A grin crept onto Damon’s face the next morning as he sat for breakfast at Blackbourne House, the Malford town house in Hanover Square. He buried his head in the papers lest his sisters notice, but they were too busy chatting about the ball to pay much attention to him.
After his sisters exited the room, his mother approached, dressed from head to toe in severe black, a black that mirrored his own garb—though each wore it for different reasons.
Despite being in deep mourning, Felicity Blackbourne had insisted on accompanying the family to London. “I shall refuse all social events,” she’d said. “But I want to be there to show my support for Damon as head of this household. As Duke of Malford.”
She paused now before him. “Damon.” Her voice cracked. “I’m sorry for what happened yesterday evening with Fillmore. Cassie told me. I did not know he would be present. The last I knew, he was still in Bath. We do not communicate much.”
Damon gave her a curt nod before turning back to the paper.
“And I am sorry,” she added, her voice catching, “for all of it. For your father. For not doing better by you. For what you suffered.”
Did she mean the beatings at his father’s hand? Or his own movements and rages?
Did it matter? The only reason he hadn’t completely closed himself off to his mother was she had written. Not often, but enough to show she still cared.
She’d never visited, though. No one had. Blackwood Abbey had long festered as the neglected Malford estate; it was cavernous and run-down and so far north that nobody had wanted to bother with it in years. As it was not a manor on which tenants depended for aid and protection, but rather an old abbey dissolved during the reign of Henry VIII and given to some Malford duke or another, it had languished, attended to by a skeleton staff, for the last two hundred years.
He nodded stiffly, unsure of what to say. She had made other overtures in the last few months since his return. When he hadn’t responded much one way or the other, she’d shrunk back into herself, taking refuge in her mourning for Silas and Adam. She’d made sure the steward devoted hours to instructing Damon on managing the Malford estates and the details of the dukedom, but had mostly kept to herself.
Tears filled her eyes and one made its way down her cheek. He reached over and wiped it off with his finger, blue eyes meeting blue. More tears spilled out as she sobbed.
“I … I wanted to be stronger, Damon. I wanted to keep you here. But a part of me thought maybe it would be better for you away. He wouldn’t … he couldn’t beat you if you weren’t at Thorne Hill, and I had hoped that maybe for you it would be easier, without eyes always on you.”
Damon swallowed. He’d never thought of it from that angle, that by sending him away, his mother might have actually thought she was helping him. He’d only felt the hurt, the pain, the devastation resulting from the ultimate rejection, that of a child by his parents.
It was true that once he was in Yorkshire, he’d had a freedom he’d never known before. No one had beaten him. No one had mocked him. If the servants had, it had been behind his back. But frankly, he doubted it. They had all taken to him, delighted to have someone new in their midst. A master.
Mrs. Hardy, the housekeeper, and her husband, Joseph, who’d served as rather a jack-of-all-trades at the abbey, mending items and caring for the few horses, had taken him under their wing and become his surrogate parents, more loving than any he’d known. Especially his own.
“I want you to know—I need you to know that I am sorry. So very sorry. I don’t ask that you forgive me, but you need to hear this: I accept you fully, as Duke and as my son. In the few short months since your return, you’ve mastered everything thrown at you, excelling in all aspects. I am proud of you.”
She swallowed and his throat bobbed likewise, a surge of emotion flooding through him. But before he could respond, she spoke again, her fingers fidgeting with the lace at her sleeve cuffs. “I’m worried, Damon.”
“About what?”
“About Fillmore. About what he might do. He was so angry last autumn to hear you were still alive. And that you were coming home. He seemed to think he would become the next duke after the passing of your father and A-Adam.” A sob choked off his brother’s name.
Damon rose from the table and enfolded her in a brief, awkward embrace. “Rest assured, I do not fear my uncle. Men like him, all bluster and no action, are two a penny.”
His mother ducked her head as he released her, worry creasing her brow. “I hope so, my son. I hope so.”