“Amusing,” Lucien repeated slowly. Carefully. After a moment.
He could not recall the last time he’d been so astounded by a mere word. Perhaps when Delacorte had pumped his fist in the Gentleman’s Room.
There passed another silence.
“Were you upset, Father?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Were. You. Upset. You hadn’t said a word to me for six years. Were you truly upset?”
The duke’s eyebrows dove irritably. “Of course, Lucien. One doesn’t wish drowning upon anyone.”
Lucien almost laughed. “I suppose you rent your garments, that sort of thing?”
The duke glared at him as if he’d been insolent.
And it was odd, but Lucien felt a distant amusement. It was abundantly clear there was nothing in this man before him that felt like the man Lucien remembered. The man who’d once lifted him on his shoulders so he could pick apple blossoms for his mother. Who’d laughed and chucked him under his chin and was indulgent. He understood now that he hadn’t really known that man at all; he’d interpreted that man based on a few moments. The sensation was akin to standing in a house while the walls collapsed. It had seemed like shelter, once, those memories. But suddenly the view was infinitely more expansive. Suddenly there was more air to breathe.
“The last we spoke, Father, was a few days before you sent a letter to my mother explaining why her services were no longer needed.”
Finally. The duke’s features spasmed in discomfort, perhaps distaste. Maybe even a hint of fear. His finger traced the edge of his desk nervously. Back and forth. Back and forth. The duke was not a man accustomed to being called to account for anything. Perhaps it was only now occurring to him that a boy he’d entirely abandoned might hold a little bit of a grudge.
The duke sighed finally, heavily. “You were a charming little boy, Lucien, and I liked having you about when I saw you. But one needs a legitimate heir when one is a duke, and a legitimate wife; and the proper wife for me, the current duchess, would not tolerate having a mistress and an illegitimate son hanging about. I’m certain you understand. You’re intelligent and I made certain you received a fine education. I decided I’d given you the tools to get on with life and that what you did with them was up to you. And as much as I enjoyed your mother...”
The little smile the duke produced here made Lucien want to run him through with a sword.
“Oh, yes, Christine wassolovely...” His father turned to the window, where, presumably, memories resided.
Lucien said very slowly, “Her name was Helene.”
The duke lifted his hand. “Oh, of course, of course. I used to love the way she said my name.Robairrrr,” he said mistily. “Robairrrr. Ah, youth.”
Lucien’s teeth clamped down hard.
And in another blinding epiphany Lucien realized that his memories and the duke’s memories were inverse images. Not reflections at all. The grand themes of Lucien’s life—love and loss and heartbreak, betrayal and fury, his own and his mother’s—were not a part of the duke’s story. Helene and Lucien had been features in his life, something that made it a little more pleasurable, like hunting dogs or a good horse. It had amused him to indulge them. And it had probably been easy for him to stop.
The muscles across his stomach tensed as finally emotion pierced: it was unbearable to think his mother’s life had been of so little consequence to the duke, when she had given so much of her heart to this man. But it was a choice his mother had made, for reasons of her own.
Still, for an instant, Lucien struggled to take a breath.
The duke would be baffled if Lucien said to him, “You broke my mother’s heart.” It would be like so much shouting into the wind. Like hysteria without context. The contents of his mother’s heart had probably never concerned the duke. He had taken her devotion for granted, because he’d paid for it.
He considered how it would sound if he said it now:your wife, the duchess, arranged to kill me, so embarrassed, annoyed, threatened was she by my very existence.
This, too, would have sounded like so much delusional ranting.
And of course, he couldn’t prove it at all.
And now he realized he would simply never say it. His mother was dead. Lucien understood definitively that he wanted nothing from the duke.
And gloriously he realized he needed nothing from the duke. Not explanation or answers or absolution or apologies or money. Nothing.
Well, perhaps one thing.
“Is this a pretense, then, Lucien?” His father waved at the correspondence from the Triton Group. “A ruse to come and see me and ask for money? I cannot think of what you want from me. I gave you a fine education. You’ve a title you weren’t born into, thanks to me and the rare generosity of the king. It’s up to you now to make a life of it.”
“It’s not a farce. I’m well-off. I don’t want or need your money. I thought you might like to see for yourself the results of your generosity,” Lucien said gravely. “And I thank you for it.”