Hareton Hall: Richard and Rose, Book 6

by Lynne Connolly

  “His catamite?” The question came sharp and unexpected.

  The young man blinked, off his guard, just for a minute. “I may have let him, a few times, but he was too weak for much. It kept him in my power.”

  My stomach turned over. The cold-blooded callousness of this youth appalled me. Richard appeared so to some people, but inside he felt deeply, cared terribly.

  “I was in his bed when he died. Oh no, I had nothing to do with it. That would have been supremely foolish. And in any case I owed him a debt. He taught me to read, gave me some polish, made me this instead of the young thug I’d been.” He waved one hand to indicate his dress and appearance. “Someone said once, in my hearing, that gentlemen were born, not made. They were wrong. I was made, and no one has ever noticed anything wrong. Although my birth was probably better than his, as it happened. At least on my father’s side.”

  Richard sat unmoving, listening to this boy.

  “We started the smuggling operation. I was surprised to find just how much money it provides, and I had the contacts to sell the goods at a pretty profit. John was enthralled. He loved to laugh at his neighbours, buying tea, tobacco and wine from these men, not knowing it was us all the time.”

  “Somebody did,” Richard commented. The servants.

  “That man you found—Yale was it? Where did he work?”

  “In your stables,” said Richard briefly.

  “What I did after John’s death I did with his blessing. We had discussed it in detail. He hated everyone except me, said they left him, but to tell you the truth…” he leaned forward, an unpleasant smile lingering on his features, “…I knew why. He was never done complaining, whether about the food on the table or the quality of service, nothing was ever good enough for him. I only spent two years with him, but I couldn’t have spent much more. He only did it because he wanted to. He never took my feelings into consideration.” He shrugged. “But he provided well for me. So when he died, I became Sir John and he was buried as Alan Roughley. Another reason for me to dye my hair. He was as dark as this.” He indicated his dark brown hair. “I might shave it all off and use wigs now, but I was afraid you might notice the resemblance between us if I did that before. It is more marked than I’d thought.”

  I stared at him, imagined him in a powdered wig. Yes, his face was the same shape as Richard’s. He had the high cheekbones, the full mouth, the heavy lids, but he must have inherited the colour and shape of his eyes from his mother. A deep, cerulean blue would have marked him out as Richard’s far more clearly than the light, clear grey eyes he’d been gifted with.

  “It was quite a change to use my real name once more. I was christened John, but I hadn’t used it since I left home. Most of the servants doubled up as free traders so they accepted the change. It was nothing to them. The late Sir John had been a recluse, so there was no one to mourn him.”

  “Why didn’t he just will his fortune to you?” I asked.

  “He did. I have the will. But there would have been questions, perhaps a lawsuit from his distant family, and my past might have come up. It seemed easier this way.”

  “Easier isn’t a word I’d have used.” Richard appeared completely at his ease, his face set into polite interest, his long fingers steepled.

  His son shrugged. “It worked. But then the Excise took us by surprise and we had to disperse for a time. That was when I got my idea.” He looked at Richard. His face showed real animation now, enthusiasm and excitement. “Of course, it was easy to find out about you. I did it almost as soon as I left my mother and sister to their cesspit.” He leaned forward. “My mother told me about you, but she was quite a liar, so I looked at some old newspapers, found out all I could about you. I even worked as a pageboy in your parents’ house for a time. You weren’t living at Southwood House then, but you came to dinner and attended functions there. Then I knew it was true, and I had you.” His hand clenched into a fist. “I’d have approached you then, but I had the strong suspicion that you’d have me whipped soundly and put out of doors for my pains, so I made my plans. I always knew one day I’d make myself known to you.” He must have seen Richard at his coldest, just before he proposed to Julia Cartwright. “Now I can talk to you and snap my fingers at you.” He followed suit, the sound of his clicking fingers loud in the silent room. “I’ve made my own way in the world, and I need nothing from you. I just wanted you to know.”

  “Why?”

