‘He encouraged her to try and forge a good relationship with the staff on the estate and get to know them a little. To sum it up, my father believed that she needed a purpose...at least until children came along. She’d been flitting in and out of PR work when they’d first met, but her heart wasn’t really in it. Turned out that she had her own ideas about what the “lady of the house” should do, and when she moved onto the estate with my dad it became clear that it wasn’t very much.
‘She couldn’t hack the isolation of the countryside. She was a city girl through and through and she hated being alone when my dad was taking care of his business on the estate—especially as she craved attention round the clock. In a very rare and honest moment my father once told me that he’d hoped when she had me and Sam she would settle down a bit, be more content with her lot. But instead of becoming devoted to her family she grew more and more restless and started to have affairs.’
Grimacing, Hal shook his head.
‘At first my father turned a blind eye, hoping she would grow tired of her soulless behaviour and realise what she had at home...two children who adored her, and a husband who loved her enough to forgive her destructive behaviour and also hoped that given time she would change for the better.’
Clearing his throat, Hal picked up his mug of coffee and took a swig. At the same time he found himself examining Kit’s pensive expression to try and gauge what she must be thinking about his faithless mother and his perhaps too patient, some might say foolishly deluded father. Henry Treverne Senior was a man who had never given up hope that his wife would come to see the error of her ways and be content just to be his partner and mother to their children.
‘Unfortunately she never did...change for the better, I mean.’ He shrugged. ‘When Sam and I were nine and seven respectively she ran off with an Italian count and relocated to Venice. She never kept in touch, even though my father regularly wrote to her and told her how much Sam and I were missing her.’ Hal bit down on his lip as a familiar scissor of pain jack-knifed through his heart at the memory.
Again he cleared his throat and took another swig of coffee. ‘About six years ago—just about the time I started to make a name for myself in the music industry—my father was notified by the Italian authorities that she’d been killed in a car accident. Apparently the Count’s twenty-one-year-old son from a previous marriage had been driving the car at the time and also lost his life. It was common knowledge in Venice that he and my mother had been having an affair. Doesn’t make for a very pretty story, does it?’
‘That’s so sad. For all of you.’ Her face paling a little, Kit breathed out a soft, heartfelt sigh. ‘Do you mind if I ask who looked after you and your sister when she left?’
Hal grimaced. ‘A series of not very reliable nannies, I’m afraid. One or two of them might have stayed, given the chance, but my father didn’t think any of them were good enough to mind his children. He was always finding fault with them for some reason or other. The truth is—courtesy of my beautiful, faithless mother, I think—he started to believe that women on the whole were fickle and not to be depended on. As soon as Sam and myself were old enough, he packed us off to boarding school.’
Taking another sip of coffee, he realised it was now practically cold. ‘Ugh.’ Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he returned the mug to the table, his avid gaze alighting on Kit. ‘We could be close...me and my father, I mean. But he couldn’t see why I wanted to leave and branch out on my own in a career when I was going to one day inherit the estate and title from him. He still doesn’t understand my reasons for wanting to be completely independent and neither does he see—in his words—why I “recklessly” risk my life in pursuing extreme sports.’
Kit’s smooth brow puckered in a frown. ‘Is that why he didn’t come and visit you in the hospital after your accident? You said that he’d e-mailed you saying “pride comes before a fall”.’
With any other woman he would have been surprised she should remember such a detail, but not with Kit. Hal heaved a sigh. To be honest, he wanted to shake off that painful illustration of the chasm that had grown between him and his father but he just couldn’t.
‘Trouble is he was right, you know? The only reason I agreed to that stupid bet with Rigden was because I had to prove I was better than him. Sometimes I am proud...too proud to see reason and let common sense rule.’