay?’ Addison braced himself for an unfavourable response.
Wooten was the perfect butler. He would never err on addressing a duke, but he’d been able to convey a duke-like displeasure over Addison’s indiscretions without ever once losing his demeanour of servitude.
Addison hadn’t returned easily past Wooten when he’d arrived at the town house after the gaol. He would have let his father see him in the filth and somehow conveyed to his father that he was to blame for the stench, though he’d not been.
But Wooten—that had been more difficult than peering in a mirror.
‘Of course. I could not leave your father’s employment,’ Wooten said.
‘What if it were my employment?’
‘If your father asked me to stay on with you, I would do so happily.’
‘It would be an honour for me,’ Addison said and continued into the home, leading Sophia to the upper rooms in silence.
They stopped at the dining room.
She increased the distance between them. ‘Humphrey would not be at home here,’ she said, studying a gilded mirror framed by two matching sconces.
‘He might. And as a valet, he could keep to the background.’
‘It would be hard for him to stay hidden away. And how could that help your advancement? To have people in residence who did not fit their surroundings?’
‘It appears grand here, but it is only better paint.’
‘You can’t paint everything.’
He took her arm. Kissed her fingertips. ‘Not everything needs to be painted.’
She didn’t speak.
He walked to his father’s room and heard his own footsteps in a way he’d not noticed before. And Sophia’s timid ones.
His father’s room held the basic furniture he remembered. Ducal to the last carving on the bed frame.
He stopped in the room that had been his, but he’d not stayed in it long after he’d discovered wine, women and song.
‘Your room?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes. If you look out the window, you can almost see the roof of my father’s estate. You can view the chimneys for the fireplaces.’
‘How nice,’ she said, but she didn’t stroll to the curtains.
Then he led her to the solitary room of importance he’d not entered. The library where his father had often worked.
Once inside the door, he stilled at the sight of the painting across from the mantel in order to keep it further from possible soot. The one piece of art in the home. One familiar to him. He blocked it from his awareness.
‘This was the room where they had their loudest words.’
His mind latched on to scenes of his mother sewing and his father striding back and forth, gesticulating about this or that.
A silent laugh escaped Addison’s lips.
Not all the recollections of his parents were of their true disagreements, but they were often spirited. He could remember avoiding the room, preferring the steadiness of his own domain. Sometimes he would be aware of strident tones, but it usually didn’t mean anything more to him than the patter of rain on rooftops. It was volume and frustration. Not hatred and not always anger.
His mother had overacted as much as Humphrey did.
His brothers had had his father’s name and title, but their lives likely had little of the Duke in it. A man could be divided in just so many portions and, in Addison’s younger years, his mother’s town house got the largest measure of the Duke, he suspected. Not that it mattered to him then. But perhaps it should have. His half-brothers surely noticed, although he doubted Benedict cared any more than he had. Edward, the heir, possibly felt differently.
‘I was happy to be the bastard child. My father came here to see me, or so my mother sometimes shouted,’ he mused. ‘And her greatest fear was that he would take me. Because of that, she had to watch her step. She truly burst into a rage at herself one night when he left, angry she would have to placate him, or risk losing me.’
‘He would have had all rights to you if they’d been married when you were born. But she was your mother and your only rightful parent because they weren’t wed.’
His brows rose. ‘He had friends in Chancery Court. In Parliament. Among royalty. And he had funds. And since he recognised me as his son, Mother feared the Duke could take me. He could have.’
He watched as realisation dawned in her eyes.
‘But there were instances my father reassured her, stridently, that he would not separate me from her. Never, he claimed. But many times, in a temper, he would retort he only came here because of me and then he would take me for a short trip. At first, he would be furious with her, but we would see a menagerie or purchase a treat, or he would show me where Parliament sat, and he would talk, and then his anger would fade and we’d return here.’
‘Perhaps, because they fought so easily, it’s best they didn’t wed.’
He firmed his jaw. Staring overhead, and shaking his head, he said, with a hint of false incredulity in the words. ‘But if they married, what would they have fought about then?’
His dry laugh bounced back at him from the empty shelves where his mother’s vase collection had rested. He moved closer, running a hand over the wood on the mantel, making three distinct circles in the dust, unhappy to see the indication of emptiness. He brushed his hands together to clean them.
She stepped to his side, opened her reticule and took out a folded handkerchief, giving it to him to wipe the dirt from his fingers. ‘My husband and I never argued. I did all I could to appease him. He—himself—wasn’t mean. But I wanted to avoid the petulance, the conflict and the feeling of being cornered. I didn’t own the house, either, and I didn’t even feel I had the option to argue with him if I disagreed.’
‘My mother never questioned her right to disagree and my father would give gifts to appease her. I sold them, later. He had to know. He’d taken me to the shop once when he’d purchased a gift for Mother and I tended to sell them back to the best tradesmen.’
He pointed to the circles he’d made. ‘The Meissen. The Sèvres. The ormolu clock.’
If he could find the valuables he’d sold to support his rakehell lifestyle, he wondered if he’d try to purchase them again, but doubted he’d be successful. Besides, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to afford it.
He’d sold them, but he’d retained her favourite vase, which he no longer had. He’d sold his mother’s treasures, except the one. The one Crisp had explained as broken. Perhaps it had been. He had kept the inferior, worthless trinket which Crisp had used to replace it. The memento of his mother’s that he’d treasured had likely been stolen from him, explained away as shattered. A justice only fate could deliver.
The recollection sent a shard into his midsection.
His father knew. Knew when he’d visited and he’d tapped the ugly little pot that sat on the shelf, the true artwork not in Addison’s dwelling. Not left behind in the town house.
Addison had felt the slap, accepted it and remained standing.
He again recalled his mother saying the Duke treated her better than if their positions had been reversed. He suspected he could have said the same thing.
‘She should have been his wife. Who knows if it was guilt, or stubbornness, or perhaps she didn’t truly love him? She preferred to be his mistress.’ He jerked his head sideways.
‘Am I not—?’
‘Don’t say it,’ he commanded. ‘Sometimes my brothers and I crossed paths without my father there. They called my mother names and that enraged me. They settled on mistress. The ugly word. The one my parents used in fights. The one most profane to me. They were older than me, but not as swift on their feet.’
Addison walked away from the mantel and fought back his emotions, staring at the one painting in the house. He’d once sold the artwork directly in front of him. A gift his father had given his mother. The dealer had likely contacted his father and his father had purchased it a second time.
He owed his life to his father and his loyalty.