  “So that you could see what I’ve become. You know I’ve had a hand in the occurrences here recently?”

  “My poor crippled brain managed to work that out,” Richard commented.

  “There’s great profits to be made around here.”

  “I think you’ll find that this part of the coast is taken.”

  “Not while I have a say in it.” I heard the arrogance of youth. “They’ve had it too easy, too long. I’ll increase the business here and make everyone richer.”

  “You would be well advised not to,” said Richard.

  Sir John stood and paced the room restlessly. “What would you know about it?” he demanded, swinging back to face Richard. “What do you know about anything? Pampered, cosseted, I’ll bet those hands have never seen dirt in their whole lives.”

  “Putting aside your premise that hands can see,” Richard said, his tones drops of ice water, “my upbringing is something I had no control over.” That was putting it mildly.

  “You could have controlled mine.” Sir John was bitter, angry.

  “That was taken away from me,” Richard told him. Then he’d decided to tell John the truth.

  “You let it be taken.”

  “What did you expect? They would never have allowed me to marry your mother, whatever I might have declared at the time. I had no income of my own, no way of supporting her. Much less children.”

  “You promised you’d marry her.”

  “Told you that, did she? You said she was a liar.”

  John was intruding too far, too soon. Richard wouldn’t let him any further into his private life, not yet.

  Sir John glared at my husband. He met the angry stare with what looked like bland indifference.

  “Don’t you think you owe me anything?” the younger man demanded.

  “No. Not owe. Besides, you seem to have done very well for yourself. Perhaps you should send for your sister and let her share in your good fortune.”

  “I intend to, once I’ve settled something here.”

  “Surely you have enough without involving yourself in nefarious activities?”

  “It depends what you think is enough.”

  I was tired now, and it took one glance for Richard to see it. He stood in one smooth movement and offered his hand to me. “As I said, I do not intend to miss my dinner. All I will say is this.” Having seen me to my feet, he turned to face his son again. “Don’t get involved in the smuggling activities round here. That’s good advice, the best I can give you.”

  “And leave my sister alone,” I added.

  John stared at me in an insolent way before replying. “She’s not the kind of woman who pleases me, but I might find some amusement in her. Besides,” he said, keeping his gaze on my face, “she’s too old for me. Isn’t that right—Father?”

  I don’t know how Richard kept control over his emotions at that moment. “‘Sir’ will do. It will raise fewer eyebrows.” He held his arm so I could place my hand on it in the formal manner he rarely used in private. Then, as though on an afterthought, he turned back. “And I wouldn’t place any confidence in our relationship to get you out of trouble.”

  “What could I expect from you?” Sir John demanded bitterly. “A popinjay, a pretty society plaything? Do you even know one end of a sword from another?”

  “I believe I do,” Richard said, and led me out of the room.

  For the rest of the day he’d been carefully polite and completely cut off from everyone. Over dinner Gervase looked at me questioningly, but I shook my head. We wo
uld tell him, but not now.

  That night I got to bed first. Richard slipped into bed beside me, and I put my arms about him. I felt him relax, the rigidity slowly melt away, and I was glad I could do this for him, but I was afraid of what was to come. He’d taken solace in my arms once before. Now he did it again.

  He laid his head on my shoulder and he wept for a long time. He hadn’t known about the children. His mother had handled the whole affair and not allowed him to know. For years he’d thought himself infertile since his many affairs hadn’t produced any known progeny, but since he’d carefully kept himself to married women, I suspected that some of the babies claimed by proud husbands may have come from another source.

  At least those children were well cared for, not left to a woman little better than a whore.

  I lay with my arms around him and soothed him, stroking his head with its tight, blond waves, his shoulders and his back, as I would with a weeping child. I said nothing beyond murmuring, “Oh, my love, I’m here, I’ll always be here for you,” and other quiet, soothing words while he shook, racked with his grief and frustration and sheer blind fury.

