* * *
A split second before he heard Anna scream, Barrington straightened. With deadly intent, he lunged, moving at incredible speed and catching Hayle completely off guard. He stabbed him first in the left leg to disable him, then in his right shoulder to render his sword arm ineffectual.
The earl’s son screamed in pain as the sword fell uselessly from his hand. As he sank to the ground, Barrington saw the look of disbelief on his face. He hadn’t expected that final rally. Hayle had been preparing himself for victory, readying his blade for the killing blow, his wounded opponent all but vanquished.
Instead, he was the one now down on the ground, blood flowing freely from wounds in his leg and his shoulder. He would live, but he would never fight with that arm again. Only then did Barrington turn and see Anna flying across the grass towards him. Anna, her eyes wide, her face white with fear. ‘Barrington! Oh, dear God!’
And then she was in his arms, heedless of his blood soaking into her gown. He gasped at the pain her embrace caused, but there was no way in hell he was going to push her away. Not now when he felt the wetness of tears on her face. He closed his eyes and held her close as his knees finally gave way and he sank wearily to the ground.
‘Barrington!’ she cried, falling with him.
‘I’m fine, Anna,’ he whispered. ‘Fine. I just need to…sit down.’
Seconds later, Peregrine came running. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ He looked in horror at Edward lying on the ground, and then at Barrington bleeding in Anna’s arms. ‘What in blazes—?’
‘Lord Hayle and I had some…unfinished business,’ Barrington murmured over Anna’s head. He handed his sword to Peregrine with the instruction that he watch Hayle, then he tipped Anna’s face up to his. ‘It’s over, love. Everything’s going to be all right now.’
He stared down into her eyes and saw everything that mattered to him. Everything that ever would matter. She was his now and for always. And he was never going to do anything to risk losing her again.
That was his last thought as he slipped into darkness and the pain in his shoulder mercifully disappeared.
* * *
It was a tense party that gathered in the Earl of Cambermere’s library just over an hour later. Barrington, his shoulder bandaged and wearing a clean shirt lent to him by Peregrine, held a large glass of brandy in his good hand and Anna sat next to him wearing a new gown, her previous one having been liberally stained with his blood. Peregrine sat in the chair in front of the fireplace, looking deeply upset by all that had gone on, and the earl sat behind his desk, looking equally troubled as he nursed an even larger glass of brandy.
Only Edward was absent, his injuries being tended to upstairs by the surgeon his father had called in immediately upon the party arriving home.
A few minutes later, the door opened and the surgeon came in. Instantly, the earl was on his feet. ‘Well?’
‘Your son will be fine,’ Mr Hopkins said with a weary smile. ‘I’ve stitched the wound and given him a sedative for the pain. I doubt he’ll wake up for some time.’
‘How serious are his injuries?’ Anna asked.
‘The injury to his thigh was superficial, but he won’t have much use of his right arm.’ The surgeon glanced at Barrington. ‘I suspect the only reason he’s still alive is because you knew exactly where to strike.’
‘It was never my intention to kill him,’ Barrington said quietly. ‘Only to prevent one of us from being killed.’
‘Then you have my congratulations on a job well done. I’ve left some laudanum on the table by the door for you, Sir Barrington. It will help ease the pain.’
Barrington nodded. ‘Thank you, Mr Hopkins.’
‘Yes, thank you, Hopkins,’ the earl said gruffly. ‘Good of you to come so quickly.’
The surgeon smiled. ‘I’ll add it to the bill. Goodnight, all.’
Cambermere waited for the surgeon to leave before saying, ‘Now would someone please tell me what in God’s name happened tonight?’
Barrington glanced at Anna, but realised she was still too shaken to talk about it. Given that Peregrine didn’t look much better, Barrington said, ‘I think it falls to me to explain, my Lord. And as much as I regret some of what I am about to say, I’m afraid you need to hear it all.’
The earl grimaced. ‘Say what you must. I shall bear it as best I can.’
