Page 28 of Lady Petra and the Wolf

Instead of the harsh words he expected, he found his Aunt Diana’s arms wrapped tightly around his middle as she rushed to embrace him. Over her head, Wolf’s uncle slowly rose. From the kind expression on the man’s lined face, Wolf recognized the slow pace was likely from the rheumatism they had written of and not any wariness.

“I didn’t know if we would ever see you again,” his aunt murmured.

Wolf stood in his aunt’s arms as his uncle clapped him on the back unsure of what to say. As with Petra, “I’m sorry” felt far too meager. Eventually, his arms moved of their own volition and he found himself returning his aunt’s embrace for the first time in well over a decade. He swallowed hard against the sudden, aching tightness in his throat as a stinging dampness threatened to cloud his vision.

“I knew he would come eventually. I knew we would see him.” Uncle Elliot grasped Wolf’s hand within his own, shaking hands with him in the American style once Diana had lessened her vise grip. “Brandy?”

Wolf finally spoke, “No thank you…Uncle.”

Elliot’s mouth ticked up at that and he began to move slowly to sit down while Diana stayed before him.

“Just look at you, how tall and handsome you are,” she noted as she turned his head this way and that. “Where is it you are staying? You should stay with us.” Wolf held himself still under her perusal, willing back that moisture in his eyes.

I was not sure I would be welcome. “I am staying at the Ostrich.”

“You will stay with us. We’ll have your valet move your things by evening.”

Giving him a look that would brook no argument, Diana turned and pulled the bell pull.

“You must stay for tea, of course. Sit, sit.” Gesturing with her hands, Diana became a flurry of activity as her husband watched on with fond amusement from his armchair.

Before the discomfort of the situation fully sank in, Wolf found himself sitting to tea with his estranged aunt and uncle. Without even asking, his aunt poured for him in exactly the same way he had always taken his tea. Of course, she had not forgotten, as warmth and guilt once again twisted through Wolf’s insides. Finally, he arrived at the purpose of his visit.

“How do you fare, Uncle?”

Uncle Elliot paused, set down his tea with a shaking hand, then glanced at his wife. “I am slow, much slower than I ever thought I could be. I will likely never recover.”

Wolf looked between them. “Is it…” He could not bear to finish his question if this malady was fatal as fear that he had wasted all these years away from his uncle rained fresh upon his psyche.

Diana spoke next as she brought her husband tea. “We do not know. He could have many more years. Or not. The doctor was not certain.” It was the first time her voice wobbled all afternoon and Wolf longed to reach out and comfort her. Elliot beat him to it and wrapped her small hand in his large one. As her voice trailed off, his uncle’s grew in strength.

“It matters not, for I aim to live every day as if it were my last. All I need is my lovely wife…and the occasional spot of brandy, I suppose.”

Wolf stared at the tea in his hand. “I’m sorry I did not come sooner.”

His uncle batted his hand as if to brush the words away. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

Setting his tea down, Wolf rose to gaze out the window, viewing the bustling street below. “You are too forgiving. I left you, both of you, and never came back.”

“Julian,” his aunt’s voice was very small behind him, but closer. Only when he looked up again did he realize she was standing beside him.

“You were a boy. When your father sent for you, you were just a boy.”

Her small fingers wrapped around his forearm in a comforting grip but he did not turn. He would not let them absolve him so easily.

“Would we have liked to see you more after you left? Yes, of course. You were the son we never had.” His aunt’s words drove in the dagger of guilt he knew he deserved, and she went on. “But we also knew you had responsibilities as a viscount. We would never have dreamed of stopping you.”

At that, Wolf turned. “Who my father taught me to be…was so at odds with everything I learned from you. Hard work. Kindness. I fear I’ve…become him somehow.”

“Oh, Jules,” his aunt whispered, and the name carried him to another petite woman he had wronged just as deeply. She squeezed his arm and placed his hand softly into her own.

“Your father was not a good man,” his uncle said with a grimace that pulled on the lines of his face. “But he was a persuasive man. My sister, your mother, initially did not wish to marry him. Yet somehow, he found her alone in the garden at a ball and used that opportunity to secure her hand. My objections fell on deaf ears, as her mother supported the match.”

Elliot had been the son born on the wrong side of the blanket and raised in his father’s household. From everything he knew, his uncle loved Wolf’s mother dearly as a sister, but Wolf’s grandmother had hated Elliot and he had little power in the family, especially once he married someone in trade.

Elliot’s story confirmed the lingering threats that Kemberley hinted at: his father had trapped his mother. And Wolf had done the exact same damn thing.

“I took the wrong lessons away.” Shame flowed within him, stiffening his joints. His head suddenly felt monstrously heavy, and he let the weight guide his gaze to the Turkish carpet below him. “I did not come to see you, I trapped someone very…dear to me. Just as my father would have done. How does that make me different from him?”