  I waited until the storm subsided, then I went into my dressing room and fetched a soft damp cloth, and a dry one, and cleaned his face for him. I’d left the candles alight in the sconces by the bed, and a branch of them on my dressing table, so I saw his reddened, swollen eyes when I gently patted his face dry.

  He lay back quietly and allowed me to help him, his eyes closed. He took several deep breaths.

  I put the cloths back and fetched a glass of brandy for him. He accepted it and sipped it slowly. I waited, letting him recover in his own time.

  After he put the empty glass down, he took me into his arms and kissed me tenderly. “What would I do without you?” His voice still shook from the pent-up emotion he’d recently released.

  I lifted myself up and looked down at his dear face. “Weep in private. Wash your own face.”

  “More likely I’d get horribly drunk and fall into bed in a stupor. Only you have ever seen me like this.”

  “I count it one of the greatest privileges you’ve given me. To care for you.”

  He lifted a hand and cupped my cheek. “That’s what it means, doesn’t it? The cherish part of the promise I made you at the altar?”

  “Yes.”

  I was part of him now. When we first married he’d found it hard to share, but forced himself to do it, and now he could, and accept it. It was a sign of the strength in him. So brave, to let someone see what no one else had seen before, to trust me so much.

  “The boy seems well able to take care of himself,” I said.

  “He shouldn’t have had to,” he answered. “He should’ve been given more help. He would have received that help if my mother responded to the letters his mother sent.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “My responsibility. A whore for a daughter and a criminal for a son.” He sighed.

  “And a baby we can teach properly,” I reminded him. “The other two were accidents of birth. You sired them, but you didn’t have the teaching of them, their upbringing.”

  This time his smile was more natural. “Yes. But I’m too tired, too shaken to think about it all now. Can we deal with it in the morning? Just hold me now.”

  I did as he asked after I got out of bed to snuff the candles. He watched me and I felt glad that he took pleasure in the sight, whereas once I might have been embarrassed or shy. I came back to bed and snuffed the one remaining candle on my side of the bed. The room was in shadow now, lit only by the dull glow of the banked-down fire and the night glow from the unshuttered window.

  I moved into his arms, gave him a gentle kiss and waited for him to fall asleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  Yale was gone, but we still needed to talk to John Smith. Accordingly we drove into Exeter to see him. We found him in an excitable state, for Smith, which mainly consisted of an agitation of movement, an inability to keep still.

  He greeted us in his little parlour. “We have a development, my lord.” He shook our hands and then clapped his own together. “A Cawntons’ man, willing to tell all.”

  Richard raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “You may well look surprised, sir,” Smith said. “We have him in the town gaol, more for his protection than anything else, and he has told us so much already I feel we’re finally getting somewhere.”

  “Very unusual for a Cawntons’ man to peach,” Richard remarked. Smith stared at him curiously but let the cant phrase pass unremarked.

  “Perhaps, my lord, your lady might care to do some shopping while we repair to the town gaol.”

  I wouldn’t hear of such a thing. “Certainly not. Ladies visit gaols all the time. You can even visit the condemned cell at Newgate for a price.”

  “And if you pay them enough they might let you out again,” Richard remarked softly. I smiled.

  John Smith took my accompanying them in good part, and we set out, walking there as the gaol wasn’t far away. We weren’t dressed particularly finely, and we didn’t pass through the more fashionable areas, but we still met one or two acquaintances and were forced to pass the time of day with them, while John Smith hovered in the background with Carier and Nichols, waiting until we had done. We would have introduced him, but he didn’t seem to want it. Mr. Fielding’s men preferred to keep their heads below the parapet. Since he was on official business, he wore his red waistcoat, but had little else to distinguish him from the ordinary citizen. Many of these passed us by, and some stopped to stare, but I took no notice.

  John Smith’s red waistcoat seemed enough to give us the ingress to where we needed to go. The constable looked at us askance, but Richard gave him a vail, and he asked no more questions. Richard had asked that John Smith address us as “sir” and “madam” to avoid any unnecessary attention.

