“Glass tax,” he said. “It was easier to remove the windows and sell them off than to pay taxes on them year after year. Perhaps, one day my fortunes will turn and I can see this home restored to its former glory.”
“I certainly hope so, Lord Wolverton. It’s a lovely house. Just what a country manor house ought to be,” she replied.
As they neared the side entrance that was closest to the stables, a small, thin man appeared. He’d been skulking in nearby bushes. She felt Lord Wolverton tense beside her. Who was the man? A debtor, perhaps? But while he clearly recognized the man and was caught off guard by his presence, she did not sense anger or defensiveness in him. Mary glanced back at him curiously and wondered what sort of business he had with Lord Wolverton and if it involved his investigation into his late wife’s ill fate.
“Let me see you inside, Miss Mason.”
Mary could tell from his tone that it was not a request or even a suggestion. He did not want her to know what he was about or who he was dealing with. “Who is that man?” she asked.
“It’s nothing you need concern yourself with,” he replied firmly.
“On the contrary. I think I need to concern myself with it very much. It seems as if you are rather unhappy to have this person here and I would know why, Lord Wolverton. Is he pressing you for money? Or is this related to our mutual concerns regarding Lord Harrelson’s affairs? Because if it is, I am entitled to know what it’s about!”
Wolverton grimaced. “He’s an employee, but not a respectable one. I have had to go to rather unsavory lengths to get the information that I require in order to prove my innocence, and he is part of that. He is a criminal, and I would prefer that you be exposed to no further criminal elements, especially not those that I am responsible for putting in your path. Let me get you inside and then I will see what has brought him here and send him on his way.”
“You will relay all the information that he offers?”
“You have my word,” Wolverton stated.
Mary nodded her agreement but said nothing further as Lord Wolverton lifted her down. In his arms again, pressed close to him with her hands clasped behind his neck, it was rather like being carried as a bride would have been. The thought made her blush, but not nearly so much as the yearning it stirred inside her. Somehow, in the course of their relatively short acquaintance, and despite the very unorthodox manner in which it had begun, she’d found herself quite smitten with him. She was not so foolish as to call it love. There were still far too many secrets between them for her to give it such credence. But the knowledge that it could be, that if nurtured and tended in just the right way those feelings could grow, that was very much on her mind as he carried her inside.
Hope was a futile thing and well she knew it. She was too lowborn for him, regardless of what his current standing was in society. And even were he to overlook such a thing, she did not possess the sort of fortune that he would require in a bride if he had any hope of setting his estates to rights. Mary was not so foolish as to think such things could or should be ignored. He had tenants who depended upon him. He had other tenants who had been shuffled off to heaven only knew what sort of landlords. There was far more at stake than simply her romantic inclinations. The world worked in certain ways and it had to. Marrying for love was all well and good when both parties were of the same class. He’d be forgiven for marrying someone “in trade” as it were, if only she were wealthy. But while Benedict was successful in his business, he had certainly not amassed the kind of riches that would make her lack of breeding acceptable. It was a terrible thing to have such irrepressible feelings for him while at the same time having such a firm and uncompromising understanding of precisely how the world worked. In short, hope would not die, even when she knew it to be utterly hopeless.
“Are you well, Miss Mason?” he asked, his voice heavy with concern.
“Quite well, Lord Wolverton, only a bit tired, I think,” she lied. But then she knew he’d been asking after her physical health, and not the state of her heart. Bitter disappointment only qualified as an illness for those who were wealthy enough to be classified as eccentric. “If you could see me to my room, I think I shall rest for a bit.”
“Of course,” he agreed readily.
Mary managed to stifle her sigh, but only just, as he bore her up the stairs as if she weighed no more than a feather. Strong, handsome, and so very honorable, he’d been all that was kind and heroic to her. And she would be leaving him very soon. It was for the best, she knew, but she could not prevent a pang in her heart at the thought. But it would be better to do it now, make a clean break, and forget the burgeoning feelings she had for him, than to allow things to continue and truly have her heart broken.
*
Alex deposited her on the chair before the fire. He hadn’t the strength to lay her upon the bed and actually walk away from her. Holding her closely, feeling the soft press of her body against him and the sweet way she’d clung to him had only intensified his craving for her. He needed her gone, though he knew that he would miss her terribly when she left. The house would feel empty again, perhaps more so than it had before.
He needed to speak with Davies and figure out what the man had learned. He would not have dared come directly to Wolfhaven unless the news was of great importance. To that end, Alex knew that he could not linger with Miss Mason. To do so would be to delay whatever news Davies wished to impart and also tempt him beyond what he could reasonably resist. “I’ll return shortly,” he said. He might have been fooling himself in thinking it, but he was certain that he saw a flash of disappointment in her eyes. It was quite possible that he only saw it because he wished to.
Leaving her, he headed down the stairs and back outside to where Davies waited. The man was skulking about, as if he literally did not know any other way of being except very poorly clandestine. “You have news?” Alex demanded.
