Oddly enough, even though he’d come to accept that they would have to obtain an annulment, he still didn’t want to hear her say the word. He hated the word. It meant the end. He didn’t think he could bear it.
“Yes?”
“Lord Burleigh is wrong. My father wasn’t your father as well. I refuse to believe it. Thus, there is only one thing to be done. You and I together must disprove the entire tale.”
He could but stare at her. “You don’t believe what Lord Burleigh told me? You call it a tale, as in a myth or a fiction to tell a child at bedtime?”
“That’s right.” She turned from him and began to pace some fifteen steps away from him, then back again, in her long-legged stride. She whirled about to face him at the far side of his study. “I don’t understand why you would so completely accept what Lord Burleigh said. Listen to me: he has no proof. Nothing in writing. No sworn statement attested to by anyone. Yes, it’s a tale, one he believes firmly, but nonetheless still a tale.
“I’ve gone over this many times in my mind, Gray, throughout today. Listen, Lord Burleigh has only my father’s belief that he had impregnated your mother. Nothing more. You, Gray, bowed to his opinion, his consummate belief. No wonder—you’ve known him all your life. But I’ve never even met Lord Burleigh. Nor was I there with that sick old man, hearing the anguish in his voice, the sorrow for you, for both of us. No, you gave me only the facts—and the facts don’t tear you apart with their sorrow and tears. They’re cold and dry and don’t clutter or numb your brain with the pain of it all.
“And so I tell you, it’s not true. There are no real solid facts. Nothing to prove Lord Burleigh’s allegations. Now, my question to you is how are we going to discover the real truth?”
He rose slowly to his feet, splayed his palms on the desktop. “Jack, I’ll admit it. When I left Lord Burleigh, I felt flattened, overwhelmed. I felt impotent. I was scared out of my mind that you could be pregnant because I did believe him. It’s true that Lord Burleigh’s pain and sorrow touched me deeply, scored his beliefs into my very soul, whereas you got a diluted version.
“But it doesn’t matter. The truth remains the truth. I have no reason whatsoever to disbelieve Lord Burleigh. He was frantic. He didn’t want it to be true, trust me on this, but he’d accepted the fact that he couldn’t allow this marriage to continue.
“You’re right, I was immensely floored by what he said, by how he said it. He believes this with every part of his being. Could I do less? No, I don’t think so. I must believe him. Don’t you think I wanted to fight against it?”
She didn’t answer. She picked up her dark gray wool skirts and nearly ran back to his desk. She leaned over it, her face nearly in his. “You are not my damned brother. I cannot believe that you are so willing to simply give up, to simply toss me out of your life, to toss each of us out of each other’s life.
“Now, since your mother and your father are dead, we must find another member of your family who was around your parents in those days.”
Slowly Gray shook his head. “My mother isn’t dead. Most everyone believes she died some ten years ago, but she didn’t. She lives on my country estate near Malton, on the River Derwent, not many miles northeast of York.”
“She’s alive?” Jack nearly jumped up and down with joy and relief. “By all that’s holy, that’s wonderful. There’s no problem now, Gray. I don’t understand why you simply didn’t tell me we would go immediately to see your mother. She would certainly tell you the truth, wouldn’t she?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said. “If she were able to.” He dashed his hand through his hair. He looked away from her, toward the far wall covered with bookshelves.
“What, Gray? What is the matter?”
When he looked back at her, his eyes were shuttered, looking inward toward a vast wasteland of remembered pain. “I suppose you deserve the truth. My mother has been quite mad since the day I murdered my father. Or rather, since the day I shot the bastard who was beating my mother to death.”
She said nothing more, simply walked around the desk and leaned against him, her arms around his back. He’d killed his father? She felt the wrenching pain in him and for a moment couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of what he’d said. He’d carried this within him for so very long. She would wager that she was the first person he’d ever told of it. He’d been so alone. She didn’t think she could bear it. She squeezed him more tightly, not caring that he’d stiffened, tried to steel himself from his half sister. “I’m so very sorry,” she said against his shoulder. “So very sorry. I knew your father was a bad man, but this?”
