The Bridgertons Happily Ever After (4 page)

Stepping lightly, he entered the room. The curtains were partway drawn, and he could see Daphne lying in bed, still as a bone. He tiptoed closer. She
did
look pale, although it was hard to tell in the dim light.

He yawned and sat on the opposite side of the bed, leaning forward to pull off his boots. He loosened his cravat and then slid it off entirely, scooting himself toward her. He wasn’t going to wake her, just snuggle up for a bit of warmth.

He’d missed her.

Settling in with a contented sigh, he put his arm around her, resting its weight just below her rib cage, and—

“Grughargh!”

Daphne shot up like a bullet and practically hurled herself from the bed.

“Daphne?” Simon sat up, too, just in time to see her race for the chamber pot.

The chamber pot????

“Oh dear,” he said, wincing as she retched. “Fish?”

“Don’t say that word,” she gasped.

Must have been fish. They really needed to find a new fishmonger here in town.

He crawled out of bed to find a towel. “Can I get you anything?”

She didn’t answer. He hadn’t really expected her to. Still, he held out the towel, trying not to flinch when she threw up for what had to be the fourth time.

“You poor, poor dear,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. You haven’t been like this since—”

Since . . .

Oh, dear God.

“
Daphne?
” His voice shook. Hell, his whole body shook.

She nodded.

“But . . . how . . . ?”

“The usual way, I imagine,” she said, gratefully taking the towel.

“But it’s been— It’s been—” He tried to think. He couldn’t think. His brain had completely ceased working.

“I think I’m done,” she said. She sounded exhausted. “Could you get me a bit of water?”

“Are you certain?” If he recalled correctly, the water would pop right back up and into the chamber pot.

“It’s over there,” she said, motioning weakly to a pitcher on a table. “I’m not going to swallow it.”

He poured her a glass and waited while she swished out her mouth.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat several times, “I . . . ah . . .” He coughed again. He could not get a word out to save his life. And he couldn’t blame his stutter this time.

“Everyone knows,” Daphne said, placing her hand on his arm for support as she moved back to bed.

“Everyone?” he echoed.

“I hadn’t planned to say anything until you returned, but they guessed.”

He nodded slowly, still trying to absorb it all. A baby. At his age. At
her
age.

It was . . .

It was . . .

It was
amazing
.

Strange how it came over him so suddenly. But now, after the initial shock wore off, all he could feel was pure joy.

“This is wonderful news!” he exclaimed. He reached out to hug her, then thought better of it when he saw her pasty complexion. “You never cease to delight me,” he said, instead giving her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

She winced and closed her eyes. “Don’t rock the bed,” she moaned. “You’re making me seasick.”

“You don’t get seasick,” he reminded her.

“I do when I’m expecting.”

“You’re an odd duck, Daphne Basset,” he murmured, and then stepped back to A) stop rocking the bed and

B) remove himself from her immediate vicinity should she take exception to the duck comparison.

(There was a certain history to this. While heavily pregnant with Amelia, she had asked him if she was radiant or if she just looked like a waddling duck. He told her she’d looked like a radiant duck. This had not been the correct answer.)

He cleared his throat and said, “You poor, poor dear.”

Then he fled.

Several hours later Simon was seated at his massive oak desk, his elbows resting atop the smooth wood, his right index finger ringing the top of the brandy snifter that he had already refilled twice.

It had been a momentous day.

An hour or so after he’d left Daphne to her nap, Colin and Penelope had returned with their progeny, and they’d all had tea and biscuits in the breakfast room. Simon had started for the drawing room, but Penelope had requested an alternative, someplace without “expensive fabrics and upholstery.”

Little Georgie had grinned up at him at that, his face still smeared with a substance Simon hoped was chocolate.

As Simon regarded the blanket of crumbs spilling from the table to the floor, along with the wet napkin they’d used to sop up Agatha’s overturned tea, he remembered that he and Daphne had always taken their tea here when the children were small.

Funny how one forgot such details.

Once the tea party had dispersed, however, Colin had asked for a private word. They had repaired to Simon’s study, and it was there that Colin confided in him about Georgie.

He wasn’t talking.

His eyes were sharp. Colin thought he was reading.

But he wasn’t talking.

Colin had asked for his advice, and Simon realized he had none. He’d thought about this, of course. It had haunted him every time Daphne had been pregnant, straight through until each of his children had begun to form sentences.

He supposed it would haunt him now. There would be another baby, another soul to love desperately . . . and worry over.

All he’d known to tell Colin was to love the boy. To talk to him, and praise him, and take him riding and fishing and all those things a father ought to do with a son.

All those things his father had never done with him.

He didn’t think about him often these days, his father. He had Daphne to thank for that. Before they’d met, Simon had been obsessed with revenge. He’d wanted so badly to hurt his father, to make him suffer the way he had suffered as a boy, with all the pain and anguish of knowing he had been rejected and found wanting.

It hadn’t mattered that his father was dead. Simon had thirsted for vengeance all the same, and it had taken love, first with Daphne and then with his children, to banish that ghost. He’d finally realized that he was free when Daphne had given him a bundle of letters from his father that had been entrusted into her care. He hadn’t wanted to burn them; he hadn’t wanted to rip them to shreds.

He hadn’t particularly wanted to read them, either.

He’d looked down at the stack of envelopes, tied neatly with a red and gold ribbon, and realized that he felt nothing. Not anger, not sorrow, not even regret. It had been the greatest victory he could have imagined.

He wasn’t sure how long the letters had sat in Daphne’s desk. He knew she’d put them in her bottom drawer, and every now and then he’d taken a peek to see if they were still there.

But eventually even that had tapered off. He hadn’t forgotten about the letters—every now and then something would happen that would spring them to mind—but he’d forgotten about them with such constancy. And they had probably been absent from his mind for months when he opened his bottom desk drawer and saw that Daphne had moved them there.

