by Jenny Brown
The knuckles on his tightly clenched fist had gone white with strain.
“What is that, Your Lordship?”
“Is she really my mother, or are you?”
Mrs. Atwater’s small hand flew to her mouth in surprise. “Me, your mother? You must be joking.”
“I have never been more serious in my life.”
Mrs. Atwater peered closely at him. “Me, your mother! Whatever put that into your head?”
“I’d always heard my mother had much difficulty birthing James and how the doctors told her she must not bear another child. But James was sickly. So I thought my father had forced my mother to pretend your child was hers to ensure he might have another heir.”
“He never would have done that. Your father was a very proud man. He would have been horrified at the idea of polluting his noble line with the blood of the likes of me. He wouldn’t even acknowledge my poor Charles, though he had no doubt his own blood ran in Charles’s veins. Why as you said, he looks just like him!”
Edward struggled to breathe. “But you were so kind to me when I was small. I used to think it was because you were my real mother—I used to hope you were.” He fought against the tears that threatened to unman him.
“Well, I’m not your mother, Your Lordship. I was kind to you because you were a sweet little bit of a lad, and because, well, your birth made my life far easier. But you must get over that idea that I am your mother. It is not true. Lady Hartwood is your mother, as much as she might have wished she weren’t.”
“But if I am her child, why has she always hated me?”
“Do you really not know the answer to that?” Mrs. Atwater asked. “I should have thought by now someone would have told you.”
“Told me what?” More fear gripped him at the realization that, as mistaken as he had been, there was still some secret here, even if it was not the one he had expected.
Mrs. Atwater turned away and put down his hat on a chair. When she turned back to face him he saw that she seemed to be struggling with some strong emotion. “If you really don’t know the truth, it’s not my place to tell it to you,” she said at length. “I owe that much to Black Neville. He wouldn’t have wanted it known, and even though he’s been gone these many years, I owe it to him to keep his secret now.”
“Your loyalty does you credit, but it is misplaced. My father wasn’t faithful to you any more than he was to my mother. And why should you owe anything to him, when he wouldn’t acknowledge your son, Charles, who looks just like him?”
The warring emotions flitted across her face. He’d struck a nerve.
“He was a proud man, Black Neville was. But he didn’t abandon Charles, even if he wouldn’t claim him his own. He gave me that necklace for Charles, didn’t he? And when he gave me that necklace, he gave me every penny he had command of. He couldn’t have done more for any son.”
“I always wondered why he gave it to you. James was still alive and he was his heir. I always thought my father did it to pay for your silence because he’d passed off your child as his own, but if that was not the case, why did my father beggar his heir and give everything he had to Charles?”
“James was always sickly. You could see that just by looking at him. It was a wonder he lived long enough to marry that poor girl. Black Neville didn’t think James would live to inherit his title.”
“But James was not his only child,” Edward said softly. “He had me. I was strong and healthy.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Atwater agreed. “He did have you. But he wanted his real son to get his money.”
His real son? It took a moment for her words to sink in. Then, as Mrs. Atwater saw understanding flood into his eyes, her hand flew up to her face in dismay. “Oh I am such a blabbermouth! I meant to keep his secret. He cared so much that no one should ever know.”
“Know what?”
“That your mother had betrayed him with another man. What else could it be?”
What else indeed.
“You can see why I felt fond of you, now, can’t you. Once your mother had fallen pregnant with another man’s brat, he had no more care for her, and I had him all to myself. But I felt sorry for you, poor child, because none of them gave a snap for you, and it wasn’t as if you’d had any say in it.”
Then another realization dawned. “But if I’m not my father’s son, then I’m also not Lord Hartwood!”
“Oh, but you are, for he did acknowledge you. That was part of the bargain he made with your mother. It makes no matter to the law whose swiving did the work when a child is born to a woman joined in lawful matrimony. Not if the father won’t raise a stink about it. And he didn’t, even though he’d been in Paris with me from Michaelmas to New Year’s the year before your birth. You are his son in the eyes of the law and no one can challenge your title.”
“But why didn’t he raise a stink?”
“Pride. What else? He couldn’t bear the shame of going through a divorce, nor could he bear to be exposed in the press as a cuckold, as he would have been had he gone forward. So he agreed to acknowledge you as his son and let your mother remain his wife in the eyes of the world, though he told her were she ever to make another misstep, he would divorce her. He let her know, too, that she could never again utter a word of complaint about anything he did or he would reveal her shame to the world. So she lived with that hanging over her, and I imagine that is what pushed her to become the way she is now, obsessed with reputation and propriety.”
“So that was why she would never denounce anything he did, even when he ruined us by giving you that necklace.”
“It was. She knew what was due to her husband for giving her that second chance. Many another man would have cast her out when the truth had become known.”
“But if Black Neville was not my real father,” he whispered, “who was?”
“That was the worst part of it for him. Had your mother dallied with someone of his own rank, I think your father could have borne it. Lord knows he’d left his own cuckoo’s eggs in many another nobleman’s nest. But when he forced the truth out of your mother, he learned your father was some strolling player who had come through town, a handsome devil who had the reputation for playing Romeo on the stage and off.”
