Page 77 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
He looked at her directly. "I want my grandson," he said. "He is the only family I have left. My son is gone. My wife is gone. The boy is all that remains, and he is a Cluett, and he belongs with his family."
Emily kept her hands very still in her lap. "Mr. Cluett, Frederick is well cared for here," she said, evenly. "He is happy. He is settled. He has a home, a name, and people who love him. Youcannot just come and take all of this away from him, make him start over."
"He has a grandfather," George Cluett said. "Who did not know he existed until two weeks ago and who has come as soon as he was able. I want to know him. I want him to know where he comes from. His father's family. His father's name."
"He does not know you," she argued, her hands gripping the back of a velvet chair to keep from shaking. "He is happy here. He is safe. He has just begun to heal from the loss of —"
"He will heal at my hearth," George snapped. “What claim do you have to him, Your Grace? Your family disowned your sister. They want nothing to do with the boy. You have taken him in, and I am grateful for that, genuinely, but you are his aunt by blood and nothing more. You have no legal standing. No guardianship. Nothing in writing that says he is yours to keep."
He pulled a tarnished silver watch from his pocket, checked it, and snapped the lid shut with a definitive click. "I want to take him with me tonight," George said. "The boy."
"Mr. Cluett —" Emily tried to say.
"I have arrangements to make for the journey, Your Grace," George cut her off. "I shall return tonight. Please have his things packed. I’ll not have him leaving with nothing but the clothes on his back, though I expect the finery he wears now will be of little use where we are going."
"Tonight?" Emily gasped, her mind racing. "You cannot possibly expect —"
"Thank you, Your Grace," George said, already turning toward the door. "I’ve lost years of his life already. I’ll not lose another night."
He stood up and bowed slightly before walking out of the room without a backward glance, leaving Emily standing in the center of the drawing room. The silence that rushed back in was deafening. She looked up at the high, ornate ceiling, feeling her eyes sting.
The door creaked open, and a skitter of small boots on the hardwood broke the suffocating silence. Emily had no idea how long she had been standing there, frozen in the center of the rug.
"Is he back?" Frederick burst into the room, his face flushed from playing, his small chest heaving. He skidded to a halt, his eyes darting around the expansive, shadowed drawing room as if Theodore might be hiding behind the heavy velvet drapes. "Did Uncle Theo come home?"
Emily couldn’t even force a smile. For the past week, Frederick had become a persistent shadow, his usual play replaced by a restless, searching energy. He asked at breakfast, at lunch, and before bed. It was a realization that gnawed at Emily’s heart. Her presence, once his entire world, was no longer enough. The boy had found a tether in Theodore, and in his absence, Frederick seemed to be drifting.
"Not yet, darling," Emily said.
"But it's been so many days," Frederick slumped, his bottom lip trembling just a fraction. "He said he had business. Is London very far? Maybe he got lost."
"No, he isn't lost," she promised, kneeling so she was eye-level with him. She reached out to smooth a stray lock of hair from his forehead, her fingers trembling. She was now in a fight to keep him, yet here he was, pining for the man who had fled the house to get away from her. "The Duke is very good with directions. He’ll be back soon."
"Soon?" Frederick pressed, his eyes wide and searching.
"Soon," she repeated, the word tasting like a lie.
Her mind was a whirlwind of static.George had said he was coming back tonight. She looked at Frederick’s small, innocent face and felt a wave of nausea. How was she supposed to protect him? If she kept him here, she was defying the only blood relative who claimed him. If she let him go, he would be taken to another life by a man he didn't know, away from the only stability he had ever found.
"Go back to the nursery, Frederick," she said, her voice sounding distant even to her own ears. "Peggy has... she has a game for you, I'm sure."
"I want to wait by the window," he insisted, his stubbornness so like the man who had just left the room. "I want to be the first to see the carriage."
"Frederick, please," she whispered, her composure beginning to fray. She couldn't think straight. The ornate walls of the drawing room felt like they were closing in.
She needed a plan. She needed a lawyer. She needed...
She needed Theodore.
CHAPTER TWENTY
"Iam not in the mood for this, Julia. I would like you to leave."
Julia closed the door behind her.
Theodore’s last two weeks in London had been a calculated disaster. He had come to find the version of himself that made sense, the man of ledgers, logic, and distance, but that man seemed to have perished somewhere on the road between Cavendish House and Mayfair.
He set down the glass.
