Hope - Lesley Pearse [166]
William knew by Anne’s expression over breakfast that she thought he was going to excuse himself from dealing with Albert today as he’d promised.
She wasn’t entirely wrong about that; he had lain awake half the night thinking up excuses. But it struck him that his whole life had been a series of excuses. He’d made a good marriage but failed Anne because of his sexual deficiencies. He’d been born to a fortune and he’d gambled and frittered it away. He had only one thing he could be proud of and that was Rufus, for despite both his parents’ weaknesses he’d grown into a fine young man, intelligent, strong, loving and hardworking.
His grandfather had built Briargate intending it to be passed down to William and then to his grandson, but thanks to William’s stupidity it was now more of a liability than an asset. Yet he knew that Rufus would sooner inherit a worthless, crumbling estate surrounded by a wilderness, than have a father who was too cowardly to stand up to blackmail.
Fortunately Rufus’s security was not under threat, owing to the legacy from his maternal grandfather, but even if it had been, Rufus had the intelligence, enthusiasm and knowledge to change Briargate into a profitable farm. He’d often said he found it immoral to have so many decadent flowerbeds when that land could be turned over to chickens, pigs or vegetables.
So even though William was shaking in his shoes at the prospect of what might happen as a result of dismissing Albert, he knew he had to do the right thing, for Rufus.
‘Where are you going?’ Anne asked as he got up from the breakfast table. They had barely spoken as they ate. He had looked at his newspaper; she had been reading a letter from her sister. They were usually silent at breakfast, but it was a comfortable silence; today it had been tense with unsettled business.
‘To put on my garden shoes,’ he said. ‘You stay in here and watch in case I need you.’
‘You’re going to talk to Albert?’ she asked. She sounded very surprised.
‘I won’t be doing much talking,’ he said with a weak, boyish grin. ‘I shall be giving him his marching orders.’
‘Don’t you want me to come too?’
William had thought long and hard whether it would be better or worse with Anne beside him. But he’d come to the conclusion he must do it alone. He couldn’t subject Anne to Albert’s foul language; he was sure to fire a volley of his favourite expletives.
William let himself out through the back door by the boot room, pulling on his coat as he went. It was very cold, and as he looked down the garden to see where Albert was, he noticed there was fog in the valley down by the river.
The sound of the saw told him Albert was in the woodshed at the back of the stables. It was the one place he really didn’t want to be alone with the man. It was there that he had kissed Albert the first time and said that he loved him.
William couldn’t bear to think what a prize fool he’d been. He’d given the man his heart and his money, and risked everything for him. But his biggest mistake was to romanticize him.
William had thought of him as a beautiful, gentle and creative archangel in a working man’s smock, who out of gratitude transformed the garden into the kind of Eden he felt William deserved. He even believed that Albert was an innocent; that he succumbed to William because he was the only person who had ever shown him any affection, or valued him.
Much later, when William began to realize the giving was all one-sided, he made excuses for his lover: he’d had a vicious mother; he’d been influenced by brutish men from an early age. Yet William still believed that if he showed him enough love, understanding and kindness, Albert would reciprocate.
Now he was well aware that Albert had never had the capacity to feel love. He might have a heart pumping his blood round like anyone else, but whatever it was in most humans that gave them emotional feelings towards others, this was missing in Albert.
He could play-act emotions superbly; in the past he had shown such tenderness, adoration and sympathy that William had stopped