An actor. Of course.
Mrs. Atwater added, “I always thought she did it to get back at him for running off to Paris with me. Those women of the ton, they’re expected to ignore that kind of thing, but your mother was a woman of spirit and she rebelled, though she should have known better. Even a woman as strong as your mother wasn’t going to change a man like Black Neville. He liked his pleasures, and he didn’t like them interfered with. But if she had hoped to make him jealous by dallying with that actor, or thought it might bring him back to her, she was sorely mistaken. Her infidelity made him hate her. He never forgave her, and when he saw you growing up so healthy and strong while James was such a weakling it enraged him further. That’s why he gave me that necklace for Charles. It was her dowry money, and it pleased him greatly to give me all of it, to punish her for forcing him to leave his title away from his blood.”
Mrs. Atwater was still talking, but he could no longer hear her words. They were drowned out by the cacophony that rose within his heart. He was not Black Neville’s son. He was not the damned son of a damned race. He could not blame his nature on his father. He did not even know the man who’d been his father. And his mother’s lifelong hatred, the hatred that had poisoned his life, was no longer inexplicable. It was all too easily understood. It had nothing to do with his own character at all, only with the way that his very existence must remind her till she died of her one life-ruining mistake.
He thanked Mrs. Atwater for her frankness and stood up. When she handed him his hat and he put it on, he was almost afraid to look at himself in the glass hanging in the hallway. He hardly knew who he would find looking back at him. He no longer knew anything except he had let his own pain drive him to hurt his mother where she was most vuln
erable. Now Eliza would pay a terrible price for his blindness, unless he could somehow find a way to get his mother to relent.
Chapter 19
“Her Ladyship left no word as to when she will return,” the butler informed him on his return to the house, dashing his hopes that the situation could be resolved quickly. The butler believed Lady Hartwood had gone to visit Dr. Abercrombie, perhaps to receive one of his famous hydrotherapeutic treatments, but he was not certain.
There was no point in attempting to follow her to the doctor’s bathhouse. His mother would not thank him for interrupting her session, so he made his way down the passage to the library intending to wait for her there, only to find that it was already occupied by the Reverend Mr. Hoskins, the clergyman who had attended his brother on his deathbed.
The clergyman seemed surprised to see him. Addressing him in a low voice, he inquired as to why Lord Hartwood had not already returned to town.
“Surely you of all people must know the answer to that,” Edward replied. “You were present when my brother made his will. There is more than a week left to the term of the visit his will compelled. If I were to leave now, my mother must lose her home.”
“How very odd,” the Reverend Mr. Hoskins replied, screwing his face into an expression of surprise. “It has been two days at least since I informed Lady Hartwood that James’s will could not hold up in court.”
“Not hold up in court, but why?”
The clergyman assumed a solemn expression. “Alas, though it is hard for a man of the cloth such as I am to admit that religious sentiments such as those James Neville entertained at the end of his life might proceed from any but the most elevated of causes, I was forced to conclude that by the time he drew up the will in question, the balance of your brother’s mind was disturbed.”
“But how could you prove it?”
“Why, by citing the impropriety of the terms he included in that will—the terms that brought you here. Though your brother, looking into the abyss, saw too late the sinfulness of his previous life and hoped to atone for it by forcing a reconciliation between the sole members of his family he’d leave behind to mourn him, it was unconscionable that he attempted to force your mother, a virtuous woman, to associate with a son whose behavior has been such as yours has been. And had there been any further question of it being improper, your subsequent behavior upon your arrival here would answer it.”
The clergyman licked his lips nervously before continuing. “After discussing the situation with Lady Hartwood last week and being made privy to her understandable dismay at the situation into which James’s will had forced her, I informed the family’s solicitor I would be willing to testify in court as to the unsoundness of James’s mind in his final hours.” The clergyman’s voice grew conspiratorial. “I was in attendance, as you know, and was in a position to make a definitive assessment of his condition. Her solicitor then advised Lady Hartwood that, in view of my testimony, there could be no question that the court must set aside that will, and that James’s earlier will, which was drawn up at the time of his marriage would go into effect.”
“So there was no need for us to play out this travesty,” Edward said bitterly.
“None at all,” Mr. Hoskins assured him. “The earlier will leaves this house and its contents to Lady Hartwood for the term of her life, as well as any income from what was left of your brother’s personal estate. The rest reverts to you. But I confess myself astonished that your mother has not yet informed you of this.”
He was not at all astonished. This was the explanation for why his mother had moved against Eliza. Had he been informed that the will would be set aside, he would have left for town immediately, taking Eliza with him, and his mother would have lost the opportunity of retaliating against him. No wonder she had kept it secret.
But what was he to do now? If the will had been set aside, he had lost the last hold he had over his mother. His heart failed him when he considered the coming confrontation. He had nothing left to bargain with and she knew it.
