Realm 07 - A Touch of Honor

by Regina Jeffers

  John opened his eyes to study the surgeon more closely. “I had not thought on it. I suppose I will return Lady Swenton to my manor and the family cemetery. Is there some reason of import to rouse your curiosity?”

  The surgeon had the good sense to blush. “I apologize; I am not a man who knows how to speak of life’s trials with anything less than the truth.” John held his tongue until he knew the man’s purpose. “As a surgeon, I am fascinated with how the body reacts to trauma. In our medical schools, we have so few opportunities to study the human anatomy outside of books.”

  With difficulty, John sat upon the table. “Are you asking my permission to cut upon my wife’s body?” Incredulity rose in his tone.

  The surgeon backed away from John’s lethal stare. “No, my Lord. I assure you that was never my purpose.” He swallowed hard. “Occasionally, when the local sexton has a case which challenges his abilities…”

  “Such as my wife’s accident?” John eyed the surgeon suspiciously.

  “Exactly!” The man said with relief. “I assist him in making the person presentable.”

  John eased from the table to stand stiffly. “And you are being paid by the sexton to make my wife presentable?”

  “Do you object, my Lord?”

  John thought of the damage to Satiné’s head. “Although the coffin will remain closed, if you have talent in this area, I hold no objections. However, know I mean to set a course for York on the morrow.”

  The surgeon cleared his throat. “And what of the child, Baron Swenton?” John’s heart turned a somersault in his chest. “I suppose most would not consider the fetus a child. Some three to four months in its development. Most miscarriages come long before this time in a woman’s childbearing. I suspect the influence of the fall caused your wife’s body to reject the pregnancy. Does your Church accept the child’s remains in the same coffin as the mother? Some do, but others…”

  The man rattled on, but all of which John could think was of Satiné’s lie: She had sworn her monthlies had returned–that there was no child. “Could the babe have survived if not for the fall?” Blind bitterness consumed John.

  “Only if the mother had done as well,” the surgeon assured. “Our skills are not advanced enough to save a child when the mother passes, but perhaps some day.”

  “Is it possible to know whether the child was a boy or a girl?” It was essential to him to know. John would have loved either unconditionally, but an heir for his title would have been a blessed event.

  “I am sorry, my Lord. It was too early to know for certain. At this stage, both genders have a genital tube, which later turns to either a penis or the clitoris. I simply wished upon permission to examine the child more closely. To make some notes upon what I observed.”

  John found the idea more than a bit morbid; yet, he understood the necessity of science. He hoped some day mankind would be able to care for a child beyond the mother’s efforts. “I do not wish the child’s remains cut upon, and I wish it placed in the coffin with its mother rather than destroyed in a fire.” He attempted to speak without rancor, but he thought he might run mad into the street; no one could devise such a bizarre situation.

  “Certainly, my Lord. I am extremely grateful.”

  John nodded curtly and walked away as briskly as his injuries permitted. He barely saw Sir Carter and Worthing speaking to the constable or heard the man calling after him. He had no idea where he was going or what he intended to do when he arrived, but John knew if he did not escape the current insanity surrounding him, he would not be responsible for his actions.

  Sir Carter caught his arm. “What has occurred?” the baronet hissed with urgency.

  John shook off his friend’s hand. “I married a conniving devil.” He noted Sir Carter’s look of surprise, and the baronet’s glance about the street to check for eavesdroppers, but John cared not for who might overhear.

  “Let us seek privacy,” Sir Carter insisted.

  “There is no privacy,” John growled, but he permitted the baronet to lead him to a nearby alley.

  Once there, Sir Carter pleaded, “Tell me quick.”

  “Satiné!” John spit his wife’s name. “She killed my child with her fall, and now I am expected by Society to grieve for a woman, who despised all for which I stand. A woman who lied to me regarding her condition. A woman who denied me the one thing I have always desired: a family.”

  Shock crossed the baronet’s expression. “Satiné carried your child?”

