Chapter 23
I never thought I’d fall back on my uncle’s advice, but he pounded this saying into my head as a boy. It’s the only thing that makes sense now.
“When a man doesn’t know what to do, he should do his duty.”
—Lawrence Sinclair, adrift, aimless, and anguished.
The Lake District was known for its loveliness—deep forests, crystal waters, and towering peaks. The air was crisp and sweet with the fragrance of green, growing things. Unlike London, which never really slept, an early morning here was so quiet a man could hear his own heartbeat. Only birdcalls and the occasional lowing of a cow ready for milking disturbed the stillness. The place made a man thank God for fashioning it to be so unnecessarily beautiful.
Billy Two-Toes’s eyes bugged at each fresh vista as he drank in the new sights and sounds. The street boy obviously thought he’d been caught up to Heaven. Even the grumpy Dudley found reasons to smile as their coach rolled along the narrow roads.
The charm of the Lake District was lost on Lawrence.
He was living by rote. He breathed in. He breathed out. He ate only because Dudley insisted. When they stopped each night, he lay down in the sagging bed of a wayside inn, staring into the darkness. He couldn’t sleep. His thoughts circled like a dog chasing its own tail. He relived every moment he’d spent with Caroline, wondering if there was something he could have done differently. The outcome never changed. When exhaustion finally claimed him, his sleep was shallow and restless.
From his earliest days, his uncle had drummed a strong sense of duty into Lawrence’s head. A Sinclair honored his debts. He fulfilled his vows. He did what was expected of him.
Surprisingly enough, those early teachings steadied him. Duty gave him an anchor.
Lawrence was returning to Ware to see to his mother’s comfort in her illness. He owed her that. She’d been as oppressed by Lord Ware’s heavy hand as he. Perhaps more so, because he’d at least been able to escape to school and the military, though it hadn’t seemed like an escape at the time. More like a banishment. But he’d made a place for himself, both at Harrow and in the service. If not for his mother’s illness, he’d have already taken that commission to serve under Colonel Boyle.
That, too, was a type of duty.
The regimen of doing what was expected kept him going. He fought to keep Caroline from sneaking into his thoughts during the day. That was the path to madness. His nights were torture enough.
Their coach finally turned down the long drive and rolled to a stop in front of Ware Hall. The manor house was a stone monstrosity built by the first Earl of Ware in the 1500s. Its turrets boasted mullioned windows, and the four-square design enclosed a courtyard large enough to billet that first lord’s troop of fighting men.
Lawrence didn’t go in immediately. Instead, he sent Dudley and Billy ahead into the imposing manor to let the servants know he’d arrived. Lawrence set out on foot across the meadow to check the condition of the dower house. The small cottage reserved for widowed countesses cowered beneath a towering arbutus near the edge of the forest.
It was in as poor repair as he’d expected. The thatched roof was open to the sky in several places. Most of the floors and interior walls would need replacing. A couple of windows sagged away from their frames.
In a perverse way, Lawrence was pleased. Renovating the cottage would keep him busy. Organizing the workers and laying out plans for repair would occupy him for several days. He wasn’t the sort to stand by while the estate’s carpenter and his helpers did all the work. Blisters, sore muscles, even a smashed thumb would be a welcome distraction. Manual labor might be the balm his bruised heart needed.
If his body was exhausted by drudgery, his mind wouldn’t find time to remind him each night that his life was over. Only breathing in and out was left.
When he returned to the manor, to his surprise, the servants had lined up on either side of the door to greet him. It was something they’d never have done had Lord Ware been in residence. After Lawrence had left home the first time, his occasional returns were treated with as little fanfare as possible.
“His Lordship isna in residence, Master Lawrence, and willna be, like as not, for a month or more. We just received a letter from Lord Ware about his wedding,” Angus Holt, the estate steward, told him.
“Then while my uncle is away, it seems a good time to make repairs to the dower house,” Lawrence said. “Let’s start with a new roof.”
Mr. Holt beamed. “I’ve been telling His Lordship it was penny wise and pound foolish not to keep the cottage in a better state. Aye, lad, we’ll get right to it. Er, I mean, sir. Forgive me, Master Lawrence, I still see you as the boy I knew.”
Lawrence just smiled. That boy was long gone. And the man who’d taken his place was a hollow husk, but Mr. Holt didn’t need to hear about his woes. “Where will I find my mother?”
“In her chambers,” Mrs. Bythesee piped up. She was a round little woman with a kind face. She’d served as housekeeper at Ware Hall for as long as Lawrence could remember and always had a soft spot for boys with skinned knees. “Do ye come now and I’ll lead ye up.”