So Barrington told him, beginning with Hayle’s taking up with Elizabeth Paisley, followed by the details of his plan to have her steal the baroness’s necklace and finally his reasons for placing the necklace in his father’s room. He purposely made no mention of the conversation he’d had with Hayle regarding his feelings towards Peregrine, knowing it would reveal more than he—and likely the earl—wished to, but what he did say was damning enough.
At the end of the lengthy telling, the earl abruptly stood up, his face devoid of colour, his brown eyes deeply troubled. ‘Why?’ was all he said. ‘I’ve never been hard on Edward. Never forced him to do anything he had no wish to do. And I gave him everything he asked for.’
‘I’m sure you did all that and more,’ Barrington said. ‘But when you invited Peregrine to come and stay with you, everything changed. It’s time, my Lord,’ he said softly. ‘You can’t keep this a secret any longer.’
He felt Anna stiffen on the sofa beside him, but knew the time for deceit was over. She had to hear the truth and she had to hear it from her father’s lips.
Cambermere obviously knew it, too. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said finally. ‘It was naïve of me to think I could keep the secret for ever. A man’s past is never truly past.’ He looked at Anna and sadly shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I should have told you the truth straight away. Before Peregrine even got here. But I was afraid you would think badly of me.’
‘I could never do that, Papa.’
‘You might over something like this.’
‘Like what?’
The earl sighed. ‘The fact that Peregrine is my son.’
Barrington heard Anna’s muffled gasp, but it was to Peregrine’s starkly white face that his gaze was drawn. ‘I’m what?’
‘It’s true,’ the earl said. ‘I met your mother when I was nineteen. We fell madly in love and it was my dearest wish that we be married. But my father wouldn’t allow it. Olivia wasn’t well born and I was heir to an earldom. So while my parents didn’t object to our friendship in the beginning, they did once they saw it getting serious. When I told my father I was in love with Olivia, he forbade me to see her ever again.’
‘Oh, Papa,’ Anna said softly.
‘We were both heartbroken,’ the earl said quietly. ‘At that age, love is so keenly felt, as was the pain of our enforced separation. But I had no choice. I had duties and obligations. Responsibilities to my name. So I made the decision to break it off. I never saw Olivia again.’
‘But what about Mama?’ Anna asked. ‘Did you not love her?’
‘Yes, but not in the way I loved Olivia. I’m sorry, my dear, but you may as well know the truth. My marriage to your mother was arranged and the love we came to feel for one another developed over time. But what I felt for Olivia was entirely different. Something that only comes along once in a lifetime. Peregrine is the result of that love.’
‘But how could you just leave her like that?’ Peregrine asked in a harsh whisper. ‘You got her with child and then just…walked away?’
‘I never knew she was increasing,’ the earl said, the sadness in his voice reflected in the bleakness of his expression. ‘I was sent away to Europe. When I got back, it was to find the preparations for my marriage to Isabel already underway.’
‘How did Mama feel about the marriage?’ Anna asked.
‘We liked each other well enough. Your mother was high born and beautiful, everything a man could ask for, and we were married a few months later. The problem was, I was still in love with Olivia.’
‘But you never saw her again,’ Peregrine said grim
ly.
Cambermere shook his head. ‘I went looking for her when I got back, of course, but she was gone. And I had no idea there was a child until two months ago when the man you believed to be your father wrote to tell me about you.’
‘But how did he know?’
‘Apparently, Olivia fell ill not long after I was sent away. When she found out she was…dying—’ the earl’s voice caught, but he forced himself to go on ‘—she gave you to her sister, Mary, to raise. But she made Mary promise not to tell anyone who your father really was. Mary kept that promise until the night before she died. Only then did she tell her husband who you really were and that it was only right I be contacted and made aware of your existence.’
It was a shocking story and Barrington wasn’t at all surprised that no one in the room spoke for a few minutes. They all had much to come to terms with. The knowledge that Cambermere had been in love with another woman before he’d met his wife. The fact there had been a child from that ill-fated love, and the fact that only three people had known the truth about Peregrine’s existence.