  John scrubbed his face with his dry hands; yet, exhaustion remained. “I discovered Satiné’s condition by accident–in a letter to Coyle, which I franked for her. Earlier at the abbey when I expressed my concern, my wife…” Again, John spit the words. “My wife claimed her womanhood in tact, but the surgeon says otherwise. Satiné’s fall caused her to lose the child she carried. My child. My heir.” The anger and the despair ricocheted through him, and John sank to his knees in sobs. “My child,” he whispered harshly.

  As if it was not an unusual event, Sir Carter, joined by Lord Worthing, had caught him in their combined embrace, and they rocked him as no one had ever done previously. Rocked him as if they were his brothers. His friends–two of England’s finest and most lethal agents of the Crown–openly sharing his grief, and John found comfort for the first time in his life. Comfort in of all places, a filthy alleyway in a British seaside resort. Comfort in the face of the complete devastation of all he was and all he cherished.

  After a few minutes of self-absorption, Worthing braced John to his feet. He thought to apologize for his weakness, but a slight shake of Lord Worthing’s head said John’s regrets were not necessary among friends. “I have instructed the constable to return later today to pose the last of his questions.” Worthing spoke as if John’s anguish had not been on display for all to observe. As idiocratic as it seemed, the future earl’s words brought flickers of reason to John’s sensibility.

  “You will accompany me? I cannot concentrate on all the details and would not wish to misspeak?” A sigh of resignation escaped John’s lips.

  “Certainly,” Worthing assured.

  John blew his nose in the handkerchief Sir Carter had slipped into his hand. With a deep steadying breath, he said, “I hold a responsibility to my family’s name to guard its reputation, and despite my feelings for my baroness, my actions require I remain silent upon the state of her demise. However, please know I refuse to bury Lady Swenton upon my land.”

  He had expected his friends’ objections, but none were lodged. Sir Carter suggested, “Escort Miss Aldridge’s remains to Chesterfield Manor. Tell Ashton you could not bear to deny his grief for you have known the lady but six months while Baron Ashton has shared Satiné’s life from the moment of his niece’s birth.”

  John wished to turn upon his heels, mount his horse, and ride hell bent to Marwood. “Would you send riders to Yardley and Thornhill. Satiné’s sisters should have the opportunity to speak their farewells.”

  “If it is your wish.”

  “One week,” John declared. “One week from today, I will cease thinking upon Satiné Aldridge as anything beyond being a woman of which I once held an acquaintance.”

  Worthing warned, “You must publicly mourn Lady Swenton’s passing or know the barbs of scandal once more.”

  John straightened his waistcoat. “I will order my household to black, but in my mind, the effort will be for Lady Fiona Swenton, the last baroness of Marwood Manor. I have not given my mother the proper respect, and I mean to correct my previous neglect.”

  *

  Lexford had accompanied him in John’s small coach, which had been draped with black ribbon across the crest, and John and his staff had worn black armbands, symbolic of the mourning expected of him. The previous evening, he had denied the physician’s suggestion of laudanum, but after a night filled with the terrors of the day, he had accepted the medicinal before climbing into the coach. John was certain the bumpy roads to the west would destroy
what composure he poorly feigned.

  “I will not be proper company,” he had warned as the laudanum’s effects invaded his mind.

  Lexford chuckled ironically, “You would be worst company without it.” The viscount paused before adding, “I think it best if you remain at Lexington Arms with Lady Lexford and me instead of tolerating Baron Ashton’s household. I fear Ashton will not take Miss Aldridge’s death easily, and I will not have you know the man’s harshness.” John appreciated how his friends had accepted John’s need to place distance between him and Satiné’s memory by referring to his late wife as Miss Aldridge. “However, I must caution you Lady Lexford encourages Aaron to join in the family activities.”

  Despite the numbing effects of the drug, John’s heart lurched against his badly bruised ribs. Each of his friends had taken to his dream of family and home. Everyone but him. He would be expected to mourn at least a year for a woman who had blatantly announced “I despise you.” Others would say Satiné had not been in her right mind when she said the words, but John had thought her confession “I despise this world, for try as I may, I have never been comfortable in it. I have attempted to make myself into the kind of woman everyone admires, but the mold has never fit. I am different. A mismatch in Society” the only honesty she had ever offered him. “Your family will be a welcomed distraction,” he told Lexford and hoped he could prove himself the friend he wished to be in return.