“A bad man? My father? No, that doesn’t begin to describe what he was. He was a monster. He beat her as long as I can remember. Then he started beating me. She screamed and cried, but did nothing.
“One day, when I was twelve years old, I heard my mother screaming. I ran into her bedchamber to see him hitting her with a belt. She was on her hands and knees, her head down, making these keening cries, and he was standing over her, his legs spread, wielding that thick belt. I couldn’t stand it. I remember that I yelled at him to stop. He turned to face me and he was smiling. He said to me, his voice all jovial, nearly caressing, I remember, ‘Well, boy, you want me to stop hitting the bitch? What will you do if I don’t stop?’ I stood there, frozen, just as I’d been since I was old enough to realize what he did to her. He laughed, turned, and struck her so hard she went down flat. I ran into his bedchamber and got his gun that he kept in a lower drawer of his armoire. I didn’t even stop to see if it was loaded. I simply ran back into my mother’s bedchamber, saw him raising that belt yet again, and yelled at him to stop it.
“Again, he turned to face me. He saw the gun in my hands. I’ll never forget what he said to me for as long as I live. ‘You dare raise my own gun to me? Do you know what I’m going to do to you for that?’ and he started toward me. I shot him.
“I shot him dead center in his chest. He stopped, one foot still lifted to take his next step toward me. I remember the look of utter surprise on his face. ‘You shot me, you puling little whelp?’
“I said nothing at all. He came toward me, blood dribbling out of his mouth, falling onto his white shirt that was already drenched with blood from the bullet in his chest. I raised the gun and shot him again. This time the bullet struck him in the throat. I don’t think I realized until then that the gun held two bullets. He cursed me, took one more step toward me, blood now spewing out of his neck like a great red fountain. Then he just crumpled to the floor.”
She held him more tightly. She could see that boy, see his mother. But she couldn’t see that horrible man who’d terrorized both the mother and the son. What Gray had done had taken great courage.
“My mother got herself together and crawled over to where he was lying. She looked up at me, tears streaking down her face, and she said, ‘You killed the only man I’ve ever loved.’ Then she fell over him, crying and crying. I went to the butler, Jeffrey, and told him what I’d done. He took care of things.
“I remember that Lord Pritchert, the magistrate, came to speak with me. Jeffrey and all the other servants stood with me. But there was nothing to fear. Evidently everyone in the neighborhood knew what kind of man my father was. He was neither admired nor respected by the folk thereabouts. He was probably hated, although no one ever said that to me.
“Lord Pritchert just asked me to tell him what happened. I did. He didn’t even ask to speak to my mother. He just patted my shoulder and left.
“It was over almost as soon as it had begun. I killed my father and he was buried the next day, and my mother was quite mad from that day onward.
“Lord Burleigh came to the funeral. I remember he sat with my mother. She was simply silent in those days before and following the funeral. I don’t believe she said a single word to him. It was Lord Burleigh who saw me through Eton and then Oxford, who int
roduced me into London society, who put me up for membership in his clubs. And never once, until yesterday, did he ever let on that there was any sort of question at all about the man who’d sired me. I assume that he believed having a rotter for a father was preferable to being a bastard and knowing it. Naturally, had it ever come out, I would have lost my title and my estates.”
Jack eased back from him. She looked up at him, touched her fingertips to his cheek. “You were a brave boy. You put an end to the violence, the endless cruelty to both you and your mother. You became an excellent man. You’re my husband, not my brother.
“We will go to Malton and see your mother. We will do what we can to prove that none of this is true.”
“What if you are pregnant, Jack?”
“By the time we discover if I am or not, we will know that we are in no way related and we will rejoice.”
He marveled at her. He realized quite suddenly that she was right. He’d held Lord Burleigh’s hand, listened to his tortured words, and taken everything he’d said as truth. He’d simply given up. He’d not questioned a thing, not really, not like Jack had.
He gave her an odd smile, one that held a great deal more than she saw. “How old did you say you were, Jack? Surely you can’t be just a green young twit?”