Eventually his mother returned home and after a brief consultation with the Reverend Mr. Hoskins, who scurried away back to his burrow when it was done, she invited Edward into the front parlor. She took her old accustomed place in her armchair, but made no motion for him to sit down, so he was left standing in front of her feeling the way he’d felt when he had been a small boy sent to her for punishment. Fear, longing, and a dull unnamed pain warred for possession of his attention. He felt her loathing for him radiating out from her, as he always did in her presence. He felt, too, her pleasure in having finally got the best of him. It took all his control to stand before her, knowing he no longer had any control over her.
And yet, as the force of her anger washed over him, and he braced himself as if for a blow, something within him surged up and reminded him he was no longer a helpless child. He was a man. Nor was he the damned and evil man she’d always insisted he was. Eliza had shown him that. The loathing he felt for himself in his mother’s presence flowed through him, but now that he knew whence it sprang, he no longer fought it and he resisted the temptation to respond to her anger with his own.
She was his mother. He could no longer doubt it.
She had made a single foolish mistake out of thwarted love, and in so doing had lost what she held most dear. As he regarded her now, no longer peering through the distorting lens of his own anger, he saw for the first time a woman who had once been young and headstrong, who had loved a rake and failed disastrously in her attempt to make him love her back. Her lifelong hatred for himself had nothing to do with who he was or anything he’d done. It was only her response to the disaster she’d made of her own life. And as he saw this, a surge of joy rose within him and he knew that he was free.
Lady Hartwood motioned him to be seated, but he remained standing for a moment longer, still stunned by what he saw in her. Then it struck him that she might take his inaction as more rudeness. He could not afford to alienate her further, so he sat down.
“I have received a very strange letter,” she said after the silence had grown nearly unbearable.
“A letter?”
“From the creature who calls herself Mrs. Atwater.”
He said nothing, but anxiety rose within him. Why had Mrs. Atwater written to his mother?
“It appears she believes your doxy to be in some danger of being kidnapped and sent into a bordello. She makes wild accusations against the magistrate, a man I have entertained here in my own home. I find it difficult to credit such a thing. He is a man from the finest of families. Why, I’ve known his mother for years.”
Edward spoke carefully, not sure what else might be written in the letter. “I’ve heard such rumors, too. But you of all people should know that a son might have morals quite different from those of his mother.”
His mother nodded, not quite suppressing a look of triumph. She made a show of consulting the letter again, then put it down in her lap. He might be done with game playing, but she most assuredly was not. He would have to play this last hand with the greatest skill he’d ever employed. He considered his next move, reviewing every possible way he might sway her, before rejecting them all as useless, until like a gamester counting on one last throw to save him, he finally spoke.
“I don’t know what else Mrs. Atwater has written you,” he said quietly. “But you should know that I went to her to see if she could use her influence with the Regent to save Eliza. She told me she could not. She upbraided me for my behavior to you and told me you and you alone could save Eliza. She spoke the truth. I only ask that you let the punishment fall where it should, on my shoulders, and not on Eliza, whose only fault was to think her woman’s love could help me become a better man.”
“Women always think they can reform men like you,” his mother said bitterly. “I trust she has learned of her error.”
“I believe she has,” he replied quietly. “You should also know that I have offered for her and she has rejec
ted me.”
His mother looked at him with renewed interest. “She has more sense than I credited her with.” She brushed away an imaginary speck on her cuff. “It would be no pleasure even for a woman like her to be married to a rake like you.”
“That was exactly the sentiment she expressed in response to my proposal,” Edward said. “I don’t know that I shall be able to change her mind. I have done many things I’m not proud of, as you very well know, and they cannot be undone. But if there is any way I can prevent harm from coming to Eliza, I will do it, no matter what it might cost me.”
“It is easy to speak such words.” His mother sneered. “But they are only words—and you are a master of words. What are you willing to do to save her?”
He skewered her with his eyes. “Whatever it takes.”
A look of satisfaction spread over his mother’s face. “If you are truly willing to do what it takes, then perhaps we may deal together, at last, you and I. James’s previous will—the one the court will accept—doesn’t leave me nearly enough to live upon.”
Chapter 20
An hour later, Edward left his mother’s house clutching the paper she had signed, which announced her intention of withdrawing her charges against Eliza. The paper had not been bought cheaply, but he had given her all she asked for without argument. His money would mean nothing to him if Eliza suffered more harm.
He hurried to the magistrate’s house and pounded on the door. But the man who let him in informed him that His Honor had gone to a meeting of legal gentlemen and could not be reached until the morrow. Edward demanded to know where the meeting was being held but the man was close-lipped and would give him no further information. There was nothing for it except to come back the next morning.
But at least he could go and tell Eliza the news. The constable’s house was only a few streets away. He ran the whole distance.
The lights were off when he reached the house, as if the household were already asleep. He knocked on the door. It seemed like hours passed until it was opened. He was glad to see it was the constable who faced him and not a servant to whom he’d have to explain his mission. But when the constable realized who had summoned him an expression of dismay swept across his face.