  *

  They had arrived at Chesterfield Manor on the third day of their journey; Lexford had insisted it would be best if they escorted his wife’s remains to the estate, and so they had tarried at a nearby inn until the wagon hauling Lady Swenton’s coffin caught up with John’s small coach.

  “I do not imagine Baron Ashton will accept the news of his niece’s demise well,” the viscount observed.

  John knew he sounded of a spoiled child, but he could not abandon his feeling of loss. “Personally, I care not for the baron’s sensibilities: Lord Ashton relinquished that particular privilege with his poor parenting of his niece.”

  Lexford markedly frowned, but the viscount kept his tongue. “What do you wish to share with Ashton regarding Lady Swenton?”

  John coldly declared. “Everything. The truth of how his niece plotted to join her lover and the truth of all I did to protect her. I want no whisper of ill repute attached to my actions.”

  “Swenton,” Ashton called as John followed Lexford from the coach. “I did not recognize your carriage. What brings two of the Realm’s finest to my door?”

  John straightened gingerly, his ribs and shoulder still sore and stiff. “I have escorted your niece to her childhood home.” He spoke without emotion.

  Ashton looked to the approaching wagon. “My God, Swenton,” the older man accused, “what have you done to my dearest child?”

  John’s ire rose quickly. “What have I done?” he hissed. “I have done nothing but to protect your niece with my life and my title.”

  Lexford stepped between him and Baron Ashton. “Swenton,” the viscount said calmly. “Why do you not enjoy Baron Ashton’s gardens while I speak of Lady Swenton to her uncle?”

  John certainly held no desire to sit among heavily scented floral arbors, but doing so would be preferable to a confrontation with Satiné’s uncle, a man John had once thought admirable. “As you wish, Lexford. Send Jayson for me.”

  That had been three days prior. Satiné’s sisters had arrived in a timely manner. The Worthings had traveled with Thornhill and the Duchess, while Yardley and his countess had made excellent time for Sir Carter had sent the notice via one of the small yachts the Realm used in such cases, rather than to send riders over land. The baronet, his lady, and Pennington had traveled together. Godown and his marquise came to stay with the Lexfords, and even Lucifer Hill had made an appearance. They had all come to pay their respects to Ashton’s niece and to observe John’s reactions to Satiné’s small, yet elaborate, service.

  He had voiced no objections to any of Ashton’s suggestions: John had permitted the man his show of grief. Instead, he had kept his distance from both where his wife’s body in the coffin rested upon a long table and the portrait of a virginal Satiné, which Baron Ashton had had brought down from the gallery to be displayed upon an easel. John never permitted his eyes to look upon the image of his wife in all her innocence. Only once had he approached the coffin, and then it was to grieve for the child, not for its mother.

  Although Ashton spoke cordially to John, the tension between them lay thick. John had thanked Lexford repeatedly for his friend’s foresight in insisting that John remain at Lexington Arms, which was but five and twenty miles from Ashton’s manor. At Lexford’s manor, it was he, Aidan and Mercy Kimbolt, Gabriel and Grace Crowden, and Henry and Hannah Hill and the children. That was the most difficult aspect of waiting for Satine’s family to arrive and the services to occur: the realization the world had passed him by.

  John held little hope of ever knowing the happiness he easily noted on the countenances of those who called him friend. “All know family. Everyone but me,” he murmured over and over again as he looked upon a room crowded with Satiné’s family and Ashton’s neighbors. They grieved for a woman none of them truly knew. Only he had experienced the full brunt of her duplicity.

  By the day and time of the vicar’s speaking his prayers over Satiné’s body, John’s insides had been held in tight control for nearly a week, and he no longer knew the source of the pain in his chest: his injuries or his hushed anger? “When do you intend to return to Marwood?” Pennington had asked quietly after the service.

  Fearing the Realm’s leader might observe what John had disguised, he did not meet the man’s probing gaze. “As soon as I can speak my farewells. I desire no more of this farce. I have served the last of my duties to Miss Aldridge.”

