Page 60 of A Gentleman's Reckoning
They played until the footman came in to announce that the carriage was ready. Geny stood and held out her arms and Matthew slipped into them, allowing her to give him a hug. She forced her emotions down so that she did not alarm her brother with her tears. But it was with an overly bright smile that she said, “Farewell. Don’t forget to write to me.”
“I won’t,” he said, following the footman out the door. He would forget, of course, but their time together had seemed to exercise a positive effect on him. He was chatting with Brantley as he went to the carriage.
Within minutes following his departure, the house had grown as silent as a tomb, and Geny walked around the library looking at the shelves she knew by heart. There were no books that interested her.
Your father has the appearance of goodness, but whether his actions can stand scrutiny is another matter.John’s words came back to her, and she wondered once again if there was any truth to what he said. If only she could know.
An idea then seized her which was so daring it sent her breath out of her lungs in awhoosh. If her father had gone north and her brother was no longer home, thenshewas the mistress of the house. Who was there to stop her from going into her father’s study? Her decision was made, and with resolute steps she exited into the corridor and walked toward the study. She opened the door and looked around.
The study was her father’s domain, and she had not set foot in it above five times in her whole life. It had all the masculine trappings of leather and dark burgundy curtains with lingering cigar smoke. An intimidating room. However, now that she had determined her course, she wasted no time in going over to his desk. If she was to find any clue to what sort of man he was, it would most likely be here. She glanced through the papers on top of the desk and found nothing of note. Then, she began opening the drawers, which somehow seemed like a greater trespass; it made her heart beat painfully fast. Her father would be extremely displeased should he ever find out.
The first drawer held bills and some stationery products, such as fresh wax and pen nibs, and the second drawer was more of the same. It was in the third drawer that she found more sentimental items, and as she sat on his chair, she pulledout the first stack with trembling hands. These were perfumed letters with nothing written on the outside. When she opened the first one, her eyes fell on her mother’s familiar handwriting.
Her shoulders slumped in relief. He had kept her mother’s letters! This was not the action of an unkind, unscrupulous man—her father was merely being judged for his reserve.
Out of respect for her parents’ intimacy, she decided not to read her mother’s letters but turned her eyes to the bundle underneath. These were done in a different handwriting and were also perfumed. She gulped, dropping them on the desk as though they were hot and put her fingers over her mouth, staring at them.
No, no. I cannot look at those.I do not want to know.Geny shook her head.What am I doing?
She had just decided to stop her investigation when a solitary letter at the bottom of the drawer caught her eye, this time again in her mother’s handwriting. The familiar loops unleashed something in her that made her go back on her decision not to read her mother’s letters. Just to read one—to hear her mother’s voice again through the words written long ago—would fill the aching void inside of her that had become too great.
She seized it and opened it to discover that it was dated only a fortnight before her mother’s death. With parted lips, she hurriedly skimmed the lines, desperate to learn the state of her mother’s mind before she died.
Franklin,
I am obliged to write to you in your club, because you have not been home these past five nights, but there is a pressing matter you must be informed of. The blacksmith from Windsor came to the house today asking for you. I received him in the parlor in your absence, and yes—I am sure you have already surmised what I am about to tell you.
You will therefore not be surprised to learn the purpose of his visit,although it came as a great shock to me. Now that his daughter has died, leaving behind a child whose parentage he said was yours, he has come to request that you continue to send the monthly allowance, so he might raise the orphan. He was referring, of course, to Gabriel Smith, the foundling you had placed in the asylum that I had naively praised as showing such promise.
I suppose a woman of my station must expect infidelity. But I confess that I did not imagine you to be so base as to carry on this liaison whilst I was recovering from the loss of our second child. You told me that important affairs were keeping you away from London, but that was not it, was it? It was to carry on with the blacksmith’s daughter. It is the timing of your affair for which I shall not forgive you…
Geny could not keep reading; her eyes were filled with tears at her father’s utter betrayal and the gut-wrenching pain her mother had felt which carried through her words. She remembered her mother’s convalescence from her lung infection. She had been on the way to recovery before she suddenly took a turn for the worse. It must surely have been this revelation that overset her and caused her to give up her will to live.
Geny laid the bundle of papers on the desk, dropping her face in her hands so that she only heard—and did not see—the door open. She lifted her head in time to see her father on the threshold of his study, looking thunderstruck.
“What in the blazes are you doing here, Eugenia?”
Such a reception would normally cow Geny, but she was too distraught at the information she had just learned to give her father his usual reverence. She lifted the letter her mother had written.
“Is it true? Did you father an illegitimate son—the orphan Gabriel—during the period when Mother was suffering from the loss of her baby?”
Geny remembered that period of mourning well. Hermother had been several weeks along and had announced to the household that she was expecting a baby, much to the joy of everyone, even—Geny had thought—her father.
She had been looking forward to a younger brother or sister when news of the bleeding spread throughout the household. It had taken her mother many weeks to recover physically from the ordeal and much longer for her emotional pain to disappear. In the years following her mother’s loss, Geny had almost forgotten about it, first because Matthew’s birth had erased much of that sorrow, and then because the pain of losing her mother had engulfed all else. But now it had all come rushing back.
“How dare you go through my things?” he demanded, moving toward her.
Geny stood her ground. “Answer me, Father. I am hearing all sorts of rumors about misplaced funds in the orphanage, and now this. I could overlook almost anything, but I am convinced that your indiscretion is what caused Mother to deteriorate so rapidly. You are responsible for her death.”
The earl snatched the letter out of her hands. “You do not understand the way of the world. You remain purposefully ignorant by burying your nose in the asylum rather than attending to your duties as is befitting the daughter of an earl. How dare you lecture me?”
For the first time in Geny’s life, she saw the sign of weakness in him that he attempted to cover with bluster. It was a look of shame that he would conceal at all costs if he could to save face. She stared at him, realization dawning as she saw him clearly for the first time in her life.
“But is it true?—”
“I am not obliged to answer any of your questions, and I will thank you to leave this room at once. I had not thought it necessary to lock the door to the study located in my own home. Evidently, I must begin doing so now.”
Geny walked to the door, knowing she would have nothing satisfactory from him. No confessions, no apologies.
