So Harry wasn’t really sure why he kept cleaning up after his father, since he certainly could have left it to someone else. Maybe he didn’t want the servants to know how often it happened. Maybe he needed a visceral reminder of the perils of alcohol. He’d heard that his father’s father had been the same way. Did such things run in families?
He did not want to find out.
And then, quite suddenly, Grandmère died. Nothing so peaceful as in her sleep—Olga Petrova Obolenskiy Dell would never depart this earth with so little drama. She was sitting at the dining-room table, about to dip her spoon into her soup, when she clutched her chest, made several gasping noises, and collapsed. It was later remarked that she must have had some level of consciousness before she hit the table, because her face missed the soup entirely, and she somehow managed to hit the spoon, sending a dollop of the scalding liquid flying through the air toward Sir Lionel, whose reflexes were far too dulled to duck.
Harry did not witness this firsthand; at twelve, he was not permitted to dine with the adults. But Anne saw the whole thing, and recounted it breathlessly to Harry.
“And then he ripped off his cravat!”
“At the table?”
“At the table! And you could see the burn!” Anne held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger pinching out a distance of about an inch. “This big!”
“And Grandmère?”
Anne sobered a bit. But only a bit. “I think she’s dead.”
Harry swallowed and nodded. “She was very old.”
“At least ninety.”
“I don’t think she was ninety.”
“She looked ninety,” Anne muttered.
Harry said nothing. He wasn’t sure what a ninety-year-old woman looked like, but Grandmère certainly had more wrinkles than anyone else of his acquaintance.
“But I’ll tell you the strangest part,” Anne said. She leaned forward. “Mother.”
Harry blinked. “What did she do?”
“Nothing. Not a thing.”
“Was she seated near to Grandmère?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. She was across and diagonal—too far away to be helpful.”
“Then—”
“She just sat there,” Anne cut in. “She did not move. Did not even start to rise.”
Harry considered this. It was, sad to say, not surprising.
“Her face did not even move. She just sat there like this.” Anne’s face assumed a decidedly blank expression, and Harry had to admit, it was precisely like their mother.
“I shall tell you something,” Anne said. “If she were to collapse in her soup in front of me, I would at the very least look surprised.” She shook her head. “They are ridiculous, the both of them. Father does nothing but drink, and Mother does nothing at all. I tell you, I cannot wait until my birthday. I don’t care if we’re supposed to be in mourning. I’m marrying William Forbush, and there is nothing either one of them can do about it.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Harry said. Mother would likely possess no opinion on the matter, and Father would be too drunk to notice.
“Hmmph. You’re probably right.” Anne’s mouth pressed together into a rueful frown, and then, in an uncharacteristic show of sibling affection, she reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll be gone soon, too. Don’t worry.”
Harry nodded. He was due to leave for school in a few short weeks.
And while he felt a little guilty that he got to leave while Anne and Edward had to remain behind, this was more than drowned out by the overwhelming sense of relief that washed over him the first time he rode off to school.
It was good to be gone. With all due respect to Grandmère and her favorite monarchs, it might even have been great.
Harry’s life as a student proved just as rewarding as he’d hoped. He attended Hesslewhite, a reasonably rigorous academy for boys whose families lacked the clout （or, in Harry’s case, the interest） to send their sons to Eton or Harrow.
Harry loved school. Loved it. He loved his classes, he loved sport, and he loved that when he went to bed, he did not have to detour to every corner of the building, doing his late-evening check for his father, fingers crossed that he’d passed out before making a mess of himself. At school Harry took a straight journey from the common room to his dormitory, and he loved every uneventful step of the way.
But all good things must draw to a close, and at the age of nineteen, Harry was graduated with the rest of his class, including Sebastian Grey, his first cousin and closest friend. There was a ceremony, as most of the boys wished to celebrate the occasion, but Harry “forgot” to tell his family about it.
“Where is your mother?” his aunt Anna asked him. Like Harry’s mother, her voice betrayed no trace of an accent, despite the fact Olga had insisted upon speaking to them only in Russian when they were small. Anna had married better than Katarina, having wed the second son of an earl. This had not caused a rift between the sisters; after all, Sir Lionel was a baronet, which meant that Katarina was the one called “her ladyship.” But Anna had the connections and the money, and perhaps more important, she had—until his death two years prior—a husband who rarely indulged in more than one glass of wine at supper.
And so when Harry mumbled something about his mother being a bit overtired, Anna knew exactly what he meant—that if his mother came, his father would follow. And after Sir Lionel’s spectacular display of stumbling grandiosity at Hesslewhite’s convocation of 1807, Harry was loath to invite his father to another school function.
Sir Lionel tended to lose his s’s when he drank, and Harry was not certain he could survive another “Thplendid, thplendid thchool” speech, especially as it had been delivered whilst standing on a chair.
During a moment of silence.
Harry had tried to pull his father down, and he would have been successful had his mother, who was seated on Sir Lionel’s other side, aided in the endeavor. She, however, was staring straight ahead, as she always did at such times, pretending she heard nothing. Which meant that Harry had to give his father a lopsided yank, setting him rather off balance. Sir Lionel came down with a whoop and a crash, striking his cheek on the back of the chair in front of Harry.
This might have set another man into a temper, but not Sir Lionel. He gave a stupid smile, called Harry a “thplendid thon,” and then spit out a tooth.
Harry still had that tooth. And he never allowed his father to set foot on the school’s campus again. Even if it meant he was the only boy without a parent in attendance at the graduation ceremony.
His aunt insisted upon seeing him home, for which Harry was grateful. He did not like having guests, but Aunt Anna and Sebastian already knew all there was to know about his father—well, most of it. Harry hadn’t shared the bit about the 126 times he’d mopped up after him. Or the recent loss of Grandmère’s prized samovar, whose enamel cracked right off its silver core when Sir Lionel had tripped over a chair, done a curiously graceful leap through the air （presumably to catch his balance）， then landed on his belly atop the sideboard.
Three plates of eggs and a rasher of bacon had also been lost that morning.