The faint bustle of a busy household starting its day woke Margery just before dawn: the muted sound of laughter, a baby’s demands for breakfast, the clatter of dishes. She stretched, wincing at the soreness in her back and neck, and looked down at herself. She was still clothed, though her shoes were off, a blanket she didn’t recognize tucked about her. A quick scan of the room in the dim predawn light and she saw her shoes placed neatly beside her bag near the door. Joan must have come in last night after she’d cried herself to sleep. She should perhaps feel embarrassed that she’d needed caring for in such a manner. Instead she felt a spark of warmth in her battered heart. Life went on, didn’t it? The proof was in the changes here in Aaron’s old home. It was as if she had, quite literally, weathered a frightening storm the night before and opened her eyes to clear skies.
Mr. Kitteridge was the first to see her as she entered the kitchen. “Good morning, my girl,” he said with a wide smile. The sadness of the night before was no longer clouding his eyes, a new vigor in his step as he made his way to her and kissed her on the cheek. “And did you sleep well?”
“I did, thank you. But goodness, Joan, that smells divine. Can I help you?”
Joan grinned at Margery over her shoulder. “Not a bit. Have a seat. The bread is already toasted, and these eggs are almost done.”
Margery greeted Bill, who was trying to steal a triangle of toast—and a kiss—from his blushing wife. Then, greeting a bright-eyed Wesley, who was happily gnawing on a wooden horse on a blanket in the corner, she sat across from Mr. Kitteridge. Once again Margery felt fairly enveloped in love and goodwill.
Only now she felt as if she were missing something precious. Daniel’s face floated into her thoughts. How she would love to share such a scene with him, seeing his happy face in the morning, stealing kisses, doting upon their children—
She frowned. How could she have come here determined to forget about him and only find herself more certain of her love for him? But she could not think of him now, not while she was in this place, with these people. So she laughed and ate, reminiscing gently about the past. And felt a certain melancholy—yet healing—farewell in it.
When breakfast was over and done, Bill rose and kissed his wife and son.
“As much as I wish to stay, I must be off.” He turned to Margery. “I hope we’ll see you again, and soon?”
Margery smiled. “If that’s an invitation to return, you may depend upon it. You just might grow sick of me.”
“Highly doubtful,” he said with a grin, kissing her cheek and shaking his father-in-law’s hand before heading out the door.
Margery, rising from the table, was about to help Joan clear the dishes and clean the kitchen when Mr. Kitteridge spoke.
“Will you give me a minute of your time, my girl?”
Margery blinked, surprised, as she sank back down. “Of course.”
He ran a hand through his graying hair and blew out a breath. The frustration in him was palpable. And she suddenly remembered the same reaction from him the night before, how she’d been about to question him on it when the others had arrived.
She leaned closer to him. “What’s preying on your mind?”
He gave her a tortured glance. “I promised I wouldn’t mention it. But it’s killing me to remain quiet.”
She frowned. “Promised what?”
But he seemed not to hear her. He caught Joan’s eye. She gave an imperceptible nod before turning back to her work. It seemed to bolster something in Mr. Kitteridge. His expression shifted, a determined gleam entering his eyes. “Though that promise was only that I wouldn’t write to you of it, not that I wouldn’t tell you outright.”
Margery was growing alarmed. Had the man received a blackmail letter as well? She had not even considered it, but wasn’t it possible? “Mr. Kitteridge?”
He took her hand and pressed it between his. “My girl, your father is not the villain you believe him to be.”
She blinked. Well, she certainly hadn’t expected that. Though she was relieved that the man wasn’t aware of his son’s desertion—and she prayed he might never find out, for it would destroy him—she didn’t know what to make of this new subject. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve come to know your father over the past years since my Aaron died. He’s visited me often, has offered help, has made it so we could keep our heads afloat while grief ate at us. And I can say, with absolute certainty, that there is not a man alive who feels his guilt more keenly.”
Margery, stunned, could only shake her head in disbelief. Her father was a proud man, a stern man. Picturing him befriending Mr. Kitteridge, confiding in him, was as foreign to Margery as picturing him skipping down Dewbury’s main street wearing a flowered hat.
