“I’m such a bumbling fool. I just thought I was keeping her safe!”
Harriet couldn’t think of anything to say.
“You can’t imagine what it’s like to have a child,” he said, falling into the armchair where she’d slept part of the night. “When her mother died, I thought I’d put her out to a wet nurse and then send her away to some female relative somewhere. That made sense, didn’t it?”
Harriet nodded.
“But then I picked her up and she had this odd face, with all that corkscrew hair going on—” He stopped. “You look a bit like her. I couldn’t send her away. I had the wet nurse here. Later I should have sent her to Sally’s aunt, where she’d be safe and with other women, but I couldn’t. Idiot!” he cried, clutching his head.
“It’s not that terrible,” Harriet said, speaking against every instinct she had. She simply couldn’t bear the bleak look on his face.
“I know what I have to do. She must go live somewhere else, away from this place and its dangers.”
Harriet cleared her throat. “Couldn’t you be less drastic? Why not simply invite people whom you trust to the house so that you can unlock the nursery wing? And get rid of the rats. It seems simple to me.”
“Simple! You don’t know how easy death is. It’s—it’s like a door. A person simply walks through it, and she’s lost to you forever.”
“As it happens, I have lost someone very dear to me,” she said. “But I did my best to keep him safe.”
“As I am doing!”
“By inviting her for picnics in that leaning tower?” she burst out. “By filling your house with people whom you yourself don’t trust not to be dangerous? By locking her in, and not even bothering to check on her before you go to bed?”
“I didn’t go to bed,” he said. His voice grated. “You’re right about everything else.”
“The fact that you didn’t go to bed is just part and parcel of the truth of it,” she said. “Perhaps you should send her away. A father who spends the night gallivanting rather than bothering to check on his daughter obviously has no time for her.”
He put his head back in his hands. She felt that alarming sweep of vertigo again, as if she would do anything to make him stop looking so stricken.
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“I—”
“I’m a terrible father. My father was no father at all, but I thought I could improve on the model.” He straightened up again and his face shocked her, with such black shadows under his eyes that it looked as if he’d been punched. “Hubris. I should have known. Men in my family can’t be decent parents.”
“Why?” she said sharply. “And I don’t think you’re a terrible father. You simply need to be less careless.”
“We’re a disreputable bunch. Villiers did you no great service by bringing you here. I’ll have to send her away.” His voice was as bleak as midwinter.
Harriet swallowed. “She loves you,” she said, faintly. “Don’t send her away. Just change your life.”
“I let her be bit by a rat,” he said, turning around again. “This house is, metaphorically at least, full of rats. And I, like they, have no idea how to turn into a more civilized version of myself. I am no quiet country squire, Harry Cope.” Then: “Is it rage that makes your eyes that color?”
“Anger has no particular color,” Harriet said. She was trying to work through what he just said. Could it be that Jem allowed this house party to continue because he considered himself reprehensible? Flawed beyond the ability to change?
“Your eyes are the most peculiar color,” he said. “Sometimes they’re brown, and sometimes they take on a violet tinge. When you disapprove of something they—what am I saying?”
Harriet was wondering the same thing. What sort of man stayed up all night making love to his mistress and then praised a man’s eyes?