A faint smile touched her lips. “You did think of me, then?”
“In the beginning, I did nothing but think of you. It was years before I was able to put my dreaming behind me.” He’d been older. Wiser. More capable of self-discipline. “Even then…”
“What?” she asked.
He was silent for a long moment, his fingers stroking the curve of her cheek. When next he spoke, his voice was husky with memory. “Sometimes, when I was standing on the deck of a ship at midnight or driving alone along some deserted moonlit road, I’d feel the oddest sensation. A sharp tug pulling at my heart. As if a thread was anchored there, linking me to some other person, somewhere out there in the wide world. I always imagined it was you. Imagined it, and wondered if you felt it, too.”
A rogue tear slipped down Maggie’s cheek. “I did feel it. I still do.”
He brushed the tear away, cursing himself for provoking it. “I’m sorry, Maggie. So sorry that I’ve hurt you. That I didn’t keep my promise.”
“I waited for you. For so long.”
A burning prickle stung at the back of his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wanted to come home, but…there was no way back to you. Not as the boy I was. Not as Nicholas Seaton.”
“You make him sound like he was quite another person.”
“I’ve come to think of him as such. A young, unfortunate fellow who I laid to rest somewhere in Italy.”
Fresh tears threatened. “And Lord St. Clare?”
“Born in the same place. From Seaton’s ashes, you might say. The man I was meant to be. Who I would have been, had things been different.” He realized how nonsensical he must sound. “It’s all become so bloody complicated.”
“It has, rather.” She set a slim hand on his bare chest, her palm sliding upward, brushing over the decade-old scar from Fred’s whip. Her fingers curled around his neck. “But you’re here now. That’s all that matters to me at the moment.”
He bent his head and kissed her very softly on the mouth. Their breath mingled, their lips parting and clinging. His pulse throbbed. It took all of his strength of will to draw back from her. “Can you ever forgive me? I know I don’t deserve it—”
“Of course, I forgive you. I only wish you’d had the good sense to confide in me earlier. To trust me enough to explain who you really are.”
“Who I really am,” he repeated with a wry huff. “It’s more complicated than you might think.”
“I’m beginning to see that.” She frowned. “Lord Allendale’s son, James Beresford—the man you claim is your father… He truly was your father, wasn’t he? He was Gentleman Jim.”
St. Clare’s fingers stilled on the curve of her cheek. He felt a disconcerting mixture of relief and alarm. “How did you know?”
“Something Jane’s aunt said. She’s forever mistaking people for their forebears. She caught a glimpse of you tonight through the carriage window and thought you were your father—Jim, she called him.” Maggie searched his face. “It is true, isn’t it?”
“It’s true,” he admitted. “James Beresford was Gentleman Jim.”
He hadn’t realized how much of a burden the truth was until he confessed it to her. No one else knew of it, save his grandfather. And the Earl of Allendale wasn’t much for talking about the past. Not St. Clare’s past, anyway. His boyhood in Somerset was a subject the earl had discouraged almost from the first moment they’d met.
“How ever did you find out?” Maggie asked. “The night you left Beasley Park, all you had was the merest suspicion. And that was only that a highwayman was your father, not a nobleman.” Her eyes widened on a sudden thought. “Did you ask after him at the hedge tavern in Market Barrow? The one where Jenny used to work?”
St. Clare’s thumb moved over her jaw in a slow caress. And then he dropped his hand. He exhaled heavily. “I didn’t go to Market Barrow. I couldn’t risk it. It would have meant riding inland, instead of to the coast.”
“But how—”
“I went to Bristol, just as I’d planned. I asked after Gentleman Jim at every tavern I passed. All the while, I was dreading the moment the authorities would catch up with me and haul me back to Somerset to face the noose. And it wasn’t only them I feared. On one occasion, two sailors from His Majesty’s Royal Navy nearly impressed me into service. I managed to get away from them, but it was a very near thing.”
