“I am.”
“It doesn’t make any sense at all! If you knew I was coming for the letters, you could have removed them. Why wait for me in the dark, then let me take them away?”
“It must be my innate sense of chivalry, after all,” he said.
“Mr. Campbell, I shall never understand you. Yet I’m not a fool. You really didn’t know about the hiding place?”
“No, I didn’t. Admittedly, I spent some time at Deerfield as a child, but not all of it. I lived at Hawksley, not here, and I went away to school. Mr. Garth the carpenter must have done his work when I wasn’t present.”
She felt devastated. It had been too easy, hadn’t it? If Leander Campbell had her mother’s correspondence and was blackmailing her over it, it was far too great a coincidence for Frank Garth to have mentioned their hiding place. Life wasn’t really so neat. If he indeed had them, Mr. Campbell must have the letters hidden elsewhere. She had been an idiot to think he might keep them at Deerfield.
“Then these papers aren’t the letters,” she said.
“I have no idea,” he replied. “But we may assume they belong to the major and perhaps we should put them back.”
“And perhaps you are bluffing, sir,” she said. “After walking all this way in the dark, I think I must make certain, don’t you?”
Eleanor walked quickly to the table and spread out the papers. It was immediately apparent that they weren’t Lady Acton’s letters. The paper was older, for a start. There were several blank sheets and only a handful of documents. One was even in a foreign tongue of some kind. The crabbed writing varied, but it was that of the clerks of twenty-five years before, not the beautiful copperplate in which her mother took pride.
Nor was there any Acton crest in a red wax seal.
They were, after all, none of her business. She would have to put them back just as she had found them, with the blank paper wrapping the other sheets, and return the bundle to the cubbyhole.
She felt sick with disappointment. She began to fold up the papers when a name on the top sheet seemed to leap out to demand her attention.
Eleanor turned to face Mr. Campbell. He still stood calmly at the fireplace, watching her.
“These papers may belong to the major,” she said in a shaky voice, “but the content would seem to involve you.”
He didn’t move and his eyes did not leave her face. Holding the documents in her hand, she walked back to the sofa and sat down.
“Record of Birth,” she read aloud. “Born this twelfth day of February in the thirtieth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, and in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety, at Blairgour House, in the County of Argyle, Scotland, to Moira, only daughter of Ian Campbell of Blairgour, and the Honorable Gerald Arthur Richard Hart of Hawksley Park in the County of Norfolk, England: a boy, Leander Gerald Arthur Hart.”
She put the paper in her lap so that he shouldn’t see her hands tremble. “It’s witnessed by one Janet McEwen, midwife, and Fiona Mackay, maid, who has made her mark. It’s also signed by your mother, Moira Campbell—though she signs herself Moira Hart. It is you, isn’t it? It’s proof of your birth.”
“Which is touching, but not odd,” he said quietly. “I have seen it before. Major Crabtree brought it from Ireland. It was one of the ways that he was able to prove to Lady Augusta that I was her husband’s by-blow—apart from my troubling appearance, that is. Apparently my mother secreted it among my clothes when I was taken from her and sent to the convent. She must have cared a great deal about my father’s identity, yet the Irish nuns knew only Gaelic. It meant nothing to them.”
“Then neither did this,” Eleanor said, in a voice oddly choked with a rising panic, as she set aside the top sheet and looked at the second.
“Neither did what?” he asked calmly.
“This next paper.” Eleanor looked up at him, her heart hammering. “She must have hidden it there, too. It’s dated the third day of May, 1789, and signed by two witnesses. One of them is the same Fiona Mackay. The other is a Robbie Stewart, gamekeeper. Then there’s the signature of the rector of the kirk—that’s a church, isn’t it?—at a place called Strathbrae. Is that near Blairgour?”
“Not far, I believe. Why?”
“Because they were married there,” Eleanor said.
“My dear lady, I am completely in the dark. Who was married at Strathbrae?”
