A Solemn Promise

XXII

"I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother." Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

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XXII.

The next morning, Cecily did not ring her bell for Naismith as she usually did. Instead, she put on her robe and went through what had once been the duke's study and entered into Peregrine's bedroom.

It was a passageway that had been used for two centuries by the dukes and duchesses of Ashwood, and yet Cecily believed that this was quite possibly the first time that she had used it. She certainly had never taken it upon herself to visit her husband. Not once.

It made her laugh, really, to remember that Peregrine had arranged for his study to be moved some years ago as though Cecily would have a desire to disturb him.

Peregrine was still in bed, and it shocked her a little for a moment before she saw the soft rises and falls of his chest as he breathed. He did look awful. His skin was pale, and as thin as paper. She could see every vein underneath it. The sickness was eating away at him and he had lost a considerable amount of weight in the last month or so.

It astonished her that neither Jack nor Susanna had realised their father was ill. Susanna, perhaps, was too much of an optimist to think the worst. Jack was often far too busy with his nose buried in a book as he flouted responsibility to notice anyone else.

As Cecily took a seat in the chair near Peregrine's bed, Cecily wondered if she would have been able to ever love her husband had she not met with Edward Denham. Perhaps she might have. Perhaps if she had been more loving, Peregrine would not have had to seek comfort elsewhere.

She did not at all blame Peregrine for his choices. Once she had lost her heart to Edward, she could never open it again for him, especially not so soon after having it broken. She never gave Peregrine a chance. She had hardened herself, becoming an entirely unpleasant person to live with, to protect herself from being hurt in such a way again.

Peregrine had developed a dislike for her that could only be in response to her behaviour towards him. Though he had never been cruel to her. Their marriage had been doomed from the moment they stood at the altar.

Really, from the moment that Cecily had confided in her mother. Peregrine might have been like Sarah in the beginning. He could have been kind and sweet to her if she'd taken the opportunity to notice. But Cecily had changed him. Just as Adam would change Sarah.

Selfishly though, Cecily did not really care about Sarah Ashley's feelings at the moment in time. Adam was walking along a precipice and he needed help. He needed someone to say that happiness was important, that love was important. Her son deserved the life that Cecily had so wanted for herself.

And perhaps God was giving her an odd sort of second chance in being able to pave the way for her son and Edward's daughter.

The idea made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, it shocked her so. Never in her wildest dreams could she have believed that she would ever even consider allowing such a match. She had spent so much of Adam's life preventing such a union.

Her reasons for preventing the match still stood. Grace was nobody. She was poor. She was low born. She was a servant in their own household.

Though Edward was a tradesman, he shared the same characteristics with his daughter. And yet it hadn't mattered to Cecily. At sixteen, she was prepared to bake their own bread and sweep their own floors.

Just as Edward wasn't nobody to Cecily, Grace was not nobody to Adam. And God forbid, if she prevented their marriage, and the poor girl died ... she never wanted any of her children to feel as she had five years ago.