‘So, Peregrine really is my half-brother,’ Anna said, the first to find her voice.
‘Yes, my dear, he is,’ her father said. ‘And I hope you will believe me when I say that I was as deeply shocked when the letter arrived telling me about him as you are now.’
Anna nodded, her eyes heavy with regret as she glanced at Barrington. ‘I’m so sorry, Barrington. I should never have doubted you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it does.’ Anna turned to glare at her father. ‘You should have told us the truth, Papa. As soon as you found out.’
‘I know. I thought you might have realised it the first day Peregrine arrived,’ Cambermere said. ‘Edward saw it straight away.’
Anna shook her head. ‘I wasn’t looking. You introduced him as your godson. I had no reason to suspect otherwise.’
‘But if you knew who I was when you wrote to me,’ Peregrine said slowly, ‘why didn’t you tell me when I first arrived in London?’
‘Because I wanted the three of you to get to know one another without any kind of prejudice standing in the way,’ the earl explained. ‘Perhaps that was naïve of me, but I thought it would be easier for you to become friends if you didn’t know about the connection. Wrong, I know now, but that was the decision I made.’ He glanced at his daughter, his eyes pleading with her to understand. ‘I knew it would be difficult to explain my having a child with another woman. You loved your mother deeply and I feared you would see it as a betrayal of her that I had been with another woman, even if happened before your mother and I were introduced. I didn’t want you to hold that against Peregrine. It wasn’t his fault.’
‘But it mattered to Edward,’ Anna said sadly. ‘He knew who Peregrine was and he wanted nothing to do with him.’
‘It was worse than that,’ Barrington said. ‘Your brother wanted to humiliate Rand, the way he felt he’d been humiliated by your father’s bringing Peregrine to London. Edward was convinced that if he knew Peregrine was your father’s son, so would the rest of society.’
‘And did they?’ Anna asked.
‘I’d be lying if I said there hasn’t been speculation about it. Nevertheless, it was Edward’s intention right from the start that Peregrine should fail.’ Barrington said. ‘He introduced him to Lady Yew, knowing her penchant for younger men, and made sure that Peregrine knew the truth about the state of the Yews’ marriage. He encouraged him to become Lady Yew’s lover, and he used that to try to set your father against Peregrine, and perhaps against you as well.’
‘That’s why he tried to make it look as though I’d stolen the necklace,’ the earl said sadly.
Barrington nodded. ‘He knew you wouldn’t go to jail, but that your standing in society would be hopelessly compromised. That’s what he was counting on. He also planned on courting the baroness in the hopes of eventually marrying her. He felt that by showing you in such a bad light, and himself in such a good one, she would eventually transfer her affections to him.’
‘Dear God,’ the earl whispered. ‘What did I do to deserve such hatred from my own son?’
‘He didn’t hate you, Papa,’ Anna said sadly. ‘He was just eaten up by jealousy.’
‘And by his fears, irrational as they were,’ Barrington said. ‘Perhaps he was afraid you might have made Peregrine your heir.’
‘No,’ the earl said firmly. ‘Whatever my feelings for Peregrine, Edward is my legitimate heir. The title must devolve to him.’
‘But what of his future now, Papa?’ Anna said. ‘He cannot stay here. Not after what he did to you and Peregrine. To say nothing of the fact that he tried to kill Barrington tonight.’
‘My lord, if I may…?’ Barrington interjected.
The earl nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘It might be in everyone’s best interests if Edward were to…go away for a while.’
The earl frowned. ‘Go away?’
‘To the Americas, perhaps. Or Australia. A man can do well in such places if he applies himself and your son is far from stupid. He is simply a victim of his own insecurities. This could be a chance for him to make something of himself. More importantly, it would get him away from London and give the rest of you time to work matters through. And, hopefully, to put all of this behind you.’
Anna nodded. ‘I think it’s an excellent idea. I don’t see how any of us would be able to carry on as normal, given what’s happened.’