“And now I’ve said my piece,” Mr. Kitteridge said.
“I—I don’t know what to do with this,” she admitted.
He patted her hand and nodded in understanding. “I know he’s hurt you. But I do hope you can forgive him and move on, if only for your own sake. Won’t you visit with him before you leave?”
Margery stared at him, stunned. “I—I can’t,” she whispered.
He nodded sadly, sitting back in his seat with a heavy sigh. Margery, confused, needing something to do, rose and gathered up dishes with shaking hands. Mr. Kitteridge should despise Lord Tesh. The man had outright refused Aaron’s suit for Margery’s hand, had made him feel unworthy. And here he was, pleading his case?
So immersed was she in her troubled thoughts, she didn’t immediately realize that Joan had become uncommonly quiet. Nor did she realize there had been a knock at the front door until Mr. Kitteridge rose from his place at the table and spoke.
“I’ll get it,” he murmured. Then, casting Margery a hooded glance, he made his slow way from the kitchen. In short order he was back. But now he was accompanied by someone who was painfully familiar.
Margery gaped at the newcomer, unable to believe her eyes. “Papa?”
Viscount Tesh, looking as out of place as any one person could, standing in the doorway of this simple kitchen in his fine, expensive clothes, stood ramrod straight and gazed at her with uncertainty. It was an expression she had never seen on his face before.
He cleared his throat. “Hello, Margery.”
She shook her head, still unable to comprehend that he was here in Mr. Kitteridge’s humble home. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
He motioned to the kitchen table. It was only then she realized Mr. Kitteridge and Joan and baby Wesley were nowhere to be seen. In a daze she stumbled to the table and sat down heavily.
Her father sat across from her. “I didn’t think you would ever return to Dewbury,” he said.
“I didn’t do it for your benefit.”
The words escaped before she quite meant them to. But they opened something up in her, the anger of years coalescing into something sharp and painful. Here was a man who should have supported her in everything, loved her through everything. And she had never doubted his love for her. Until she’d needed it most. It was then he’d turned his back on her.
His eyes fell from hers, as if he could hear the shouts of condemnation ringing through her head. “I understand,” he rasped. “And if you never want to speak to me again, I understand that as well. But I am sorry. I’m more sorry than I can ever say.”
She gaped at him. This was not like him. Lord Tesh never apologized, never begged for forgiveness. She remembered Mr. Kitteridge’s confession shortly before her father’s arrival then, his claims that the viscount had been giving the Kitteridge family help, that he’d been visiting. She narrowed her eyes. “What are you playing at?”
“Nothing—”
“No, you are.” Her body fairly vibrated with her anger and confusion. She clenched her hands tight beneath the table. She longed to rise, to run from the room. But she feared in that moment her legs would not hold her.
“You don’t do anything but for your benefit,” she continued. “And I’ve never known you to suffer from a moment’s guilt in your life.” An idea struck her then. “Is it to save face with the villagers? Or did my stepmother put you up to it? Is that why you’ve had a change of heart with the Kitteridges?”
“You have no excuse to think any better of me, I know,” he managed, looking more miserable than she had ever seen him. “And perhaps if I had better handled things with you after Aaron died, perhaps if I had been able to look past my pride to do what was right, we would not now be where we are. But I know now I was wrong, Meg, to refuse your marriage to someone you loved, and to cut you out of my life. And I’m so very sorry. Can you forgive me?”
It was not that he begged—something she had never seen him do—that brought the sob rising up in her throat. Nor was it the use of his childhood name for her, something she had not heard from him in nearly two decades. No, it was him calling Aaron by his name that finally made her see that he was sincere. Before this moment he had always been “Kitteridge” to her father, first said with unconcerned boredom, then with disdain, and finally with barely suppressed anger. But saying “Aaron” in that anguished way, a tone that spoke of regret, fairly broke her heart.
He must have seen how deeply she was affected, for he suddenly leaned forward. “Meg,” he said, his voice broken, “I can never undo the damage I’ve caused. But please, can we move forward? Can we try to rebuild what we’ve lost?”
She stared at him, torn between the anger that had burned bright inside her for so many years and the quieter part of her that remembered how much she had loved this man. Even now, after all he’d done, he was still her father.
