The Mercy of Men

1879

Scotland was nothing like Italy, and more so, Inverness was nothing like Rome. There were many times when Katherine resented the fact, missing the world she’d known in her early years of childhood, but she had grown to love her new home. In the years since the move, she had learned that it wasn’t where she was that mattered. It was who she was there with. And anywhere she could be with her father was home.

“Have you got it?” Benedict was seated atop his deep brown horse, watching his daughter with a measured gaze. His eyes, a deep shade of blue, sparkled in the light of the morning.

“You know I do,” she said, swinging herself up onto the back of her own horse. “It’s far more difficult to do this in a dress.”

“I told you you didn’t have to wear one.”

“And I told you that was a hideous idea.” Bridget had emerged from the manor house and was descending the steps toward them, a lump of fabric in hand. “She’s a lady, Master Lockhart. Treat her like one. The poor girl’s never going to find a husband with the ideas you put in her head.”

“And before you tell me that doesn’t matter,” she said, “it does. This world belongs to men, something you would not understand, being one yourself. Without a man, a woman has nothing. It’s best not to be naive about it.”

Benedict shook his head. “I do know that. The world isn’t ready to be the best version of itself yet. But can I not at least pretend it is?”

Katherine shook her head. Her cat, Bella, had jumped into her lap from the top of a nearby stone fence, and she was scratching her behind her torn ginger ear. Her horse scuffed the dirt with her shoe, agitated by Bella’s soft purrs and the flicks of her tail. She didn’t mind the animals’ annoyance at each other. It was better than the constant bickering she endured from her father and Bridget.

For as long as she could remember, Bridget had been her nursemaid and governess. Like every other member of Lockhart Manor’s staff back in Rome, she had been given the option to come with the family to Scotland, where Benedict would ensure they were set up comfortably, and she was among those who had accepted the offer.

Katherine knew her father was grateful for it, but she also knew he didn’t like to face the realities Bridget often reminded him of. An academic and well-established gentleman, Benedict Lockhart’s reputation was impeccable, but he was not known for his love of tradition. The same adventurous spirit that had brought him from England to Italy, where he’d met his late wife, still ran rampant deep down. It was the untamed tempest characteristic of a young boy with the privilege of having the world in his pocket, but even as he aged and became less engaged in the wild matters of his younger days, that part of his spirit had never dampened.

Katherine knew the sense of freedom he had always known and loved was all he wanted for her. He didn’t care if or who she married or how proper of a lady she grew up to be. But Bridget was right. They did not live in a world where the rights of sons were the same as the rights of daughters. Benedict could not continue to feed the fire he had taken so much care to start in his daughter. He needed to tame it. 

But he knew better than even Katherine herself that it was far too late for that.

“Papa.” Katherine was sick of being talked about like she wasn’t there. Her father had promised her a ride to the Moray Firth. That was what they needed to focus on now.

“I know, darling.” Benedict regarded Bridget with a nod. “My daughter and I have an engagement for the day. We will return before dinner.”

Bridget shook her head. “Is this even safe?”

“When have I ever taken her to do anything I didn’t think was safe?”

“What you see as safe and what I see as safe are two very different things. This is why you need a lady of the house. It’s far past time.”

Bridget was staring at Benedict with focused eyes, a breeze tousling the red strands of her hair. She knew saying such a thing would upset him, it always did, but she wanted the idea to stay clear in his head. As far as she was concerned, the longer Benedict went without remarrying, the more harm was done to Katherine, a young woman with the ambition of a man. 

“You only get true love once, Bridget. Maria was mine,” Benedict said. He settled his gaze on Katherine. “You do not settle for something just because you’re supposed to.”

Bridget opened her mouth but Benedict was already whipping his horse around.

“Now,” he said, reaching over to shoo Bella off of Katherine’s lap, “I’ll race you.”

He took off, and Katherine scrambled to catch up.

They flew through the endless grass that comprised their land and erupted into the streets of Inverness. They wove around shouting coachmen and bewildered children. Until they reached the trees at the edge of the water, there was nothing in the world but the wind in their hair. 

