Page 83 of Everything But the Earl
“And you would do whatever your wife wanted.”
“Yes. Within reason.”
Morfudd leveled her gaze at him. “Have you asked her what she wants now?”
“Sheliedto me.”
The tea kettle started to whistle. Morfudd got up to turn it off. She poured tea for herself and Owen. “So you have not yet gotten past feeling betrayed.”
“How else should I feel? Yes, I was in London, but I thought we’dgrown close. All those letters. They were precious to me. And I came home because I was worried about her, but I was also hoping to have this happy reunion, and while I find Dafydd to daily be a delightful surprise, I can’t seem to reconcile the fact that she didn’t tell me about him. Not once did she mention it.”
Except she had, hadn’t she? Owen suddenly remembered the letters in his pocket. He reached into his jacket and pulled them out.
“What are those?” Morfudd asked.
“Letters Grace meant to post but didn’t because the baby came early.” Owen turned them over in his hands. “She gave them to me this morning.”
“You should read them.”
Morfudd busied herself with preparing luncheon while Owen read the letters.
The first one said everything: they were to have a baby, due around the end of August, which was now. The babyhadcome early, Owen had already done the math on that. This letter was dated at the end of July, so Grace must have thought she’d be giving Owen just enough time to get back to Wales. The letter also confessed that she was Gerard Makepeace. She said at the end that all of this was news she would have liked to tell him in person, and she hoped they could discuss when he came home.
The second letter was dated a week after Dafydd’s birth, and it was informing Owen that he had a son and that Grace greatly regretted her earlier letter had not made it into the post with enough time to summon Owen home for the birth.
From all this, Owen inferred that Grace had put off telling him as long as she could so that she did not take him from his business in London—perhaps because she knew he’d drop everything and rush home as soon as she told him about the baby—but suddenly the baby’s birth was almost upon her. If only she’d gotten that first letter in the mail sooner.
When he finished reading, Morfudd was staring at him expectantly.
He grunted. “I wish I’d been here when she went through labor. I don’t know if I could have helped, but maybe I could have offered some comfort. By her delay in informing me that the baby was on the way, she didn’t let me make my own choice about whether to come.”
Morfudd nodded. “So she was wrong. I understand why you are angry. I suppose the question is, what will you do about it? Has she apologized?”
“Several times, yes.”
“But you are still angry.”
Angry was the wrong word. Hurt was closer. And the letters helped soothe it somewhat. It was clear that she intended to tell him. “I am upset.”
“What did she say in the letters?”
“She told me about the baby and some other things. She had been reading my letters and knew I was doing some difficult work in Parliament. She didn’t want to force me away from that, wanted me to have my moment to do something meaningful, so she postponed telling me about the baby as long as she felt necessary. And, of course, that was too long, it turned out, because the baby came early.”
“Was it important? Your business in Parliament?”
“I thought so at the time, but it wasn’t more important than my family. And it came to nothing anyway.”
“What happened?”
Owen gave her a brief summary of the situation with the compromise road bill and the Luddites and how Owen wanted to act, but how no one else in Parliament seemed interested.
He concluded, “As we so often do, we sent troops instead.”
“That is the English way.”
“But I am not English.”
“No. Perish the thought.”