She laughed. She didn’t know where that laugh had come from, but it was there, and it had burst free and she enjoyed that brief jest from him.
“Women are born wiser than men, particularly brash young men who are more handsome than they deserve to be. You will simply have to accept it, Gray.”
Horace and Dolly rode together in the second carriage, perhaps enjoying each other’s company more than one would imagine. Georgie spent half her time in each carriage, even Jack admitting with an exhausted laugh that six hours in a closed space with a five-year-old little girl would give her gray hairs before she was twenty. As for Gray, he discovered that any possible gray hairs wouldn’t be all that bad. Georgie now smiled at him. He’d earned that smile. He’d played Chase the Chicken with her for one hour and twelve minutes, without pause, never once succumbing to a headache, as Jack, the weakling, had done earlier. It was Georgie who said she wanted to bird-watch. He’d shown her a black bird in the first three seconds of looking out the carriage window. Georgie had then taken his hand, rubbed it against her cheek, and said, “I like p-p-porridge.”
Gray had stared at his hand, cocked his head to one side, and asked, “My hand feels like porridge against your cheek?”
Georgie laughed. “I l-l-like p-p-porridge with honey.” She never answered his question. After seeing three crows flying just over the trees, she fell asleep, sprawled boneless on his lap.
If it hadn’t been for Georgie, he didn’t know how he and Jack would have survived the journey. If Gray had been Catholic, he would have believed them in purgatory, with no real idea of what would happen to them. One moment he felt blinding hope; the next, he was thrown into shadows, crushed by those shadows, knowing he would never escape them.
The nights spent at inns, Jack slept with her little sister and Dolly in another bedchamber. She didn’t say a word to him about it, just took Georgie’s hand and led her away. Each night he’d been both immensely relieved and angrier than he’d ever believed a man could be. He wanted to strike out, viciously. Horace was there, always there, saying little, but Gray appreciated his presence, his stolid support, his silent companionship. During those nights at the inns, Gray listened to Horace’s steady breathing in sleep, and it became like the steady beat of a clock, predictable, soothing.
They arrived at Needle House, Gray’s country estate, four days later. It was a small red-brick Georgian house, three stories tall, a long rectangle, only one hundred years old. Gray’s great-grandfather, the third Baron Cliffe, had built it early in the last century.
At least Gray prayed that the third Baron Cliffe had been in truth his great-grandfather, that the third Baron Cliffe had indeed spawned the man who must be Gray’s father’s father. Monster or no, Gray wanted his father’s blood in his veins more than he’d wanted anything in his life.
The grounds weren’t extensive, but they were neatly bounded by hedgerows lining the long drive. Beech and pine trees surrounded the side of the house set along the riverbank.
It was a cloudy day, the air chill. Gray hadn’t been here in eight months.
“You’ve grown very quiet in the last hour,” Jack said as the carriage pulled to a stop before the house.
“Yes,” he said, nothing more.
She took his hand, shaking it a bit. “Listen, Gray. It will be all right. We will get through this.”
He nodded; he didn’t look at her, didn’t smile.
She wondered what he was thinking. She wondered if behind those doors of his home dwelt nightmares he didn’t want to face. She said nothing, but just held his hand and didn’t let it go.
The front doors opened and a very old man with thick, tousled white hair, taller than the birch sapling beside the front steps, took very careful, measured steps outside. Then he stopped, shaded his eyes with his hand, and yelled, “Is that you, my lord? Is it truly you? Or is Mrs. Clegge wrong and it’s the vicar instead come to gather up old clothes for the orphans?”
“It’s Baron Cliffe, Jeffrey,” Gray shouted back, although he wasn’t further than fifteen feet away from the old man.
He said to Jack, “Jeffrey has very weak eyes. They worsen by the year. As for his hearing, it’s always been very nearly nonexistent. Speak very clearly and loudly. He’s a grand old man, tells stories about the Hell Fire Club, and came with my mother when she married my—” His voice simply stopped.