“It’s about the brother… I saw him in the city yesterday and followed him. He came here, my lord… to the abandoned salt mine on Harrelson’s property. He knew that Miss Mason had been held there.”
“Well, that was our suspicion and it certainly proved true enough. But that is not all you have learned or you would not be here,” Alex said, his tone skeptical.
“No, my lord. I overheard him talking with the lady that was with him but I needed to go back to Bath and be certain that what I heard was right before I brung the information to you,” the man hedged.
“You have been paid for the job, Davies. I’ll not be giving you bonuses just because you’ve uncovered something of interest… that is what you were hired to do, after all,” Alex reminded him archly.
Davies’ eyes widened and he shook his head in protest. “Oh no, my lord… I didn’t mean to… well, I wouldn’t ask for more than already agreed upon. But what I learned is most impressive. It seems that Miss Mason’s brother is not actually Benedict Mason at all but Benedict Middlethorp!”
Alex frowned. The name was familiar, teasing the edges of his mind. When realization dawned he shook his head in denial. “Surely you are mistaken, Davies! Miss Mason’s brother could not be—”
“He is. Lord Benedict Middlethorp, Viscount Vale… the long-lost heir, kidnapped more than twenty years ago!”
They’d touched on it briefly the night before, during their midnight encounter in the library. Mary—Miss Mason—had admitted the possibility that Harrelson may well have been involved in the abduction that had initially brought her together with her brother under the cruel care of their adoptive parents.
“I’ll be taking Miss Mason to Bath tomorrow. I assume that they are ensconced in the Vale townhouse?”
Davies nodded. “Yes, m’lord. It seems the whole family has accepted him without question! I know a pretty kitchen maid what works at a house in the Circus and she heard it straight from a maid that works for Lady Vale. He’s the lost heir, right enough, and his uncle, who is the executer of the estates, has already petitioned the House of
Lords to have him formally recognized.”
“Find Hamilton. Focus all your efforts on him for now,” Alex instructed. “I need to know what he’s up to.”
Davies nodded again and then slipped away, heading once more for the city. Stepping inside the house, Alex made a quick stop in the library to gather up the ledgers and correspondence he’d absconded with the night before. With those items in tow, he took the stairs to the bedchamber, where Mary Mason awaited him in a frustratingly platonic fashion.
Pausing outside, he knocked briskly on the chamber door and waited until she bade him enter. Seated before the hearth, the firelight glinted on her hair as she worked on hemming another of Helena’s borrowed gowns. Stepping inside, he stopped there to simply take in the lovely picture she presented. It was a strange thing for him to be so much in the company of a woman whose presence he desired and who seemed to welcome his in return. Prior to his marriage, he’d been focused almost entirely upon his estates and setting things to rights following his father’s poor management of them. While he’d never lacked for female attention and had enjoyed the physical aspects of intimacy with women frequently enough, their companionship in a non-carnal sense was not something he’d ever really understood.
After marrying Helena, he’d thought they would settle into their life together. But it had quickly become apparent that was not at all what she desired, and rather than force himself to endure her disinterest and complete displeasure with him, he’d left her to her own devices and she to his. But now, in the few short days when he’d been able to spend time in Mary’s soothing presence, to appreciate the softness of her voice and the gentle expression of pleasure that always curved her lips when he entered the room, Alex was finally in a position to understand precisely what had been missing from his marriage. It wasn’t simply that he and Miss Mason were attracted to one another, though it was clear that they both were despite the lack of wisdom in such a course of action, it was that they honestly rather liked one another.
“I will miss you when you are gone,” he admitted softly. “I don’t think I fully appreciated how much until this moment. This house has been very lonely and it has come alive with your presence.” It was not the house. He had come alive with her presence, and he would feel the lack of it keenly.
She dropped her hands to her lap and the pale green muslin of the gown she was altering pooled about her. Her chin came up and her eyes glittered suspiciously with fiercely battled and unshed tears. “I shall miss you as well, Lord Wolverton. More than you can know.” The admission did not ease the tension between them at all. Instead, it seemed to magnify the tension until it filled the room itself. As if to ease it and return them to something more manageable, she laughed, and declared in a much lighter tone, “But I shall not miss Mrs. Epson or her culinary torment.”
Alex smiled at that. “We shall endeavor to carry on bravely without you then… I have news that may be of interest to you. It’s regarding your brother, Mr. Benedict Mason. Or perhaps I should refer to him as Lord Benedict Middlethorp, Viscount Vale.”
She gaped at him. “What did you say?”
“Your brother has been identified as the long-lost heir to the Vale Viscountcy. But I think you are more surprised that I am aware of it than that it has occurred. Was that not who you believed him to be when you came to Bath?”
Mary flushed guiltily. “I had thought that might be the case. I am surprised that he has found his family and also that the information is being bandied about so freely. I had not expected that he would just be readily accepted by them. I anticipated a great deal of resistance for him to be quite honest.”
He stepped deeper into the room, seating himself in the chair opposite her. “I see. And your reasons for withholding that information from me?”