  Pennington’s scowl lines deepened. “Unless you release this severe bitterness, Swenton, it will eat away your soul. You are permitting your anger and your feelings of betrayal to imprison you.”

  John hissed, “Keep your philosophy; I have had my fill of well-meaning advice.”

  “You have named your poison, Baron. You mean to provide your wife continued domain over your life. You are finally making Jeremiah Swenton’s most crippling mistake.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Her passing had come over a month prior. When he departed Manchester, John had returned to Marwood to grieve for his lost opportunities. Although they each had offered to accompany him to York, he had vehemently forbidden any of the Realm to do so. He had returned to what was familiar: spending time in the fields with his tenants, bachelor meals, and an empty household. Although he had doubted their sincerity, for John had recognized his associates’ earlier disdain for Satiné, his neighbors had extended their condolences. Those he called friend had played their prescribed roles, as had he.

  “Viscount Honesdale, Sir.”

  John rose to greet his maternal uncle. When he had returned to England with Lady Fiona’s remains, he had written to Farrell Moraham to inform his mother’s only brother of John’s decision to bury Fiona Swenton in her rightful place beside his father in the family cemetery, but he had yet to hear from the man until this day. “Uncle.” John bowed with respect.

  His Lordship caught John up in a manly embrace, patting John soundly upon the back before they separated. “Despite the reported circumstances, you are looking well, Johnathan.”

  John did not respond. What was there to say? He had the look of a man who had known little sleep and no reason, with nothing more than duty to spur him from the bed in the morning. In the manner of family, the viscount seated himself without John’s permission. “May I send for refreshments, Sir?” he said as he moved a chair closer so they might converse.

  “Perhaps later.” Honesdale sighed wearily. “I returned to Warwickshire earlier in the week to discover your letter regarding Fiona’s passing and the news of your recent loss, and so I set out immediately for York. Edith�
�s mother took a turn for the worst, and the viscountess and I rushed to Scotland for by wife to be by Lady Toomey’s side. With the countess’s passing, we remained until the estate was settled upon Lord Toomey’s brother. We have been away from Warwickshire for some seven months.” He paused to adjust his overly tight waistcoat, and John smiled inwardly. It had always been so. Even as a young man, Honesdale had chosen ill-fitting garments. The familiar memory was comfortable in an odd manner. “It grieves me you had no one from the family to welcome Fiona home.”

  John admitted, “I thought it best to return my mother to Marwood without fanfare.”

  “I understand. The world continues to believe Fiona abandoned you.”

  “Did she not?” John challenged.

  Honesdale shook his head in sad denial. “I suppose in many ways it would appear so, but you must know, John, how proud my sister was of you.”

  John gave a faint grimace. “I know of no such emotion ever expressed by my mother.”

  Honesdale’s scowl lines deepened. “You truly believe the words you speak?”

  “I do, Sir.”

  “Then I am doubly glad I have come, and I possessed the foresight to bring you a gift.”

  “What gift?” John asked suspiciously.

  Honesdale smiled wryly. “All in good time.” The viscount raised an eyebrow, and the very air was ripe with anticipation. It was the first emotion John had permitted his foolish heart since returning to Yorkshire. “I should not be surprised by your opinions; they are the ones often uttered by Jeremiah Swenton. Although your father was a most excellent baron, he never understood a woman of Fiona’s nature. My sister was not one to hide her opinions or to leave her sensible mind upon a shelf simply to please her husband.” John easily remembered his father’s face turning purple with rage when the previous baron and Lady Fiona had exchanged words in misunderstanding.

  His uncle continued, “Believe it or not, Fiona loved Jeremiah.” John would normally have scoffed at Honesdale’s assertion, but he swallowed his protest for he suspected he was finally to be privy to family secrets. Moreover, Olde Sapp had said something similar only a few months prior. “Both families thought the connections strong ones, and our Fiona had convinced herself she desired what every other woman did. However, the dew quickly fell from the bloom. I attempted to caution Fiona to take more time to consider her choice, but your parents were so certain.”