Lawrence followed Mrs. Bythesee into the plaster and timbered foyer and up the gleaming staircase. Even in the absence of Lord Ware, the Scottish woman kept the manor sparkling clean. When they reached the floor where the family rooms were, Mrs. Bythesee stopped before his mother’s door.
“I dinna ken how much ye know of yer mother’s illness, but if it’s any consolation to ye, she seems to be in no pain.”
Lawrence thanked her and slipped into the room. His mother wasn’t in bed, for which he was grateful. Sickrooms made him uncomfortable. Someone had helped her dress. She was ensconced in a stuffed armchair with her feet propped on a hassock. The window was open, sunlight streaming in on her when the clouds suddenly parted. She didn’t seem ill. She might only have been resting.
Then Lawrence heard her wheezing inhalation.
She must have heard his soft footfalls as well, for she turned her head.
His mother was thinner than he remembered. Paler. But her smile was still sweet. Her lips lifted in one now.
“Oh, Henry, I knew you’d come.”
Henry. She thought he was his father. His chest constricted.
“No, Mother. It’s Lawrence.”
“Are you sure?” A frown crinkled her brow and she drew a raspy breath. “You’re so very like my Henry.”
Lawrence had been told he favored his father since he was a small boy. Usually, it was by Lord Ware, who derided him for so strongly resembling the wastrel of the family.
As if Lawrence could help the face God had given him.
His mother lifted a thin hand toward him, and he came to kneel beside her chair.
“Oh, yes. Now I see. You are Lawrence after all.” She cupped his cheek and leaned to press a soft kiss on his forehead. Then her brows drew together again. “What’s wrong, Son?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “I’m fine, Mother.”
“No, you’re not.” It was an assessment, not an accusation. “I see…a deep sadness in you. Please don’t let it be for me.”
“I’m sad that I stayed away so long.”
“Don’t be,” she said softly. “You have your own life to live. I always understood that.”
“You didn’t answer my letters,” he said. Also not an accusation.
His mother shrugged. “Lord Ware must have misplaced them, for I never received any.”
“That’s too charitable by half,” Lawrence said. “He purposely kept them from you.”
“I suppose it was for the same reason your uncle made sure we didn’t have much time together even when you lived here.” His mother cast her gaze out the window, but Lawrence wasn’t sure she really saw the trees and steep slopes. She was looking backward again. “Lord Ware said spending time with me would make you turn out like your father.”
“Was my father that bad?”
Her eyes glazed over, and Lawrence could tell she was lost in her own thoughts. Finally, she said, “Most would say yes, Henry was bad. He hurt me. So many times I lost count.”
Then, inexplicably, she smiled. “But he also made me laugh. And every moment he was with me, he made me feel as if I were the most important person in the world.” She fingered her bottom lip for a moment. “Unfortunately, Henry wasn’t always with me. But the truth is, if he walked in that door right now, I’d forgive him again. I loved Henry Sinclair, the good, the bad, and everything in between.”
Lawrence usually only thought of his father as the black sheep of the family, as he’d been taught to do. Now Henry Sinclair seemed like the luckiest man who’d ever lived. “How could you forgive him like that?”
“It’s the only way I know to love, Son. All or nothing,” she said, sucking in a shuddering breath. “So, you say your sadness isn’t for me. I’m glad to know that. I’m dying, but there’s nothing for it.”
Death was an unforgiving hound that dogged its prey relentlessly. Whether it brought them to ground in a Cumberland manor or on a field of battle near Peshawar, Death always won. Lawrence was caught in a circular trap. He could only support Caroline if he went soldiering again, but he wouldn’t risk leaving her a widow in some surely uncivilized, far-flung post.
“Is there anything to be done about why you’re sad, Son?”
“No, Mother. Some things cannot be changed.”
He took her hand, and they spent a quiet few minutes, looking out the window together. Then her head drooped, and he realized she’d fallen asleep.
Lawrence lifted her from the chair, cradling her in his arms as if she were the child and he the parent. It was heartbreakingly easy. She was so frail. Light as a little girl.
The back of his throat ached as he laid her down on the coverlet of her bed. She didn’t wake. Her chest rose and fell in the shallowest of breaths. Lawrence leaned down and kissed her temple just where a tiny blue vein showed through her nearly translucent skin.
When Lawrence walked softly from the chamber and pulled the door closed behind him, he realized his uncle was wrong. A battle death was not the best Lawrence could hope to achieve in his lifetime. Seeing that his mother died in comfort was. He’d make sure the dower house was as snug and safe and pleasant as he could make it.
After that, Lawrence didn’t care what happened to him.