‘No, I don’t suppose we would. But what about you, Parker?’ the earl asked, his voice laced with regret. ‘There’s no getting around the fact that my son would have killed you. You would be perfectly within your rights to have him brought up on charges.’
‘Perhaps, but I have no intention of doing so. I would never wish that kind of grief on your family. Your son acted out of jealousy and fear. He is tortured enough by his demons. There is no need for me to add to his suffering,’ Barrington said.
All eyes turned to the earl, who seemed to be considering the suggestion. ‘Are you sure you would be amenable to seeing him walk away? You may never wield a sword with that arm again.’
Barrington shrugged. ‘Since I am able to fence with either hand, it is of no real consequence. It is enough that Edward experience life elsewhere. Perhaps it will force him to take a closer look at his life and to rethink his priorities.’
‘I sincerely hope so,’ the earl said heavily. ‘A man’s son is said to be a reflection of himself. I hate to think that in some way I inspired that kind of belief system in him.’ He glanced at Peregrine, who was sitting quietly in the corner, and said, ‘And what about you, sir? What have you to say about all this?’
Peregrine looked up, still clearly in shock. ‘What can one say upon learning that the man he has always believed to be his father is not, and that a man he never knew existed until a few weeks ago is.’
‘A shocking revelation indeed,’ the earl agreed.
‘Also, that I have a half-brother and half-sister I never knew, and that one of them hated me enough to wish his own father grievous harm.’ Peregrine shook his head, his eyes troubled. ‘It is a great deal to come to terms with.’
‘Indeed it is,’ the earl said quietly. ‘But it is my sincere hope that you will stay here and get to know us better while you are endeavouring to do so. However, if you feel you cannot stay under the present circumstances, you are free to leave. Perhaps you will wish to return to the family you left behind.’
‘Actually, I would rather stay in London,’ Peregrine said slowly. ‘One of the reasons my father…that is, the man I thought was my father wrote asking you to take me, was so that I might have a chance to experience life beyond the farm. I think he knew I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. And while they were good to me, I doubt going back there now would be in anyone’s best interests.’
‘Then you are welcome to stay,’ the earl said. ‘If Anna has no objections?’
‘None what
soever,’ Anna said immediately. ‘I don’t like Peregrine any the less for having found out he’s my half-brother. In fact,’ she added with a smile, ‘I like him a great deal more.’
‘Good. Then the decision is yours, Peregrine. If you wish to stay in London, we will be happy to have you. And if you do not wish to live in this house, you may choose another,’ the earl said. ‘I shall see to it that you are taken care of and that you are acknowledged as my son.’
Peregrine stared. ‘You would do that?’
‘Why not? I’m not ashamed of you. Far from it,’ the earl said softly. ‘You are all I have left of Olivia and I loved her with all my heart. I see so much of her in you and I deeply regret that you did not have a chance to know her. She was…an exceptional woman.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me about her,’ Peregrine said slowly. ‘I would like to know who she was.’
‘I would be honoured,’ the earl said. Then, roughly clearing his throat, he got to his feet. ‘Well, it’s late and I think enough’s been said for now. Parker, my carriage is at your disposal. Or, you are welcome to stay here if your injuries are such that you would rather not travel.’
‘Thank you, my Lord, but I would like to return home.’ Barrington stood up, wincing slightly. It was one thing to pretend his injuries weren’t serious; it was quite another to believe it. ‘You have enough to contend with here, I think.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ Anna said, quickly getting to her feet.
They walked to the front door in silence. Barrington was very aware of Anna beside him, but the situation was too fraught with emotion to speak of important matters now. The embrace they had shared in the park, the passionate words they had exchanged, would all have to be addressed, but not tonight. ‘May I call upon you in a few days’ time?’ he asked as they stood together at the door. ‘There are things that need to be said.’
‘Of course,’ she said, her expression faltering ever so slightly. ‘Are you sure you’re well enough to drive home, Barrington? You’ve been through so much tonight.’
He gave her a weak smile. ‘We all have. Given that I won’t be the one driving, I’ll be fine. But I am in need of rest.’
Brushed by Scandal Page 26