She didn’t understand her own emotions, but her eyes burned with tears.
“Your mother, Moira Campbell, and your father, of course, the future Earl of Hawksley. In the year before you were born they were married by declaration, Mr. Campbell—or should I say, my lord earl. Duly signed and witnessed by her maid, the gamekeeper, and a member of the clergy of the Church of Scotland, this would seem to be a legal copy of their marriage lines.”
Chapter 8
A deathly silence settled over the room.
“May I see now?” he asked.
Eleanor handed him the papers. The third one was unintelligible, since it was not written in English. She felt painfully embarrassed to have stumbled upon something so intensely personal and of such moment.
“You didn’t know that, did you?” she asked.
He studied the papers, then laid them on the mantel. “That they had married? No, I didn’t.”
“It changes everything for you, doesn’t it?”
Without replying, he spun away, strode across the room, and gazed out into the dark garden.
Through a haze of tears, Eleanor stared blindly at the ranks of books, the flickering candles, the luxurious comfort and security of the major’s home: something Leander Campbell could never have expected for himself—until now.
“No, I don’t think that it does,” he said at last.
She dashed one hand across her eyes. “What do you mean? Are you afraid to claim your inheritance? After so many years of being able to follow your fancy, I can imagine it’d be a burden to have to take up the duties of the earldom of Hawksley. For this does make you earl, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” he said quietly. He turned to face her and the old humor was back for a moment. “So I am legitimate! How very awkward for the House of Lords for such a scandalous rogue to grace those hallowed chambers. Don’t you think I should refrain from so embarrassing that august assembly?”
“My brother says they’re all rogues,” Eleanor said without thinking. “But you’re still the heir.”
His smile held nothing but irony. “Ay, there’s the rub: to my father’s entire estate and inheritance. All of his titles, his lands, everything at Hawksley Park—”
“Which you’ve always wanted. And now that it’s within your grasp, you don’t have the courage!”
She knew she was talking wildly, but she didn’t care. This whole encounter had been too strange and his presence disturbed her too much.
“Perhaps I don’t,” he said.
“But even if you don’t want to be earl, think of the money. You’d have enough to waste as you choose.”
And you wouldn’t need to blackmail my mother!
He came back to her, and to her surprise dropped to the couch beside her.
“Lady Eleanor,” he said gently. “Hush! There is more to this than you know.”
“What else can there be?” She forced sarcasm into her voice. “You’re legitimate and a peer of the realm. It’s like a fairy tale come true.”
He took her hand and turned her fingers over in his.
“Life isn’t anything like a fairy tale, my dear,” he said. “Now listen. I didn’t know about the marriage lines, but I did know about the other two papers. Major Crabtree showed me that third paper, which you could not read, many years ago. It’s in Gaelic, but there’s an English translation on the back. Had you turned it over, you would have seen it. It is a record of my mother’s death. She died in the Highlands, in a township n
ear Loch Linnhe.”
“Does that make any difference?” Eleanor asked.
“It makes a great deal of difference,” he said with a wry smile. “You have just discovered that my father secretly married Moira Campbell on May the third, 1789. He married Lady Augusta on October the fifth, 1793, four and a half years later.”
“Anyone can marry twice,” Eleanor said.
“Yes, but my mother didn’t die until November, 1793, a month after the second wedding. So what we have proved now is that when my father married Lady Augusta, his first wife was still alive.”
“Which means . . . Oh, I see!”
“Which means that Lord Hawksley was a bigamist and his marriage to Lady Augusta was not valid. So Lady Diana Hart of Hawksley isn’t a Lady and doesn’t belong to Hawksley at all.”
A lump blocked her throat. “Your mother’s marriage makes Diana illegitimate?”
His eyes were very dark. “Yes.”
“But why did they marry secretly? And if they were legally married, what made her give you away?”
