Work Text:
Dear Mother,
I hope this finds you in good health. I shall be visiting Oxfordshire this coming Wednesday. You shall be expecting me then.
Your obedient son,
Francis.
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The ink on the note had dried hours before I arrived, but the words still felt as cold and rigid as the stone walls of the manor.
We walked along the bank of the River Cherwell. The water was the color of a wet slate shingle, moving sluggishly against the reeds as it had done for four hundred years. I kept my pace exactly half a step behind Mother. She was incredibly frail now, her wool shawl pinned at her throat with a family crest that would soon legally belong to someone else.
Our father had passed away at sixty-four, his heart finally giving out under the crushing weight of an estate he had spent his entire life rigidly defending. Now, the main house was empty. The grand lineage was weeks away from dissolving, bound by primogeniture law to pass to our distant, insufferable cousin Bartholomew.
Mother stopped near the weeping willow, her breath catching slightly in the damp, heavy English air. She lifted her porcelain teacup, her thin fingers trembling against the saucer.
"Francis," she whispered, her eyes staring blankly across the river toward the southern boundary. "You must look after him. Promise me."
"The lawyers have already finalized the asset transfers to Bartholomew, Mother," I replied, my voice smooth and professional. "There is nothing left of the estate to secure."
"I am not speaking of the land, Francis," she said, her voice dropping into a low, fiercely protective murmur that I had never heard her use while Father was alive. "I am speaking of William. He left when he was nineteen, and he never looked back. But a mother doesn't forget. Promise me you will find him in the States. Ensure he is eating properly. You know how he forgets his meals when he is buried in his study."
I stared at the grey horizon, keeping my face entirely unreadable. I didn't have the heart to tell her that William had legally stripped himself of his Christian birth name years ago to escape the family's eyes. I didn't tell her that across the Atlantic, he answered only to the name Arthur.
"He gets drunk so easily when the weather turns cold, Francis," she continued, her eyes glistening with a sudden, sharp grief. "And he starts to weep. He always had that dreadful habit of always leaving his stationery elsewhere, and consuming his liquor or his medicines on an empty stomach. Make sure he doesn't, your brother. Make sure he eats."
"Yes, Mother," I murmured, reaching out to steady her frail arm as a cold wind swept across the grass hills. "I’ll make sure. You wouldn't have to worry about him."
I never told William about that promise. A few days after the wedding, she passed away quietly in her sleep, peacefully perhaps. Knowing that her firstborn had traded his earldom for a humble apartment, a 22-lookin' Chinese husband, and a box of cheap Target coupons. But the ledger of my devotion had been written on that riverbank.