Percy swallowed back nausea. Would he never stop being a disappointment to his father?
“Do you remember when you saved the kitten from the carriage wheel?” the Duke asked.
“I might have a vague recollection of such an event.”
“Well, you couldn’t have had more than six years on you. From what I was able to gather from Frau Gerta, she was walking you and Michael to the park when you spied a kitten in the gutter and snatched it up just before it was crushed beneath a carriage wheel. What a row you caused when you brought the creature into the house. Mrs. Landry threatened to quit on the spot. Do you not remember?”
“There was an injury, correct?”
A faraway smile entered the Duke’s eyes. “The carriage clipped your shoulder and nearly dislocated it. So, there you were, one arm hanging useless from injury, the other clutching a frantic kitten, not about to let go.”
Percy, too, smiled at the memory. “I seem to remember her clawing my face to get away. She won that battle. Was she ever seen again?”
“Became the best mouser the kitchens ever saw, according to Mrs. Landry. Do you recall what Michael said?”
Percy put on his best impersonation of his brother. “What an ungrateful creature.”
“And your response?”
Percy shrugged. “Some childish piffle, to be sure.”
“You told Michael that she was a wild creature and she was just being herself and you wouldn’t have her any other way. You went on quite passionately, but I’ll never forget what you said next. Not every creature needs to be tamed.”
That sounded exactly like the sort of thing Percy had said on more than one occasion, and at ages embarrassingly older than six years. He’d been incredibly idealistic, even into manhood.
“When you were running wild all over London,” the Duke continued, “I knew exactly who you were, and the man you would grow into.”
“How disappointed you must have been when I didn’t turn out that way.”
“Percy, look at me.” With great reluctance, Percy did as his father bid. Piercing blue eyes bored into his. “You are exactly that man. You always have been.”
“Which is why you helped Olivia divorce me?” Percy found himself saying with no small amount of bitterness. In all the months since he’d returned, the subject hadn’t been broached between them. The time had arrived to have this out in the open, for Percy harbored a grievance.
“It took you by surprise, didn’t it?” the Duke asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think I could have prevented it?”
“I know you could have.” Such was the power the Duke of Arundel wielded in Parliament.
“Did you desire to come home and resume your unhappy marriage? Continue leading a life separate from your wife’s? For that was the existence both behind and ahead of you and Olivia.”
“I never thought I’d survive to come home. Still . . . Why did you help Olivia secure it?”
“I saw an opportunity to deal with an untenable situation.” The Duke lifted one hand. “There was Olivia, who I’d come to love as my own blood. I wanted her to have a chance at happiness.” He lifted his other hand. “And there was you, my son. I wanted to give you the chance to begin anew when you returned to England.”
“But Lucy,” Percy began. Here it was, his grievance. “She’s my bastard because the marriage was set aside. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.”
“You think Lucy is upset by that? Stop keeping yourself to yourself and let the chit know you. She will come around.”
Percy wasn’t sure it was in his daughter’s best interest to be associated with a man like him. That was nearer the truth of the matter. But he couldn’t admit such a thing to his father, not with the way he was looking at him, his golden boy. It was too much. Percy hadn’t been that boy since the Battle of Maya.
“But, Percy, I must say something to you, and I’m not sure how.”
Percy’s pulse doubled. “Yes?”
“Whatever it is that you’re caught up in now, be careful. I can’t lose you again. Those years you were unaccounted for were the worst of my life.”
“You have my word, Father.” A promise Percy hoped he could keep. Yet if matters went sideways with Montfort . . .
Well, they wouldn’t.
The Duke held Percy’s eye until, at last, he nodded. As he rose to his feet by slow stages, it was all Percy could do not to assist, but he knew better than to offer.
“Son, you’re in need of a proper shave. I shall send Drummond to the cottage in the morning.”
“Drummond?” Percy asked, astonished. “He’s still alive?”
“Too mean for the devil to take, I suspect.”
“He must be eighty.”
“Eighty and three on his last name day.”
“And this is the man you’d like to apply a straightedge to my neck? I thought you wanted me to remain amongst the living.”
The Duke snorted. “That man has the sharpest eye and steadiest hand in England. He will be there by eleven of the clock.”
With the Duke gone, Percy was left alone with Princess Polly, her foal, and his thoughts for company. He slumped against the boards and closed his eyes. The mare was making it through without infection. If only other matters would sort themselves out so easily.
These last few days, it seemed that every decision he’d made in his life, both wrong and right, had converged on him. In all honesty, he was mightily tempted to collapse beneath its weight and let it pull him under.
To do so, however, would be unworthy of the man his father believed him to be. Even if Percy understood at a fundamental level that he wasn’t and would never be that man, his father thought him so.
Those years you were unaccounted for were the worst of my life.
As if Percy needed more motivation to pursue Montfort to the ground, he had it. The year Montfort had held Percy under his influence had hurt the Duke, a hurt that still resonated within his father’s eyes.
Montfort must be stopped. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.