“I thought you must have joined up. I thought you’d become a soldier or a sailor and gone away to fight Napoleon.”
“Nothing so noble as that. I carried on with my search for Gentleman Jim. Kept looking—kept asking. Nearly got myself killed once or twice venturing into the wrong places.” He still had the scars to prove it. Grim mementos of his early days searching for his father. “He wasn’t as romantic a figure as you and I made him out to be, Maggie. He was an out-and-out rogue who kept dangerous company. Rumor was he’d escaped to the continent. To Italy some people said, by way of Geneva.”
“So you traveled there yourself?”
He nodded. “I bought passage on a merchant vessel bound for Amsterdam.” He could still recall, with gut-clenching clarity, how sick he’d become on the voyage. And then, that first taste of rye bread and herring when the ship had finally docked. The flavors so different from anything he’d ever eaten in England. “Thank God for that money you gave me. It saved my life more times than I can count. Kept a roof over my head and food in my belly while I trekked across the Alps to Milan.”
“Such a long way,” she said. “Were you ever afraid?”
“Frequently. It was a perilous journey, and for the better part of it, I was reliant on guides and the traveling companions I met along the way. I was in constant fear that one of them might slit my throat as I slept. It was a devilish incentive to learn as many languages as I could. A little German. A little Italian. Even a little French. Enough to keep me from being helpless—and from sounding too English. At the time, an English tongue was a liability.”
“I wish I could have been there with you.”
“You were with me,” he said. “Every day. Every night.” That, too, he recalled with painful clarity. The longing for her. The soul-deep yearning, worn to rawness from years spent trying—and failing—to forget. “There was so much I wanted to tell you. To share with you. Everything I saw and heard. All the funny little stories that I knew would make you laugh.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. She blinked them away. “I envy you your adventures.”
“Don’t be too envious. My grandfather was a brutal taskmaster. I sometimes wondered if I’d have been better off taking the King’s shilling.”
“When did you first hear news of him?”
“Not until I reached Milan. There was an English-speaking fellow at a pensione there. He directed me to Venice—to the villa where the Earl of Allendale was staying.”
Her brows knit. “But how did this man know where to send you? You’re not saying he knew the truth of Gentleman Jim’s identity?”
“He didn’t know anything about Gentleman Jim at all. It was me he recognized. Some years earlier, Allendale had come to Italy looking for his son. He’d shown people a miniature.” St. Clare’s mouth hitched in a brief and bitter smile. “It turns out, Mrs. Applewhite was right all those years ago. I do bear an uncanny resemblance to my father. Some might even mistake us for the same man. Allendale knew as soon as he saw me that I was his grandson.”
“His illegitimate grandson.”
“His only grandson. He’d very nearly resigned himself to the title being passed to Lionel. It’s a very sore point with my grandfather. All he’s ever wanted is to secure the Beresford line. When I appeared, he realized there might be a chance to do it. He’s unable to sire more children himself. And with my father dead—”
“Is he dead?”
“He is,” St. Clare said. “I never got the chan
ce to meet him. He died several years before I arrived in Italy, the victim of a wasting disease brought on by drink and whoring. Had my grandfather softened toward him sooner, he might have come home. But the Beresfords are stubborn—vindictive. Grandfather thought that a time in exile would be good for my father. That it would build his character. He was a disappointment to him, you see.”
“A wrong ’un. That’s what Jane’s aunt called him.”
“I daresay he was. Drinking. Fighting. Engaging in ill-conceived pranks. He was always getting himself into scrapes. When my grandfather cut him off for a time, my father resorted to robbery. I suspect it was all a lark to him.”
“And Jenny?”
“One of his many conquests. No different from the other tavern wenches he struck up with during his time on the run.”
Maggie didn’t appear convinced. “I think there must have been more to it than that. Papa always said your mother was a rare beauty in her youth. And when she was at the hedge tavern in Market Barrow—”
“Plying her trade.”
