an active interest in the House of Lords, and still always had time for me. When I was a child he would toss a ball or spend hours leading me around on my pony. He was a man of infinite patience. When I grew older he spent hours discussing my schoolwork, explaining why it was important. He could take the smallest historical fact and explain what relevance it had in the modern world. He encouraged my every endeavor. There could not have been a better father.”
“He sounds wonderful. I never knew my own father.”
“I am sorry for that, but perhaps it would have been easier.” He combed his fingers through his hair again.
“How can you say that?”
“Because it was all a lie,” he sounded frozen. In another man emotion would have grown, in Tristan they seemed to leak from him with each word until there were none left. “He was not my father.”
Marguerite looked up from her hands twisting within her skirts and met Tristan’s gaze as he turned to stare at him. He looked more a statue than a man.
“My mother, Felicity, the darling of society and the one great love of his life, had betrayed him.”
Marguerite could only stare at him blankly.
“I had always known I didn’t look like my father. It did not seem important, even as Peter grew more like him everyday. Many boys didn’t look as their fathers. I was his son, his heir. Even as I grew to manhood I never questioned. Why should I? He continued to groom me to take over his place. All was perfect. I was the perfect son in a perfect family.
“Then he died. He was in perfect health – there is that word again – perfect. He was so alive. He was athletic. He was active. He enjoyed his life to the fullest. I can still remember the night before he died. I had moved into bachelor apartments when I reached my twenty-fifth year. My mother and he had invited me to dinner. He stood at the end of the table – where I now sit every night – and he toasted us all, but in most particular my mother. I will never forget the glow in his eye as he looked at her. It was one of the happiest nights of my life.
“He did not wake in the morning.”
“What happened? How did –?”
“Nobody knows – there was speculation: his heart, a sudden apoplexy, or perhaps he rolled over and smothered against his pillows. I even heard poison suggested – both deliberately or by mistake. The surgeons had no answer.”
“It must have been horrible.”
“That does not even begin to describe it. The center had been ripped from my life. The worst were those who hinted that I should be glad of the title.”
Marguerite rose and walked to him, even in the midst of her own pain his cut her deep. She laid a soft hand upon his shoulder. “I cannot even imagine.”
“I was surviving it, though. Even though all seemed bleak, I had learned to go through one day at a time. There was Peter to be concerned for. He was not yet eighteen and after my father’s death he started to talk of running off to war – the job of a second son and all that. Talking to him, convincing him to stay filled my days. I spent long nights talking to my mother about how to keep him with us.
“She, my mother, never seemed to waver, she offered continual support. I assumed she grieved in quiet, alone when none could see. She never mentioned my father, would in fact leave the room if his name were mentioned. I assumed it hurt too much. I thought she had loved him and could not bear it.”
“That sounds reasonable to me.”
“I thought so too. I worried about her. I had spent some time in the country overlooking the estates, being sure that everything would continue as my father had desired. I could not be at ease, however. I continued to be troubled by mother. I had been hearing disquieting rumors of her behavior. So, I returned to Town unexpectedly – I wanted to be sure she was not in need of comfort and that Peter had not done something stupid.
“I came into this house, to this very room, my father’s room and here I found her – “
“Surely, that is not unexpected.” Marguerite watched as her husband paced the room. She stood still, not sure what aid to