“How old is Uncle Dolph?” Jeremiah posed the question to his father as their horses walked back to the barn at the end of the one weekly ride that did not include Joshua.
“Nineteen, maybe.” Ethan realized he wasn’t quite sure. “Or maybe eighteen. I don’t know. Why?”
“He’s still at school. He’s been at school a long time.”
“Not so long. Dolph spent only a couple of years at public school, and he’s been up at university for two years, I think. Before that, he was tutored at home, as you and Joshua have been.”
“You went to public school,” Jeremiah said, his tone diffident.
“I did, for a few years, as did your uncles Nick, Beck, George, and Dolph. Do you want to go to public school?”
Ethan’s tone was equally casual, though a cold knife of anxiety sliced at his guts. Children did go away to school as young as six, and Ethan wondered at their parents for allowing it. Was Jeremiah somehow so unhappy he wanted to leave home?
“A young man goes away to school,” Jeremiah said, his gaze even more intent on his pony’s mane, “and you said I’m on the threshold of young manhood.”
“I did say that. Give me your reins, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah looked puzzled but complied, and watched as his father tied the reins to a ring on the front of Waltzer’s saddle.
“Up you go.” Ethan grasped Jeremiah under the arms and lifted him from the pony’s back to the front of Ethan’s saddle. Waltzer paused, adjusted to the new load, and sauntered on while the pony obediently trailed beside the horse.
“You might have asked.” Jeremiah looked down at his pony and reminded Ethan for all the world of Alice Portman when she was displeased with her high-handed employer.
“I might. I’m sorry. Next time I will. What is this interest in public school? Are you ready to leave your papa and strike out on your own?”
“Soon. Joshua should come with me, and he’s still too young.”
“I’m glad he’s too young.” Ethan had one arm around Jeremiah’s waist, which meant he could feel the tension in his son’s body.
“Why would you be glad about that? Miss Alice says we’re growing like magic beanstalks,” Jeremiah said, fiddling with the horse’s mane.
“Why?” Ethan paused and tried to find words to explain the hole in his heart, in his life, in his soul, that would result if his children left his household now. He was just coming to know them, to be a father to them in any meaningful sense, and here his six-year-old—
“Because, Jeremiah Nicholas Grey, there is nobody I love the way I love my sons, and I would miss you very, very much.”
Before him, Jeremiah stopped fiddling with Waltzer’s mane. “You would? You’d miss us?”
“Because I love you.” Ethan emphasized the words Jeremiah had tried to ignore. “Because you are my family, and too soon you will grow up and become a young man who wants to make his own way in the world. Then I will have to let you go, but I won’t like it then, either.”
“Even when we’re old, like Uncle Dolph or Uncle George?”
“Even when you’re old like me. I didn’t go to school until I was fourteen, Jeremiah, and then only because my father thought Nick and I should be meeting other boys our age.” This was a lie, but Ethan forgave himself for it before the words had left his lips.
“Fourteen? That’s twice as old as me, and more.”
As I, Ethan thought with a parent’s inherent need to edit grammar. He kept his parental editor quiet and hugged his son instead. “It’s forever from now, and there are plenty of young men who go to university without ever having gone away to school.”
“I don’t want to go,” Jeremiah said on a huge sigh. “Mr. Harold said we ought, because we were an embarrassment and gutterswipes.”
“Guttersnipes. It means orphans or little criminals in the making. Children who have no supervision or manners or home.”
“I have supervision and manners and a home,” Jeremiah said with a touch of defiance. “Mr. Harold was wrong.”
“Very.”
And when Jeremiah might have burdened his father with yet more memories of the execrable Mr. Harold, Ethan chose that moment to tickle his son gently. “Are you ready to return to your own saddle?”
“Not yet. I like it way up here. When can Joshua and I have bigger ponies?”
“Horses, you mean?” Ethan tousled his son’s hair with a gloved hand. “Not for a while. Joshua is a demon on that pony, and I’m frankly scared of what he’d do with a larger mount.”
“Thunder and Lightning are good boys,” Jeremiah declared staunchly. “I wouldn’t want to sell them.”
“So we won’t. This estate can support a couple of ponies who’ve done their share of work.” Ethan did not examine too closely the notion that other children might come along to interrupt Thunder and Lightning’s retirement.
“We don’t have to sell them?” Jeremiah turned to regard his father. “Mr. Harold said the only things more useless than me and Josh were those fat, lame ponies of ours. He said they should go to the knackers, because they were a complete waste of money.”
An accurate description for Mr. Harold. Ethan batted aside the paternal guilt following that sentiment.
“Mr. Harold was likely jealous. Your ponies are first-rate, and you ride them like a pair of Cossacks. And Jeremiah? It’s ill-bred to mention it, so I beg your discretion, but what we do with our wealth is none of Mr. Harold’s damned business.”
“You said damned. I won’t tattle. Do you think Miss Alice will ever canter?”
If Ethan had his way, her heart at least would be galloping that very night. “I don’t know. For her to get on Waltzer, much less to hack out at the trot, took a lot of courage. We should be proud of her.”
“She’s proud of us. She tells us all the time. I like her, even if she makes us do lessons.”
Ethan tolerated another filial inspection and realized Jeremiah had cast one of his subtle lures. “I like her too, Jeremiah. I like her a great deal.”
“More than you liked Mama?” Jeremiah sprung the trap with casual innocence.
“That’s complicated.” Ethan searched for useful truths amid the painful and surprising realities. “I will always treasure your mother because she gave me you and Joshua, but she’s in heaven now, and we are left here to live out our lives without her. I do like Miss Alice a lot, and I respect her. Those are probably the same feelings you have about your mother’s memory.”
“Sorta.” Jeremiah started to braid a hank of mane. “Mama wasn’t always nice.”
“Nobody is nice all the time.”
“She yelled.” Jeremiah shrank back against his father’s chest as he spoke. “She yelled
“Some people yell.” Ethan tried to keep his tone level, but God above, Jeremiah had barely been out of nappies when his mother had died. Was his only memory of his mother her temper? “It doesn’t mean they don’t love you. I yell. Uncle Nick yells.”
“He yells, but mostly when he loses his ball in the weeds. Uncle Nick went to public school too.”
Back to this?
“He did. A different one than I did.”
“Mama wanted to send us away.” Jeremiah gave another one of those sighs, as if his entire soul was heaving away a burden, and Ethan felt his heart breaking. He wanted to argue Jeremiah out of these memories, to tell the boy Barbara had only been teasing or exasperated or trying to raise Ethan’s temper in response, but he couldn’t. Barbara had been fiendishly expert at ferreting out Ethan’s sensitive issues, and though they’d argued about everything at some point, she’d honed in on public school as one of the most sensitive issues of all.
Ethan pressed a kiss to his son’s crown. “Isn’t it interesting that your mother is the one who did go away, thankfully to a better place, while you and Joshua are here, with me, right where I want you?”
