Ronald cut through White Horse Street to the corner of Piccadilly and turned east. At every block, something caught his interest. He stopped to peer into storefront windows, to watch a man chalking Big Ben on the sidewalk, to speak to a blind and begging Boer War veteran. On Shaftesbury Avenue, he examined the theatre bills along the way. At a sweets vendor cart, he counted out coins for a bar of Cadbury chocolate.
“Keep following with the motor, Bolton.”
“Yes, Lady Edwina.”
Odd to see her son in such a setting, Edwina Layton thought. Off by himself, strolling along as he pleased… It annoyed and fascinated her at the same time.
Edwina was a busy woman; her weeks were full. So full that she barely had time for Ronald. Today, for instance, she was preparing for Lady Alstyne’s ball. She had purchased a special gown for the occasion from Paquin, which she knew would greatly please her husband-to-be, Lord Percival. Her son was far from her mind; in fact, she had no idea where Ronald was supposed to be this afternoon. Nanny took care of all that. If her chauffeur hadn’t turned down Park Lane, she never would have seen—or thought of—her son. Ever more intrigued, Edwina leaned closer to the window.
The carriage and motor traffic was crawling along. Given all the stops he took and the forest-green jacket and shorts he wore, it was easy to keep the boy in sight.
Following Ronald felt like a kind of lark to Edwina. Whatever was he up to? Perhaps he was going to a store to buy himself something or maybe a special place he wanted to eat. No. She shook her head. Her son had never been to a restaurant in his life.
She stuck her head and elegant feathered hat out the window of the motor, her eyes glued to her son. He was headed for the West End. Might he be going to the theatre in secret? How little she knew about Ronald, she thought. Sometimes, he seemed as inscrutable as a Chinaman, his facial expressions giving nothing away.
“He’s on Shaftesbury, m’lady,” the chauffeur said.
“Keep following, but at a distance. We’ll run our little fox to ground yet.”
On Shaftesbury and Rupert, alongside a music hall, two men and a woman stopped to say hello to Ronald, as though they were old friends. Soon after, a man in a derby patted him affectionately on the head. A look of great consternation contorted Lady Edwina’s lovely, high-cheekboned face. Nanny had warned Ronald never to talk to strangers.
But then, these people didn’t seem like strangers.
Ronald abruptly turned left into an alley behind a theatre.
“Speed up, Bolton,” Edwina commanded.
The motor drew up alongside the alley as the boy sprinted down it. Alarmed, Edwina got out and followed. She watched as her son leapt like a gazelle into the arms of a tall man by the stage door, who swung him around and hugged him. Ronald was giggling; she saw the innocent joy on his face. After a moment, the man set him down, and the boy offered him a piece of Cadbury. Edwina rushed forward, ready to intervene, but stopped in her tracks.
The thin, clean-shaven man looked vaguely familiar. He had spectacles and chestnut-colored hair, and yet…
The boy and the man were about to open the metal stage door. Edwina moved closer, some twenty feet away. Ronald disappeared into the building, but as the man was about to follow, his eyes locked with Edwina’s. An expression of surprise, then hatred and loathing came over him, which had the effect of a punch to Edwina’s nose. She recoiled. He stared at her for five seconds more, then smiled and slammed the stage door defiantly behind him.
As people streamed by her on both sides, Edwina stood there in complete shock. Douglas!
Edwina turned and shuffled back to the motor. She was baffled, angry, and about to burst into a flood of tears. By going through that stage door, it was as if Ronald had crossed the River Styx and lost himself to her.
Settling back against the rolled leather seat, Edwina looked up at the theatre, taking in the glories of its ornate stonework. From where she sat, she could see the bill listing the performers on the sidewall. She half expected to see Layton, her ex-husband, appearing as a conjurer.
For she now knew the truth: her ex-husband was back in London. She would never ever forget Douglas’s expression. It had said defiantly This is my son. Try to take him away from me!
After all this time, she had never expected him to appear again. He’d been meant to vanish from her life forever, in punishment for the unbearable humiliation he’d brought upon the family. Surprising, really, how quickly the shame had erased her love for Douglas. Edwina had—she believed—once been in love with him. But maybe, she thought, staring at the theatre lights, she’d never truly loved him in the first place.
In a way, she had married Douglas to annoy her father. Edwina had always been intimidated by her father and always did what he demanded. Douglas was quite a good-looking chap and a brilliant architect to boot, but he wasn’t the ideal selection. In her world, a real gentleman was not supposed to work for a living. The tribal customs in upper-class British society believed that marriages weren’t supposed to be based on love but on the right social connections to titled men of means, to increase the wealth and bloodlines of the families. But Edwina had learned in her husband hunting that rank did not equal mettle. Many suitors from the aristocracy and gentry were weak in will and nature, while Douglas was the direct opposite, and that was what she really liked about him. But she knew rebellion toward her father played a part in the decision as well.
Lord Litton had raged about the Britannia accident for months, shocked and horrified that a member of his family was a convicted murderer. He forbade Edwina from seeing him, not even allowing her to explain to Douglas that she was divorcing him. Ronald would be told he died in a boating accident. Litton’s continued fury had mentally battered Edwina; she shuddered at the memory. Any remaining love for her husband had died then; she was glad he was in Mulcaster, out of sight and out of mind. The truth was that she didn’t care what happened to him. She wanted to get on with her life and maintain her position in society by marrying the Earl of Gainsford.
As a girl, her mother had taught her to ignore bad things. Eventually, they would go away. But now a bad thing was back, and she had to face it.
And why the devil was Douglas in a music hall of all places?
Edwina didn’t ask herself why Ronald was there. The answer was obvious: Nanny Hawkins. She’d been a child of privilege too, and her nanny had been her real mother, just as Mrs. Hawkins was Ronald’s. Nanny liked Douglas and thought him a caring father, which Edwina knew was true. Douglas had been a wonderful father to Ronald, probably better than she was a mother. She had applied the mothering skills that her mother had used in her childhood, which were based on the notion that children were an annoying fact of life one left to the nanny’s attention.
Stroking her ostrich-feathered boa, she stared at the back of Bolton’s head, her mind replaying the memory of Ronald’s face as his father swooped him up in his arms.
“Drive on, Bolton,” she said at last. “Lady Alstyne awaits.”
“Yes, m’lady.”
Back at her father’s house in Mayfair, she passed Nanny Hawkins on the great mahogany stair.
“Afternoon, m’lady,” said Mrs. Hawkins with a slight bow of the head.
Edwina stripped her gloves from her hands in silence. Then, about five steps past Mrs. Hawkins, she turned and said, “Nanny, I think a boy does need his father.”
“I’m glad you understand, m’lady,” said Mrs. Hawkins with another small and graceful bow.