Page 80 of Miss Dashing
This extraordinary conversation had just exceeded all bounds. Hecate managed a nod. She would have popped to her feet, bounced a curtsey, and claimed a pressing appointment with the housekeeper, except that she did not trust her legs to keep her upright.
“Mama mentioned him.” With love. Mama had always mentioned him with love, on the few occasions she had brought him up, or Hecate had found the nerve to ask about him. “I hope Mr. Ross fares well.”
Please do not let him be dead. Please not that.
“I must ask you to hear me out,” Nunn said. “My intentions were good—I consider Ross a friend, always have. I introduced him to your mother, in fact, which Isaac lists among his many grievances with me. I have tried to act as a friend would act, but I also have an obligation to you, and Lord Phillip went very spare with me for neglecting it.”
Uncle Nunn maundered on for a good quarter hour, unburdening himself at the measured pace of a man trying to maintain his dignity in the midst of a fraught topic and mostly succeeding. Hecate listened, and by the time he finished, she was no longer crying. She was instead wondering why Phillip had gone to Bristol and whether he’d truly come back to her.
Though, really, sorting Phillip out was not the most pressing problem.
“I will understand if you cease speaking to me,” Nunn said. “You might well move to Paris and leave the lot of us to muddle on as best we can. I would request, for the sake of your young man, that you delay your departure until this house party has concluded.”
“Isaac has likely told Johnny of my patrimony.”
“And Johnny will threaten to make the matter public at the time least convenient to you,” Nunn said. “I doubt polite society will take notice. Old news regarding a woman long gone to her reward, and Isaac has doubtless cried in his brandy often enough in the clubs.”
A comforting and likely accurate perspective. “Johnny has other leverage over me, or so he claims.”
“Read these,” Nunn said, passing her the folded missives. “You have resources Johnny hasn’t accounted for, in me, in Lord Phillip, and in those letters. Mrs. Roberts is staunchly in your camp, and my guess is Edna will at least affect neutrality. I cannot speak for Charles, but Society regards him as little more than a chattering tailor’s dummy with an overdeveloped interest in opera dancers. I daresay Johnny isn’t ready for the forces you have at your disposal.”
Hecate took the letters, and Nunn rose.
“Read them here,” Nunn said. “You will not be disturbed. Take as long as you like, and then the letters are yours to do with as you wish.”
He pressed a hand to Hecate’s shoulder and departed, and that gesture—avuncular, personal, consoling—was yet another source of amazement.
Hecate moved around to the desk and settled into the more comfortable chair. She debated for another quarter hour whether to do as Nunn had bid her and read the letters. They were from her father, who might well have married and sired six other children. Who might not have recalled Mama as fondly as she had her Edward.
Hecate glanced at the dates, which started a month after Mama’s death and continued, the most recent being less than a month old. Most of them began in the same general manner:
My dear Nunn,
Your epistle of the nineteenth brought me much joy and no little worry. As proud as I am of my dear girl, I am anxious as well. How I wish I could aid her, and how appreciative I am of every word you relay that acquaints me with her circumstances…
The closings were all of a piece as well.
No daughter was ever so well loved, or so poorly served, by her father as my Hecate, and yet, I beg you for the next missive, as soon as you find it convenient to write…
Therewassuch a thing as a good cry, such a thing as tears that acknowledged heartache and accorded it the respect it was due. Tears that admitted the truth and gave that truth dignity and meaning.
Tears that strengthened resolve and illuminated the way forward.
Hecate gathered up the letters and returned them to the safe, where neither moth nor rust nor conniving cousins could destroy them. She went to the door and found Mr. DeWitt at his ease in the footman’s chair several yards down the corridor.
“Mr. DeWitt, might you locate my uncle and tell him I’d like to speak to him?” Tears had made Hecate’s voice deeper, but she had never enjoyed such clarity of purpose. “I have a question to put to him, and I will await him in his study.”
“You’ve been crying.” This conclusion apparently displeased Mr. DeWitt. “Did Nunn give you the sharp side of his tongue?”
“He finally gave me the truth. Please fetch him, Mr. DeWitt. I will not set foot outside his study until you do, and then you and I can go for a stroll in the gardens, and you can tell me more about growing up in Crosspatch Corners.”
“More about Phillip, you mean?”
She smiled, because even the thought of Phillip gave her joy. “Of course about Phillip.”
ChapterSeventeen
“You cannot assist me to dress for the ball, Mr. DeWitt.” Hecate allowed a note of exasperation to underscore her words.