“When her father discovered that she’d fallen in love with a hated Sassenach, he went a little insane, I think. Ian Campbell had been a young child during the Forty-five. After Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated at Culloden, the reprisals against the Highlanders were terrible. Ian would never forgive his daughter her love for an Englishman. He forbade them to see each other.”
“But they married anyway?”
“Obviously.”
“It can’t have been a very long courtship.”
He ran one hand through his hair. “It wasn’t exactly a long honeymoon. ‘Nor am I loath, though pleased at heart, / Sweet Highland Girl! from thee to part.’ My father came right back to England. Perhaps he was going to send for her.”
“But he never did?”
“Ian Campbell wrote to him and told him that Moira had died. My father didn’t question the news. Probably as soon as he came home, he regretted the marriage. When his brother was killed and he became earl, I’m sure he began to look about with some relief for a more suitable wife. He certainly believed Moira dead when he eventually married Lady Augusta. Meanwhile Ian kept Moira at Blairgour House until I was born. While she was still lying in, he sent me to Ireland, then he turned her from the house. I think he wanted me to disappear from the face of the earth, but even my dour grandfather hadn’t the heart to murder an infant.” He gave a wry smile. “I suppose I should be grateful.”
“So you were taken to the convent? Did your mother know where you were?”
“She spent the rest of her days searching for me in the Highlands. She never tried to contact Lord Hawksley. Perhaps she hated him for abandoning her. Perhaps she was too proud. Eventually she was taken in by the local people in a township near Loch Linnhe and died there. The inhabitants speak only Gaelic, but they recorded her death and that third paper is a copy.”
“Her own father stole her baby from her? I don’t know if I ever heard anything so cruel.”
Eleanor felt devastated. Poor Moira Campbell, whose only sin was to love the wrong man! A man whose son looked just like him.
“It’s a long time ago,” he said. “Though it’s small comfort, isn’t it?”
“How could your father not go to Blairgour to find out for himself what became of his first wife?”
The muscles of his face tightened imperceptibly. “There is nothing that can excuse my father.”
Eleanor looked down. It still seemed almost too incredible to believe. Lord Hawksley had been a bigamist and the Scots death certificate from Loch Linnhe proved it.
“You speak Gaelic?”
He smiled. “Not a word, though it was my first language as an infant. Anyway, Irish and Scots Gaelic are quite different. Sir Robert obtained the English translation. When he found me he was interested to discover what had happened to my mother and so he secured the record of her death. There is no question as to its authenticity.”
It didn’t occur to Eleanor to ask herself why she cared so very desperately about his birth, nor why she thought she had the right to question him. Since he seemed prepared to tell her the story so openly, she plunged on.
“How did you learn all these details?”
“I may be a reprobate, Lady Eleanor, but allow me some natural curiosity about my mother. I would have gone to Blairgour myself, but Ian Campbell died when I was still a small child. The local people who knew my mother hated Lord Hawksley—a foreigner who had seduced and abandoned one of their own. And I look just like my father, remember? It would hardly have been politic to turn up in person and stir up painful memories. I hired a man in Edinburgh to go discreetly to Argyle. Everything I’ve told you is what he discovered.”
“Though he never found out about the wedding in Strathbrae?”
“He did not.”
“But Major Crabtree knew—he had these papers here all along.”
“And must have realized what they would mean to Lady Augusta and Diana. When the major turned up here with me, Lady Augusta was a widow, seven months with child. This news would have crushed her. I never thought Sir Robert so noble, but life is full of surprises.”
Eleanor felt overwhelmed. As she thought of Moira Campbell, vainly searching for her baby and then dying alone among strangers, tears burned fiercely in her eyes.
“You come from a ruthless line on both sides, don’t you?” she said. “Who among them all cared about your poor mother?”
Lee reached up to brush the moisture tenderly from her cheek. “Eleanor, sweet girl, don’t cry!”
“I am not crying!”
She turned her head to hide the tears and raised both hands to brush them away.