“My point is, I don’t ever recall hearing Gentleman Jim’s name linked with another woman. It was only ever Jenny. Which would lead one to believe—”
“That it was some grand love affair?” St. Clare scoffed. “If that was the case, then why—” He stopped himself from giving voice to the questions that had plagued his unhappy childhood.
Why hadn’t Jenny loved him?
Why had she hit him and shouted at him and told him he’d ruined her life?
Maggie seemed to know what he was feeling, just as she always had. Her hand stroked the back of his neck in a soothing caress. “I think that, perhaps, she was disappointed by your father. Disappointed in life. It’s unfair that she took it out on you, but…I do believe she loved you in her way.”
“Oh, do you?” He gave a humorless laugh. “I’d wager she never lost any sleep over my disappearance.”
“You’re wrong,” Maggie said. “She spoke about you in the end.”
He flinched from her words as if they caused him physical pain. Jenny had often been cruel to him. And worse. She’d left him feeling as though he wasn’t worthy of a mother’s love. Even so, the thought of her dying—of speaking of him in her final moments—was almost too much to bear.
Maggie pressed on. “It was when I sat with her during the fever. Most of what she said in her final moments didn’t make any sense. But she mentioned your name, and she asked for a priest. Not Mr. Applewhite, but someone else. A man she called Father Tuck. I’d no idea she was religious.”
St. Clare hadn’t either. Jenny had never attended church services and had never encouraged him to do so. As far as he could remember, she’d been at odds with God. Bitter about her lot in life and the scorn she faced as an unwed mother. “I suppose death makes believers of us all.”
“Yes, well, regardless of religion, it was you she was thinking of at the last. That must mean something.”
“What it means, my dear, is precisely nothing. Less than nothing. It’s so much ancient history to me. Not worth discussing at all.”
“And that’s that, is it? You have no intention of talking about the past?”
“No,” he said frankly. “I don’t.”
“I’m a part of your past.”
“No, you’re not.” He looked at her in the darkness. “You’re a part of me.”
Her mouth wobbled.
“The very best part,” he said. “The only part that matters. I may have given up the hope of seeing you again, but not a day has passed that I haven’t thought of you. That I haven’t wished…”
“What?” she asked softly.
“That I could be with you again. Like this. As the man I am now.” He slid his arm around her waist and drew her close. “That I could finally make you mine.”
She touched his face, tracing the curve of his brow with her fingertips and stroking the hard line of his jaw. “My first love,” she murmured to him. “My only love. I am yours. I’ve always been yours.”
Something inside him—a tightly held coil of worry and tension—slowly eased. He leaned into her words. Drinking them up like a man too long deprived of water.
She’d always known what he needed, what it took to make him whole. And she gave it to him now unreservedly. Her love. Her friendship. The exquisite reassurance of her touch.
He turned his face into her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “What about Beasley Park?”
“I could ask you the same about your grandfather and your title. Unless… You don’t have a plan, do you?”
His expression turned rueful. “None of this has been planned. Not since the moment you walked into the library at Grosvenor Square. As for what comes next…I only know one thing.” He loomed over her on the bed, his words as solemn and weighty as a sacred vow. “Whatever happens with my grandfather, with Beasley Park and all the rest of it…I’m never letting you go again.”
St. Clare had to let her go, of course. Not an hour later, in the foggy, bronze-streaked minutes before dawn, he bundled her into a hackney and accompanied her back to Green Street.
It was for the best. The two of them had enough to worry about without tempting scandal in the bargain. If he and Maggie were to have any kind of future together, their courtship must proceed as properly—and as publicly—as possible.
He returned to Grillon’s alone, where he cleaned his wound and went back to bed. The sheets smelled of her. Of soap and lavender water, and the sweet-scented pomade used to style her thick tresses for the ball.
It made for a restless sleep.
