Page 103 of Bane Bloom

My throat tightened. He’d never spoken like this of her. Like he loved her.

The smile he wore, too, was one I’d never seen. Fond, and full of sadness. “She didn’t wish to marry me. She didn’t wish to marry anyone. Her independence was more important to her than anything. The irony is that it was part of what I loved about her.”

How this reminded me of Prudence!

“But you did marry?”

Color blotched his wan cheeks, and he sipped his brandy. “We did. We had to.”

I rubbed away a tear with the back of my hand. “Because of me.”

He nodded, but he couldn’t meet my gaze. “And soon enough you came, and how we loved you.”

I stared. “Mama loved me?”

He looked up, startled. “Of course she did.”

I shook my head, all but choking on the thickness in my throat. “You never told me so, Papa.”

“Child.” His face seemed to sink in on itself. “I did. When I told you she’d left us, you asked, didn’t she love you, and I told you she did.”

I began to shake. Apparently, like everything else, I’d buried this. Perhaps I hadn’t believed him. Or perhaps it had been easier to understand her leaving if I thought she hadn’t loved me. And then I’d spent my whole life hurting over the lack of that love.

I tightened my fingers around the herb pouch. “Find what is lost, remember what is forgotten.” I felt myself folded in Thomas’s arms.

“But it wasn’t enough to make her want to stay,” I said, trying to master the emotion in my voice. “I wasn’t enough. Or was it the opposite? I was too much?”

His eyes came to my face, and I could see the bitterness there. “You weren’t the reason she left. I was.”

I frowned. “But why?”

His head dipped. “I let her become a mother and lose herself. She stopped painting. Completely. There was no room for it. We were too poor for a servant, and she was doing everything herself. All that Nancy does, all a wet nurse would do, and all that you do, bug. All while I kept painting. Slowly her flame was going out, but I didn’t see it.” Finally, he looked at me. “Wouldn’t see it. By the time I did, it was too late.”

Papa and I wept, quietly, hands clasped, with soft rather than violent grief. It was long past. Yet for me it was like opening all the windows in a room.

Once we’d settled a little, I said, “I know that you are taking more blame than you deserve. I know that during that time, you must have been working hard to support us.”

“I was,” he admitted. “As hard as I could, until the flesh of my fingers cracked and bled from cleaning brushes.”

“It was no more your fault than it was mine. It was never the life she wanted.”

He met my gaze. “It wasn’t. And it wasn’t a choice the world let her have. But I could have done more.” I opened my mouth to protest again, and he gave a quick shake of his head. “I could have done more. At least acknowledged what was happening to her. Taken on some of her burden so she might steal back moments of her old life. If I had, maybe she wouldn’t have gone.”

“Or maybe she would have.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Or maybe she would have.”

He released my hand and got up from the table. “Wait here, bug.”

As he left the room, I sipped from his brandy glass. Nancy came out from the kitchen but took one look at my face and turned right back around.

Papa returned to the table with a small wooden chest. “I should have given you this a long time ago. I thought to wait until you were grown, and then once you were, I saw you happy and thriving and couldn’t bring myself to remind you of this buried sorrow of ours.” He pushed the chest toward me. “I’m sorry.”

Something in my belly twisted. “What’s in it?”

“The few things your mother left behind.”

Heart in my throat, hands trembling, I lifted the lid of the chest.