That had been twenty years ago.

And although he still lacked the urge to burn or shred, he’d also never felt the need to open them.

Until now.

Well, no.

Maybe?

He looked at them again, still tied in that bow.
Did
he want to open them? Could there be anything in his father’s letters that might be of help to Colin and Penelope as they guided Georgie through what might be a difficult childhood?

No. It was impossible. His father had been a hard man, unfeeling and unforgiving. He’d been so obsessed with his heritage and title that he’d turned his back on his only child. There could be nothing—nothing—that he might have written that could help Georgie.

Simon picked up the letters. The papers were dry. They smelled old.

The fire in the grate felt new. Hot, and bright, and redemptive. He stared at the flames until his vision blurred, just sat there for endless minutes, clutching his father’s final words to him. They had not spoken for over five years when his father died. If there was anything the old duke had wanted to say to him, it would be here.

“Simon?”

He looked up slowly, barely able to pull himself from his daze. Daphne was standing in the doorway, her hand resting lightly on the edge of the door. She was dressed in her favorite pale blue dressing gown. She’d had it for years; every time he asked if she wanted to replace it, she refused. Some things were best soft and comfortable.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asked.

He nodded, coming to his feet. “Soon. I was just—” He cleared his throat, because the truth was—he wasn’t sure what he’d been doing. He wasn’t even sure what he’d been thinking. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Better. It’s always better in the evening.” She took a few steps forward. “I had a bit of toast, and even some jam, and I—” She stopped, the only movement in her face the quick blink of her eyes. She was staring at the letters. He hadn’t realized he was still holding them when he stood.

“Are you going to read them?” she asked quietly.

“I thought . . . perhaps . . .” He swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“But why now?”

“Colin told me about Georgie. I thought there might be something in here.” He moved his hand slightly, holding the stack of letters just a little bit higher. “Something that might help him.”

Daphne’s lips parted, but several seconds passed before she was able to speak. “I think you might be one of the kindest, most generous men I have ever known.”

He looked at her in confusion.

“I know you don’t want to read those,” she said.

“I really don’t care—”

“No, you do,” she interrupted gently. “Not enough to destroy them, but they still mean something to you.”

“I hardly ever think about them,” he said. It was the truth.

“I know.” She reached out and took his hand, her thumb moving lightly over his knuckles. “But just because you let go of your father, it doesn’t mean he never mattered.”

He didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not surprised that if you do finally decide to read them, it will be to help someone else.”

He swallowed, then grasped her hand like a lifeline.

“Do you want me to open them?”

He nodded, wordlessly handing her the stack.

Daphne moved to a nearby chair and sat, tugging at the ribbon until the bow fell loose. “Are these in order?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sat back down behind his desk. It was far enough away that he couldn’t see the pages.

She gave an acknowledging nod, then carefully broke the seal on the first envelope. Her eyes moved along the lines—or at least he thought they did. The light was too dim to see her expression clearly, but he had seen her reading letters enough times to know exactly what she must look like.

“He had terrible penmanship,” Daphne murmured.

“Did he?” Now that he thought about it, Simon wasn’t sure he’d ever seen his father’s handwriting. He must have done, at some point. But it wasn’t anything he recalled.

He waited a bit longer, trying not to hold his breath as she turned the page.

“He didn’t write on the back,” she said with some surprise.

“He wouldn’t,” Simon said. “He would never do anything that smacked of economization.”

She looked up, her brows arched.

“The Duke of Hastings does not need to economize,” Simon said dryly.

“Really?” She turned to the next page, murmuring, “I shall have to remember that the next time I go to the dressmaker.”

He smiled. He loved that she could make him smile at such a moment.

After another few moments, she refolded the papers and looked up. She paused briefly, perhaps in case he wanted to say anything, and then when he did not, said, “It’s rather dull, actually.”

“Dull?” He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but not this.

Daphne gave a little shrug. “It’s about the harvest, and an improvement to the east wing of the house, and several tenants he suspects of cheating him.” She pressed her lips together disapprovingly. “They weren’t, of course. It is Mr. Miller and Mr. Bethum. They would never cheat anyone.”

Simon blinked. He’d thought his father’s letters might include an apology. Or if not that, then more accusations of inadequacy. It had never occurred to him that his father might have simply sent him an accounting of the estate.

“Your father was a very suspicious man,” Daphne muttered.

“Oh, yes.”

“Shall I read the next?”

“Please do.”

She did, and it was much the same, except this time it was about a bridge that needed repairing and a window that had not been made to his specifications.

And on it went. Rents, accounts, repairs, complaints . . . There was the occasional overture, but nothing more personal than
I am considering hosting a shooting party next month, do let me know if you are interested in attending
. It was astounding. His father had not only denied his existence when he’d thought him a stuttering idiot, he’d managed to deny his own denial once Simon was speaking clearly and up to snuff. He acted as if it had never happened, as if he had never wished his own son were dead.

“Good God,” Simon said, because
some
thing had to be said.

Daphne looked up. “Hmmm?”

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“It’s the last one,” she said, holding the letter up.

He sighed.

“Do you want me to read it?”

“Of course,” he said sarcastically. “It might be about rents. Or accounts.”

“Or a bad harvest,” Daphne quipped, obviously trying not to smile.

“Or that,” he replied.

“Rents,” she said once she’d finished reading. “And accounts.”

“The harvest?”

She smiled slightly. “It was good that season.”

Simon closed his eyes for a moment, as a strange tension eased from his body.

“It’s odd,” Daphne said. “I wonder why he never mailed these to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he didn’t. Don’t you recall? He held on to all of them, then gave them to Lord Middlethorpe before he died.”