Rising some while later, he bathed and changed before making his way to Grosvenor Square, resolved to face the full force of his grandfather’s ire. Instead, he found an empty house.
“His lordship has gone out,” Jessup said.
“To where? His club?” St. Clare handed off his hat, coat and gloves to the butler.
“I couldn’t say, my lord. He left in something of a hurry.”
St. Clare scowled. He was in no mood for vagaries. His head was throbbing from too much brandy the night before, and the bullet wound in his arm ached liked the devil. “This isn’t the time to make a mystery of things, Jessup. If something’s happened to upset my grandfather, you may as well spit it out.”
Jessup gave a discreet cough. “If I was to hazard a guess, sir, I would say it had something to do with the copy of Bell’s Weekly Messenger he was reading at breakfast.”
St. Clare closed his eyes for a moment. Bell’s Weekly Messenger was a scandal sheet—one of the many his grandfather had fallen into the habit of reading since their arrival in London. It came every Sunday morning like clockwork and was presented to the earl along with his coffee.
“Fetch it for me,” St. Clare said as he strode into the library. “At once.”
Jessup brought it directly. It was folded over on a report about Lady Parkhurst’s ball.
St. Clare leaned back against the edge of his grandfather’s desk, the newspaper in his hand. He skimmed the small black print. It began with the usual drivel—who had attended and what they had been wearing. From there, it advanced to rumor and innuendo.
His fingers clenched on the paper as he read the offending passage.
Questions about Lord A—’s mysterious heir abound. While we have been reluctant to intimate anything nefarious, we can now confidently convey that the prevailing rumors place his origins not in Italy, but squarely in the West Country. Can that be the cause of his animus toward a certain Somerset squire? And, too, for the attention paid to a certain Somerset beauty?
St. Clare tossed the newspaper onto the desk with disgust. The report was no stab in the dark. It had to have been suggested by someone. Someone with firsthand knowledge of his dealings with Fred and Maggie.
Had it been Lionel? At the ball, he’d asked outright if F
red was an old enemy of St. Clare’s. Or had it been Fred himself? Had he at last managed to put two and two together?
St. Clare thought the latter unlikely.
Fred was—and always had been—thick as a fence post. A mindless bully, reacting more on instinct than sense. Never mind that on each occasion he’d crossed paths with St. Clare the visibility had been poor. It had either been dark or shadowed by smoke and flickering candlelight. Even on the morning of their duel conditions had been murky, a heavy fog billowing over the heath.
No. Fred hadn’t recognized him. Not yet. But a man like him could be easily led by the right person. Someone who was sly and calculating, who knew how to play on Fred’s vanity and insecurities.
Someone like Lionel Beresford.
Exiting the library, St. Clare promptly called for his curricle.
Driving was a bit difficult with a wounded arm. The stitches pulled whenever he tightened his hands on the reins. But it wasn’t too long of a journey to manage. Only a little over a mile.
Lionel and his mother had taken a modest house in Half Moon Street. It was a respectable address, if not an ostentatious one. As St. Clare arrived, he fully expected to see some sign of his grandfather. But the earl’s elegant black lacquered carriage was nowhere in sight.
“Walk the horses, Enzo,” St. Clare said as he jumped down from the leather-upholstered seat of his curricle.
The tiger trotted forward to take the reins.
St. Clare rapped on the front door. It was opened immediately by a young footman garbed in garish pink livery.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Yes, sir?”
“Lord St. Clare to see Mr. Beresford.” St. Clare didn’t wait for an invitation. He walked straight into the small hall, removing his driving gloves and slapping them impatiently against the palm of his hand. “At once, man.”
The footman scurried up the staircase to the second floor. Seconds later, Lionel appeared on the landing. He was wearing a tightly fitted coat with equally tight pantaloons. His starched shirt-points were as high as his ears, and the great bulk of his neckcloth had been tied in some overblown approximation of the Waterfall style. “Cousin,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
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