Was it only natural that Leander Campbell should take her by the shoulders and pull her gently into his arms? As she struggled not to break down, he held her against his lithe strength, while his long fingers moved over her hair, smoothing it.
The edge of his jacket lay beneath her cheek. The clean scent of his shirt filled her nostrils. His heart beat a steady rhythm. His fingers on her hair felt wonderful. She relaxed against him. He took her hands one at a time and gently moved them into her lap, then he tipped her face up to his. Eleanor couldn’t understand the expression that darkened his eyes, but it seemed filled with pain and longing.
“I care, brown hen,” he said gently.
His voice was stripped of all sarcasm. It was a tone she had never heard him use before.
Light kisses moved across her cheeks and eyelids, smoothing away the tears and beguiling her into closing her eyes. He brushed a loose wisp of hair from her cheek and nibbled gently at her ear. The sensation was exquisite.
At last his lips moved down to hers and he took possession of her mouth. In the next moment she forgot everything but the passion that seared between them. He kissed her until her mouth felt swollen and hot. Delight burned through her veins like a fever. Her arms moved unwittingly around his neck. The softness of his dark hair and the strength of his body beckoned with a strange, enticing delectation.
She slid one hand beneath his jacket. His muscles flexed hard beneath her palm as she caressed him, finding the strong indent of his spine, the heat of his skin beneath his shirt. She knew with a burning shame that her surrender to him was absolute and that she didn’t care. She didn’t want any of this to stop.
Firm hands grasped hers and pulled them down. He released her mouth, leaped up, and strode away to the fireplace.
He leaned against the mantel and grasped his head in both hands, as if he were facing some great struggle and was drawing together all of his resources.
“Damn it all!” he said.
Then he turned to her and laughed.
“That’s how it’s done,” he said ruthlessly. “No doubt it’s how my father did it. But Moira Campbell wasn’t an earl’s daughter, so he faced no reprisals for his seduction. You had better be more careful in future, Lady Eleanor Acton. Rakes have few scruples.”
Her heart simply snapped
, like a bone caught in a mantrap. The pain of it blinded her for a moment, leaving her nothing to call on except pride. She straightened her spine as if she buckled on armor—too late, too late!
“And you have none,” she said.
His face was a mask. “That’s right. Nor do I want to be earl. The gutter suits me far better.”
“Then return there.”
The candlelight threw deep shadows under his strong jaw and chin.
“I shall, with pleasure,” he said calmly.
He took the papers from the mantelpiece and looked at them one last time. The birth and death certificates he slipped into his pocket, but he very deliberately held the other page to the candle. The marriage papers blackened and curled, then burst into flames. He held them by one corner for a moment as they flared up, then he dropped the remains into the fireplace where the ashes disintegrated into soot.
“And so ends our little melodrama,” he said. “You will tell no one what you learned here tonight, of course.”
“What do you take me for?” Eleanor said. “I hope I have sufficient honor to hold my tongue. You may have my word on it. I understand your motives very well, but I haven’t forgotten what it would mean for Diana to be disinherited and disgraced. Or even Lady Augusta! Though I’m sure you don’t care about her. I’m only surprised that you didn’t keep the papers to hold over her head.”
“And blackmail her, too? Perhaps I’m not as thorough as you think me, Lady Eleanor. It may surprise you to learn that the events of this evening have slightly disturbed my equilibrium, and so I have lost a golden opportunity. Strangely, I regret nothing.”
“Well, I do!” Eleanor said with passion. “I regret that I ever met you.”
“And I you,” he said without mercy. “I prefer my ladies with a little more polish and a lot more experience. Now, for God’s sake, will you let me take you home?”
“I should rather die.”
He raised a brow. It was the most insulting gesture Eleanor could imagine.
“Dear child,” he said. “We are civilized human beings in the staid and ordinary county of Norfolk. Heroines in romances would rather die. Ladies in the nineteenth century recognize that it is perfectly unexceptionable to allow a gentleman to escort them home.”
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