Intolerable Civility

Chapter Twelve: Ulterior Motive

"Why don't you write her a letter," David said, "and I'll give it to her. Your father will never know."

Relief broke over Luke's face. "You'll do that for me?"

"Of course."

"I'll write it immediately," Luke said. "Will you be home this afternoon?"

"I can be. I am staying with my cousin in Finsbury. Do you have a pencil? I will write the address."

Luke found a grubby pencil and a scrap of paper in his pockets and David wrote the address down for him.

"You may rest assured that any letters that Catherine receives from you through my hand will be in absolute confidence. I will make sure neither Miss Skinner nor your father ever find out."

"Thank you. You're a real swell."

It was not a word anybody had ever used to refer to David before, but he found he rather liked it.

Luke came by early that afternoon as Sarah was trying to persuade David to allow her to make him his fifth cup of tea for the day. When she learned that Luke was Catherine's brother, she gave him a very curious once over.

"I never met your sister," she said, "so I am looking at you to imagine her countenance. Are you alike?"

"As siblings usually are, I suppose," Luke said. "Well, my colouring is a little darker than hers. She is very fair."

"Oh. You did not tell me that." Sarah looked at David.

"I was not aware it would interest you," David said.

Sarah took the rebuff with a smile, but perhaps it motivated her to say, "I suppose you men will want to talk; please make use of my study," and go away up the stairs.

David took Luke into the study and shut the door.

"I've got the letter," Luke said, taking a thick, folded sheaf from his pocket. "It was hard to write it. For the past year and a half, I've been missing her so much that I didn't realise how angry I was. It's the first secret she's ever kept from me, being seduced."

The angry sheen in Luke's eyes made it seem like a confession. David thought he understood; it seemed that there was no one he could talk to in his family about this. All the same, it made him uncomfortable. His own feelings about Catherine were far from sympathetic. He did not want to be put in the position of having to defend her, yet he thought that was what Luke was asking for.

"I'll give it to her as soon as I get home." He took the letter and slipped it into his own pocket. "And whatever she writes in return, I'll make sure it gets to you safely."

Luke was not as easily put off as Sarah; he sighed and flung himself down into an armchair. "I would have helped her. I would have dragged Redwood to the altar and made him marry her. Why didn't she trust me?"

David was beginning to regret his impulse to help Luke. Why had he not remembered now that the boy — Luke was twenty-five and did not often behave it — was a self-centred nuisance? To be sure, it was cruel for their father to refuse the two all contact, but to offer to do them a small favour did not mean he wished to make himself a confidant.

"I do not know," he said politely, refusing to sit down himself in case it encouraged Luke to stay longer. "Though you do Redwood wrong, Mr Balley. He is not the baby's father."

"That's what he says, of course, but Cate named him. She would not lie."

"I am afraid she did. She told me as much."