“None of Them Will Be My Mother!” the Duke’s Son Declared — Until the Cook Brought an Apple Pie
Chapter 10
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Rosamund, who had come up with the dessert, set down the apple tart with a hand that was not entirely steady, and fled for the stairs. She did not hear the Duke say, very low to the ceiling: "He is ten. He misses nothing. It is intolerable."It was in the small hours of a December night, with snow against the windows, that they told each other the truth.She had come down to the kitchen at 1:00 in the morning for milk, unable to sleep, and found him already there, sitting at the great oak table in his shirtsleeves with a cold cup before him and his hair rumpled. Neither of them remarked on it. She warmed the milk, set a second cup before him, and sat down across the table. For some time, they only listened to the range tick."I was not here," said the Duke at last, very quietly. "That is what I cannot lay down. Eleanor took a chill, and the chill became a lung fever in the space of five days. I had gone up to London on a matter of a lease. I rode through the night when the message came, and I arrived two hours after she was gone." He stared into the cup. "Ned was in the room. He was eight. He held her hand at the end, and he has not let anyone hold his since. I have been trying for two years to learn how to be in a room with my own son, and I do it very badly."Rosamund was silent for a long moment. She did not tell him it was not his fault, because she had heard that sentence offered to her at nine years old, standing by her mother's coffin, and she knew what a flimsy thing it was."My mother died of a fever when I was nine," she said instead. "My father stopped speaking. For two years, he sat by the fire and said nothing at all. So I learned to cook, because I discovered that if I put a plate in front of him, he ate; and if he ate, he lived." She looked at her hands. "Food is how you say stay. I have never found a better way of saying it. I have been afraid ever since of being a burden, so I never take the last piece of anything." She looked up. "You are not late, Your Grace," she added with more steadiness than she felt. "He is ten years old. He is waiting for you, and at present, he is upstairs arranging a hedgehog on a cushion. I do not think you have missed him yet."The Duke lifted his head. His eyes, in the low firelight, were no longer flint, but something far more unguarded; and for a moment, she saw the man his wife must have seen.He rose without a word, took the last slice of cold pie from the dish on the dresser, and set it on her plate."Take the last piece, Miss Vale," said Theodore gravely. "I should like to see you do it once."