“We’ll see,” Jack said. She wanted to hug him, but she didn’t, not now. She said to Georgie, “Pumpkin, here comes Jeffrey. He looks nice, doesn’t he?”
“N-n-no,” said Georgie. “He looks like God.”
“Yes, he does,” Gray said, “what with all that white hair. Yes, I’ve always thought Jeffrey looked older than dirt.”
Georgie laughed a stuttering laugh.
Jeffrey couldn’t see the new baroness very well, but her voice sounded bright, and so he grinned at her fatuously and deigned to bow her into the Needle House drawing room himself, calling over his shoulder, “Mrs. Clegge? Where are you now? You must come out to meet her new ladyship. Ah, I think I can smell you. I do enjoy that lavender scent. Don’t forget your special lemon crumpets. The little girl will like the crumpets. I’m sure I heard a little girl, at least some sort of child. His lordship hasn’t spoken yet of a child, so I don’t know. Hurry now, Mrs. Clegge.”
“Actually,” Gray said quietly to Jack, “it’s Mrs. Clegge’s daughter, Nella, who’s now the housekeeper. But her voice sounds surprisingly like her mother’s. Jeffrey has never accustomed himself. He fancied the mother once a long time ago, but I was told she fancied the gamekeeper.
“Every so often, even to this day, Jeffrey kisses Nella on the cheek and tells her that perhaps someday they will eventually wed. Nella, thank God, is a sensible woman with a very big heart. She laughs and tells him he has far too much hair for her. That and he’s far too smart for any woman with only middling wits.”
Gray paused, stared out a wide window that gave onto the side yard at a deer who was grazing quietly, then added, “She also takes excellent care of my mother.”
Jack wondered at the pain it brought him to see his mother. Did he remember her tears, her screams, her escape to madness, when he looked her?
She looked back at Georgie, who was sitting very close to Nella Clegge, a stout woman with large hands and a kind face. It appeared that Georgie liked Nella’s lemon crumpets. Jack fidgeted the entire time her little sister ate her treat. She wasn’t hungry, nor was she at all thirsty. What she was, in fact, was terrified. She didn’t believe for an instant that Gray was her half brother, but she was afraid they wouldn’t be able to prove it. Sh
e knew, she knew it all the way to her bones, that without positive proof, Gray would insist upon an annulment. He would hate it; it would kill him, but he would do it. His honor would force him to do it.
When she couldn’t stand it, she said, “I can’t wait another minute, Gray.”
28
“I CAN,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “I could wait an eternity. But you’re right. Let’s go.”
Georgie, a lemon crumpet in her small hand, was quite content to sit on Nella’s lap, and look at Jeffrey, saying every few minutes, “H-H-He is God, isn’t he?”
“Well, little love,” Nella said, looking down into Georgie’s face, “you certainly look like the perfect little angel, so perhaps you’re right.”
The dowager baroness was in the largest bedchamber at the eastern end of Needle House. Actually it was a suite of three rooms, decorated with pale yellows and greens and white. Lovely rooms, Gray thought, wondering how much his mother had ever even noticed them. He’d spoken to Nella a few minutes before coming up. Nella had leaned away from Georgie and said, “She’s very quiet, my lord. She frets with the fringe on her various shawls, endlessly she frets. She’s healthy, her color good. Dr. Pontefract believes she’ll outlive us all. He spends quite a lot of time with her, just speaking of the weather, of places he visited when he was in the Navy, of the towns over in the Colonies. She’s not unhappy, my lord, don’t ever think that she’s in a pathetic condition. I don’t understand her world, but whatever is in it, she’s not unhappy.
“Perhaps she’ll venture out of her world and into this one if she understands that you’re married and her daughter-in-law is here to visit her. Now, I’ll keep my eye on the little girl. Those eyes of hers, they’re incredible, aren’t they? One blue and one gold; it’s marvelous. Ah, I’m going on and on. My husband just shakes his head at me when I chat with him. Forgive me, my lord.
“You and her ladyship go up. I’ll bring tea shortly. Your mother adores tea and my lemon crumpets. Mr. Jeffrey likes them too. They were my mother’s recipe.”
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