  I hadn’t admitted it to Richard, but I’d never visited a gaol before, although many people in the fashionable world paid their vails to visit the condemned cell at Newgate. That pastime had never appealed to me. This gaol lay partly belowground, lit by a few small, stinking tapers. It had grilled, glassless windows and it was cold. I was glad of my green wool cloak, which I pulled around me as we descended the worn stone steps to the depths.

  A large hall with a scuffed, dirty, old table, and some benches greeted us. A few prisoners sat there, and their conversation lulled when we entered. Men and women dressed far too inadequately for the chill of this place. Some wore tattered blankets around their shoulders. The women were, for the most part, dressed in petticoats and stays, with short cloaks and caraco jackets covering their arms. Plain, dirty white caps kept their heads warm. My bergére straw, festooned with ribbon around the brim, was too bright for a place like this. The men were in drab, cheap coats, travesties of the garment Richard wore, and greasy leather or cloth breeches, patched and worn.

  I wondered where I’d put my vinaigrette, but I didn’t search for it. The smell was bad, but the grilles kept it within bearable levels.

  John Smith took us to a cell, the only one in the row at the far end of the room that was not open. At his signal a man, indistinguishable from the others except for the keys which hung around his waist, came forward and unlocked it. Richard gave him a vail, and remembering his comment earlier, I hoped he’d given the turnkey enough.

  Only one man occupied the cell. He stood as we went in from the wooden rack that served as both seat and bed. A filthy cloth covered the necessary in the corner, the stench choking us as we entered. A tray with a crust and a half-consumed tankard of ale lay next to it. I thought of rats and I shuddered.

  Richard took my elbow and gave me an enquiring glance, but I smiled and shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  The man swept off his filthy beaver cocked hat and bowed. We nodded back. We remained standing, and I tried to keep my skirts away from the walls of the cell without making it too obvious. I kept my hand on Richard’s arm. I needed the s
upport.

  John Smith turned to us. “This is Cutforth.” I didn’t know him. He wasn’t a Darkwater man. Presumably he came from one of the other villages.

  “Tell them what you told me, Cutforth.” Smith stood aside.

  The man studied us curiously. “Quality,” he said, and spat in the vague direction of the chamberpot. It landed in the food. I looked away, my stomach churning. Cutforth chuckled, a rattling, throaty sound. I prayed for him not to spit anymore. “If I tell you what I know, I want out of here. When the Cawntons find out, they’ll want me dead.”

  “I’ve already said you’ll be paid for your trouble,” Mr. Smith told him. “And kept here until it’s all over, so be still, and don’t try to rook us anymore. You’ll be given enough to take you to Scotland and farther if you want it.”

  “I’ll need it,” grumbled Cutforth. He squinted at us again.

  Richard got a guinea out of his pocket. Its fresh gold surface caught the light from the single candle burning in an iron sconce in the corner and gleamed, a reminder of a cleaner world. Richard threw the coin up and snatched it out of the air. “Let’s see what you’re worth.”

  Cutforth chuckled again and cleared his throat. I tensed, but he thought better of it, and swallowed. That made me feel sick as well.

  “I bin workin’ for the Cawntons for nigh on ten year, but it’s all getting a bit too much. I want a fresh start, a ’spectable livin’.” I doubted that. I wondered what he could have done to upset his masters. “So, I’m tellin’ you the next run. I get an amnesty?” Smith jerked a nod. “All right then. They want to catch out this other lot, so they’re not waitin’ for the dark time o’ the month, not this time.” He paused and without warning, turned his head and spat. I was sure he’d seen my dislike of this practice, and he was doing this now to provoke me. I tried to keep my face still. “It’s Monday. There’s a ship comin’ over from France with wine an’ lace an’ some other bits an’ pieces—” His accent was by now so thick even I could barely understand him. Richard was frowning, concentrating on the broad Devonshire tones of the man. “They won’t be expectin’ it in the full light o’ the moon.”