“I had no proof, Lord Wolverton,” she replied. “I only had the same suspicions I’d had that brought me to Bath to start. But you may have proof. It could be that truth of my brother’s identity is in those books you hold even now.”
“And your identity, as well, perhaps?”
She shrugged. “I’d given very little thought to finding my own family. My adoptive mother enjoyed watching Benedict do menial tasks because she knew of his aristocratic origins. It was fulfilling to her in some perverse and cruel way to demean him because of it. It was different for me, so I can only assume that my own origins were not quite so exalted.”
He took one of the journals and passed it to her. “Perhaps we should find out. There’s no outward indication of which years each journal covers. We’ll just have to go through both of them.”
Chapter Ten
They spent hours going through the ledgers and various letters. Mary was exhausted when it was done, not physically, but emotionally. Those scribbled numbers and notations on the pages were representative of peoples’ lives, of misery and humiliation, and heaven could only guess what kind of suffering might be attached to each one. It was at the beginning of the second ledger that she picked up, which predated the other one by a considerable number of years, that she found a notation that could have applied both to her and to Benedict, not in their current situation, but as children.
“Lord Wolverton,” she said breathlessly. “I think… no, I’m certain that I’ve found something quite important.”
“What is it, Miss Mason?”
“Girl child, blonde, aged 2, sickly with a cough—buyer refused her thinking it consumption. FH sent her to his sister in the north who has V.” Mary read it again. “The same cough that I have now, I’ve experienced it multiple times in my life… usually any time I’ve been exposed to extreme cold or damp. Given the conditions that were part of this abduction, I can only assume that the first time I was in their care wasn’t very different. And ‘V’ must be Benedict then… V for Vale. It’s dated 1798 which means Benedict would have been about 6 at the time, assuming my math is correct in relation to the time he was abducted.”
“It certainly sounds reasonable. We’d be able to confirm it more easily if we knew who FH was. Perhaps when I take you to your brother tomorrow, he will be able to shed some light on that. Clearly, he has been able to do his own investigation and determine his identity to the satisfaction of all others involved. It would stand to reason that the identity of this mysterious FH was part of it,” he mused.
“I’m sure you are right. I just cannot fathom what has happened to all of these people. There must be hundreds of them. And while the notations indicate that some were taken from their families as children and given to other families, childless ones, I assume, I find that I am more disturbed by those whose fate is more ambiguous at the end. Like this one—brunette, age 15, sold for one hundred pounds sterling at auction. Yet it does not say to whom she was sold nor what their purpose for her was. I cannot imagine that such a sum of money would have been paid—at auction no less—for a girl, if not to sell her into some truly horrific fate.” Mary closed the book and set it aside. While she felt for that girl, was overwhelmed with sympathy for her, there was a very self-serving aspect of her horror. She realized, with shocking clarity, just how close she’d come to meeting a similar fate. It was terrifying.
Lord Wolverton’s brows came together in a worried furrow. “This is not a fit task for you, Miss Mason. You are too kindhearted and your nature too given to empathy to read through these documents without it taking a significant toll on you. Set them aside and I will finish the rest later. We should stop now at any rate. I will need to travel a short distance to my friend’s home and see about collecting a carriage that we might use to transport you safely tomorrow.”
Mary nodded. “What will we do if he says no? I’m certain the curricle would not be too bad as long as I bundle up.”
“Ambrose will not say no,” he replied with a slight smile. “He is a true friend, the truest and, perhaps, only friend I possess these days.”
“Not the only friend, my lord,” she insisted. Immediately, she blushed. It was a forward thing to say, on to
p of all the other very forward things she had already said. And what on earth could a man such as the Earl of Wolverton want in a friend such as her? She was penniless. While her brother was wealthy in his own right thanks to his shrewd acumen for business and cards, she had no money of her own. With Benedict restored to the bosom of his proper family, she had to admit that she was somewhat concerned that there would no longer be a place for her in his life. Oh, he would see to her care. But she was a nobody, likely nothing better than a cast-off by-blow. Would she be an embarrassment to him now that he was a viscount? The answer to that was a definitive yes, she realized. Benedict would never admit it, but his newfound family would likely not appreciate her presence as a painful reminder of all the years he’d been stolen from them.
“You are troubled,” he observed.
Mary shook her head. “Not really. Well, slightly, perhaps. I just wondered how Benedict’s change in circumstance might—what if his new family does not wish him to associate with someone who is naught but a reminder of the painful years he was missing? And then there is the unknown nature of my own origins. I can only assume that I was low-born. It could well be that I am an embarrassment to him now. Certainly I would be an embarrassment to Lady Vale.”
Alex gave a dismissive snort. “It is hardly worth considering, Miss Mason. Your brother has been quite devoted in his search for you. My man observed him at the salt mine where I believe you were held. He’s been tracking you closely. Those are not the actions of a man who would be swayed so easily from those he loves. I think you’ll find that his newfound family will be quite accepting of you. Otherwise he may very well choose not to accept them.”
The Mystery of Miss Mason (The Lost Lords Book 5) Page 12