They tied the horses to one of the trees and wandered down through the grass. It was a cloudy day, and the air smelled as much of rain as it did of the inlet’s sweet water. Katherine was close enough to it that she could easily have stepped off the rocks and dampened her boots in it, but she could see in her father’s eyes as they began to walk that this was not a play-in-the-water type of day. 

His eyes were dark and serious, his hands were stuffed in the pockets of his coat, and his brow was furrowed, deepening the lines that the years had creased in his forehead. There was gray in the hair at his temples. She had never noticed it before.

She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak. It was as if a heavy sheet had fallen over them, snuffing out the wild joy of their ride down from Lockhart Manor. 

Benedict cleared his throat, regarding his daughter with a look that suggested curiosity. “There are some things we should talk about.”

Her stomach flipped. “Like what?”

Benedict smiled but there was no mirth in the expression. “Bridget’s persistence on the subject is making me crazy, but she’s right. The fact is that you’re old enough to marry. You’re a young lady of noble birth, and maybe I have failed in raising you to be befitting of that station. I suppose I just never wanted you to feel pinned down as I did, and I didn’t have the added misfortune of being a woman, which, don’t misunderstand me, is not a bad thing. It just limits you in ways I simply cannot fathom, and it’s that Bridget is also right about. I could never understand what it means to be a woman because I am not one myself. I do not have to depend on another to survive, but the truth is that you do. You are at the mercy of men. And I won’t always be here to protect you.”

Katherine’s heart had stopped. “Papa—”

“It’s the truth, sweetheart,” he said. “You will marry—soon, I suspect—but when you do, promise me it will be for love and nothing else. Do not marry for money or station or obligation. Marry a man who you can love and find happiness with for the rest of your life. Marry a man who will love you for who you are and will not stand in the way of what you are capable of becoming.”

Katherine stared at him and swallowed past the knot in her throat. Her legs felt like lead, as she forced herself to continue moving forward. “Love like that is for stories,” she murmured. “It’s not real.”

“But it is. I loved your mother more than anything in this world, and losing her was like losing a part of myself.” They stopped walking, and he took her face in his hands. He was no longer speaking English but Italian, the language he had learned for his wife. “But I didn’t lose my world because I still had you. You are our daughter. You are the light of my life, my diamond, and there is nothing I want more for you than to know love like I did.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then you will find a way to defy the odds. You are not a gentle rain shower, Katherine. You are a thunderstorm. As I am too.” Benedict smiled again, and this time, there was a sense of elation in it. “You may be a girl, but I have raised you to be a man. I have known since you were young that it was what you needed. Anything my son could do, my daughter can do too. Perhaps she can even do it better.”

He often spoke to her this way—though never with the directness or intensity that he did now—and there were times when she wondered if he was compensating for something. She found it likely that he was directing onto her the perception of the world he would have bestowed on her brother. It was doubtful he never thought of him, of what he could have been, when he said these things. The child who had, along with his mother, not survived his birth. 

That day was not one that was solidified in Katherine’s memory—she had been far too young—but she did remember pieces of it. Most of all, she remembered the look on her father’s face when, ashen and afraid, he had finally come to explain the tragedy to her. She hated to think of him that way.

“You speak like you’re losing time to say these things,” she said. It felt like he was leaving her, saying his final goodbye before he departed on a voyage from which he knew he would not return. It felt like she was losing him. “We don’t need to worry about this now. I have you, and you have me. Just like always.”

Benedict chuckled and planted a kiss on her forehead. His lips were dry and cracked, but his touch remained gentle and smooth. “I didn’t mean for this to be our topic of conversation today,” he said. “It was odd. Something came over me, and I had to say it. I needed you to hear it.”

“I heard you, Papa.” Tears had welled up in Katherine’s eyes, and she held a hand to her cheek as they began to spill. “I hear you, and I love you, and I don’t want to think about a time that you’re not in.”

A soft smile on his face, Benedict wiped away her tears with a gloved hand. “We have all the time in the world, Katherine,” he promised. 

Two months later, he was gone.