It would not be easy to get his mother to accept the truth of what he would say. She had dedicated herself to learning to be mistress of a large home and estate, and she had done superlatively well. Too well, actually. By the time he had arrived at Middlebury, one year after her, he had felt like a little boy returning from school to the care of his mama. And because it had soothed her to see herself in that role, and because his new home and his new life had bewildered him, even overwhelmed him, he had not made a strong enough effort from the start to assert himself as the man of the house.
He had been only twenty years old, after all.
He did consider going back to Cornwall for a while to stay with George Crabbe, Duke of Stanbrook, as he had done for a few weeks in March—and for a few years following his return home from the Peninsula after losing his sight in battle. George was his very dearest friend. But, though he did not doubt the duke would welcome him and allow him to stay as long as he wished, Vincent would not use him as an emotional crutch. Not any longer. Those days, and those needs, were long past.
His years of dependency were past. It was time to grow up and take charge. It was not going to be easy. But he had long ago realized that he must treat his blindness as a challenge rather than as a handicap if he wished to enjoy anything like a happy, fulfilled life.
Sooner or later, then, he must return to Middlebury Park and begin the life he intended to live. He did not feel quite ready yet, however. He had done much thinking in the Lake District, and he needed to do more so that he would not return and simply fall back into the old routine, from which he would never be able to extricate himself.
He was done with the Lake District, though. He was restless.
Where else would he go but home?
The answer came to him with surprising ease.
Of course. He would go … home.
For Middlebury Park was only where he had lived for the past three years, the stately home he had inherited with his title and not set foot inside until three years ago. It was very grand, and he liked it well enough. He was determined to settle there and make it his own. It was not yet really home, however. Home was Covington House, where he had grown up, an altogether more modest dwelling, not much larger than a cottage actually, on the edge of the village of Barton Coombs in Somerset.
He had not been there in almost six years. Not since he left for the Peninsula, in fact. Now he had a sudden hankering to go back again, even though he would not be able to see it. It had happy associations. His childhood and boyhood years had been good ones despite the near poverty in which they had lived even before the death of his father when he was fifteen.
“We are going home,” he announced to Martin one morning after breakfast. He could hear rain pelting against the windows of the small cottage on Windermere he had rented for a month. “Not to Middlebury, though. To Barton Coombs.”
“Mhmm,” Martin said noncommittally as he gathered up the dishes from the table.
“You will be glad?” Vincent asked.
Martin too was from Barton Coombs. His father was the village blacksmith there. The two boys had gone to the village school together, for there had been no money for private education for Vincent despite the fact that socially he was a gentleman. The blacksmith fancied having a son who could read and write. Vincent had learned his lessons, as had his sisters, from his own father, who had been the schoolmaster. Often he and Martin had played together. Most of the neighborhood children had, in fact, regardless of social rank or financial status or gender or age. It had all been rather idyllic.
Vincent’s well-to-do maternal uncle had returned from a long residence in the Far East when Vincent was seventeen and had purchased a commission for his nephew. Martin, upon hearing the news, had come to Covington House, hat clutched in hand, to ask if he could go too as Vincent’s batman. That position had not lasted long, as it turned out. Vincent had lost his sight during his very first battle. But Martin had remained with him as his valet, even during those early years when Vincent had not been able to pay him. He had stubbornly refused to be turned off.
“My mam will be glad to see me,” Martin said now. “So will my dad, though no doubt he will make the usual grumbling quips to his anvil about his one and only son choosing to be a gentleman’s valett.”
And so they went.
They traveled all through the last night of the journey, weary as they were, and arrived at Covington House at first light—or so Martin informed him. Vincent would have known it himself, though, as soon as the carriage stopped moving and the door was opened. He could hear a few birds singing with that almost echoing clarity that was peculiar to the predawn period. And the air had a freshening feel to it that suggested an end to night but not quite a start to day.
There was no real need for secrecy except that Vincent would rather no one know he was at Covington House, at least for a while. He did not want to be a curiosity to old friends and neighbors. He did not want them trekking to his door to pay their respects and to satisfy their curiosity about what a blind man looked like. And he did not want anyone writing to his mother and bringing her hurrying here to look after him. He probably would not stay long anyway. He just needed enough time to get his thoughts in order.
A house key had always been kept above the lintel on the inside of the potting shed behind the house. Vincent sent Handry to see if it was still there. If it was not, then Martin was going to have to climb through the window into the wine cellar. It was very doubtful anyone had thought of mending the catch on it in the last six years, since it had never been mended throughout Vincent’s boyhood. It had been a regular middle-of-the-night escape and reentry route, in fact.