She dragged in a deep breath, seeing him with new eyes. “Have you truly helped Mr. Kitteridge and his family?”
His gaze dropped from hers as a faint blush stained his cheeks. “He wasn’t to tell you that.”
A warmth started up in her chest, a healing of a wound that had long festered. She smiled, a small thing, and murmured, “I do believe the promise was to never write of it.”
He blinked, his gaze flying back to her. Then, an uncertain smile. “I suppose I should have expected the man to find a loophole. He’s a clever one.”
She leaned forward. “Tell me about it.”
He did, haltingly at first, how he’d known from nearly the moment she’d left with Aaron that he’d made a mistake. But pride had kept him stewing in his outrage. Until news of Aaron’s death had reached him. He had meant the trip to London to see her and tell her to return home as a kind of reconciliation, to let her know all was forgiven and he wanted her back. Another mistake, he soon realized.
When he’d learned of Mr. Kitteridge’s troubles he’d decided to step in, to help. He’d thought himself a great benefactor, forgiving and kind. But he soon learned with their weekly visits that the man had far more to give him, far more to provide and teach.
They could be just words, the more stubborn part of her brain argued. He had hurt her too much to allow her to trust him so quickly, so completely, no matter that the young girl she had been, and that was still somewhere deep inside her, wished to do so.
When Joan reappeared some hour or so later to check on them, however, with Wesley in tow, and Margery’s father held the child on his lap with an eagerness and ease that told of many such scenes, she began to believe that what he had told her, all he had claimed, was true. And so, a short while later when her father rose to leave, and he hesitatingly went to hug her, she stepped into his arms willingly.
He started in surprise. Then, heaving a deep sigh, he held her tighter. Their relationship was not fully healed; she wasn’t sure it could ever return to what it had been before her marriage. But it was a hopeful beginning, and for that she could only be grateful.
She stood at the door after he’d gone, watching his carriage as it made its way down Dewbury’s main thoroughfare. Suddenly a comforting presence stepped up behind her.
“Do you forgive me?”
She turned to face Mr. Kitteridge. “For inviting him here despite my declaration that I wouldn’t see him? For explicitly going against my wishes?” she asked archly, before ruining her stern affect by smiling. “I don’t like being manipulated in such a way. But I forgive you for it, as I know you had my best interests in mind.”
She sighed then, looking up at the sky. The sun was climbing toward its zenith, and the day was fast progressing. She’d best get going if she was to return to Seacliff by nightfall. She had a decision to make regarding a certain blackmail demand. And a certain duke who still inexplicably held her heart though she had tried her best to pry him from it.
He seemed to understand. “Time to leave then?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said, taking his arm as they made their way back inside the small house.
In short order Mr. Kitteridge fetched the carriage while she and Joan packed up what few things she had brought with her. Goodbyes were said, tears shed. And by the time the coach pulled up before the house she was ready—finally—to let go.
Joan and baby Wesley blew kisses from the door before heading back inside, leaving her alone with Mr. Kitteridge.
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
“I am as well,” she agreed quietly. “But I’ll return soon, and promise to write often.”
“And you’ll be welcome anytime,” he pronounced. Then he frowned. “But you can’t be worrying about the likes of me. You need to look to yourself now, start a family of your own.” At her stricken look he smiled. “You think I didn’t notice your half-mourning? Or that ring still tight on your finger? But you need to live your life now, my girl.”
“I am living my life,” she said through stiff lips, though even to her ears the words lacked conviction.
He raised an eyebrow, an expression that said she was fooling herself but couldn’t fool him. It was an expression she had often seen on Aaron’s face, and it made her heart lurch in her chest.
“You’ve got one of the biggest, kindest hearts I know,” he said. “And I can see there’s a sadness to you that has nothing to do with my boy being gone. But Aaron wouldn’t have wanted you to waste your life away. Go and be happy, my girl.” He patted her hand. Then, letting her go, he stepped back.
For a moment Margery felt unmoored, lost. But then she looked at Mr. Kitteridge’s smiling face, at the certainty that shined from his eyes, and knew in a moment she wasn’t lost. Rather, she had been set free.