She was instrumental in convincing him it was time to return home. I think she might’ve threatened him, actually. I’m not exactly sure how she accomplished it, but I’m grateful, nonetheless.”
He shared a glance with Jennifer before asking Ellen, “Are you talking about the Mayfair Club, Mrs. Thornton?”
“That’s it, exactly. How did you know?”
Jennifer looked at him again. “Gordon owns the Mayfair Club.”
Ellen looked startled. “Does he? How very strange. Talk about coincidence.”
Maggie had evidently cut Harrison off, which meant that he had no ready money with which to gamble. Gordon didn’t blame her for the decision. He would have done the same if Ellen had come to him.
“However it was accomplished,” Jennifer said, “I’m grateful, too. He should have been back a week ago.”
“London is a lure for men like Harrison,” Ellen said. “They’re young, titled, and wealthy.”
“He’s also married and has responsibilities. Do those simply vanish because he wants to spend his time gambling and even worse?”
Thank God for men who liked to gamble. Without them he wouldn’t be as wealthy as he was. However, there were actually few men as irresponsible as Harrison in his coterie of customers. Most men recalled their duties and performed them without being reminded.
The rest of the dinner conversation centered on people that Ellen and Jennifer knew in Edinburgh. When dinner was over, he excused himself, leaving the two women alone to discuss birth and Harrison’s peccadilloes.
Since it was late, Gordon decided not to go back to the cottage for fear of waking Sean. Instead, he stopped in front of the library, recalling the countess the moment he opened the door.
The myth of Adaire Hall was that it was a place of enchanted happiness. He’d known that was false when he was ten years old and realized how desperately unhappy the Countess of Burfield was. No one else seemed to realize how much she still missed her husband. Either that or she cloaked it well in front of everyone else.
She’d always been honest with him, and he’d reciprocated with telling her how he’d learned the basics of mathematics by playing cards with the footmen. He’d attended the village school, but only until he was nine. The education he’d received there had been considered adequate for his station in life. It was the countess who’d expanded his boundaries.
One day he’d confessed to her that he’d stolen into this library once, just to see all the books. He’d taken one, bound in burgundy leather, and sat with it between his hands, opening it to random pages and wondering at all the words. He hadn’t known many of them. To his surprise she asked him to fetch that same book one day. From then on, she spent at least an hour each day teaching him some of those words. He would say the letters aloud for her, and she would say the word, then they would practice sounding it out and spelling it.
“You need to know about men who’ve dreamed great things,” she told him once. “Philosophers and mathematicians, among others.”
Because of her, he’d started reading the books in the library. She’d given him one a week and expected him to finish it in that time. When Sean said something about the time he spent reading, Gordon had responded that the countess wanted him to do it. Neither Sean nor Betty commented after that.
Now all of those memories coalesced. He could almost see Mary Adaire sitting there in her chair, holding a book with her fingers trailing over the spine, her palm flat against a page, almost as if she were willing herself to read the words through her fingers.
She’d never complained to him, but he felt that losing the ability to read was something she regretted the most.
He and Jennifer had taken turns reading to her. He’d always felt embarrassed when it came to poetry, but he had kept on, for fear that one of them would consider him a coward for not continuing.
He headed for that section now, daring himself. One book especially seemed to have been her favorite. He pulled it from the shelf, smiling as he opened it.
“What the hell are you doing back here?”
He carefully placed the volume back on the shelf before turning to face Harrison.
“Wasn’t the money my mother left you enough? Are you thinking you’ll get some more from my sister? She may be a fool, McDonnell, but she’s not your fool.”
As a boy he’d handled the problem of Harrison by pushing his face into the dirt.