Justin fell silent.
“We promised each other there would be no more secrets,” she reminded him.
His muscles tensed. Hiran reacted by sidestepping into a prancing trot. Justin absently brought him back to a walk. “What would you like to know?”
“Any number of things,” she said. “To start with, why were you and your friends so driven to visit the Abbey? You’ve said it had nothing to do with the tales of buried treasure. I think it must have something to do with Sir Oswald. I know you disliked the man.”
“You think I didn’t like him?” Justin gave an incredulous laugh. “Helena, I didn’t dislike Oswald Bannister. I hated him. We all did. Finchley, Neville, Archer, and I. We hated him so much that we drove him to his death.”
Justin was glad he couldn’t see Helena’s face. It was bad enough to sense the shock coursing through her body. He didn’t need to see it registering in her eyes.
He guided Hiran down the beach at an easy walk. Helena was half-turned in front of him, as if she were truly riding sidesaddle. Her back fit snugly against his chest, her plaited hair a silken torment beneath his chin. All he need do was tip his head and he could nuzzle the soft curve of her cheek. He could capture her mouth with his.
God knew he wanted to. Memories of the kisses they’d shared at the Stanhope Hotel had intruded on his thoughts far too often of late. The feel of her in his arms. The taste of her on his lips. The way she’d looked at him as her fingers twined in his.
If he could recreate those moments…rekindle the tenderness between them…perhaps she would forget about his past. She would cease her questions about Oswald Bannister and they could truly contemplate some sort of a future together.
And perhaps Hiran might sprout wings and fly.
“What do you mean, drove him to his death?” she asked. “You didn’t—”
“No. We didn’t kill him. Though you must know there are those who think we did. Or, more precisely, that I did.”
“Bess told me he fell from the cliffs. She said there was an inquest.”
“Did she?” Justin wasn’t entirely surprised. There weren’t many in the village who would pass up the chance to apprise his future wife of his dastardly reputation. “Sir Oswald was ever disobliging. Not long after I returned from India, he drank himself into a stupor and staggered over the cliffs outside of the Abbey. People still enjoy speculating about it.”
Helena turned her head. Her hazel eyes were soft with concern. “Why did you hate him, Justin? Did he hurt you somehow?”
A bitter laugh bubbled in Justin’s chest. Hurt him? Good God.
He reined Hiran to a halt by the water. He lifted Helena down to the ground and dismounted. She waited, her drooping skirts draped over one arm, while he caught Hiran’s reins.
“Oswald Bannister was a brute and a bully,” he said. “He hadn’t a single shred of honor.”
“Many gentlemen don’t. I know that well enough. One can’t hate them all.”
“Yes, well…it’s rather different when the gentleman in question is one’s father.”
Helena’s brows shot up. “Sir Oswald Bannister was your father?”
“I believe so, yes.” Justin ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Mine and, possibly, Alex Archer’s. Probably both. I don’t know.”
She drew away from him. “Who was your mother? Was she…” Her voice sank to a scandalized whisper. “Was she his mistress?”
“Nothing so refined as that.” Justin couldn’t keep the bite of anger out of his words. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was confess his disreputable origins to the daughter of an earl. Not when that lady was his wife. Not when he was coming to care for her so very, very much.
He knew she would never look at him the same way again.
“My mother was his fifteen-year-old scullery maid,” he said. “Sir Oswald regularly debauched his female servants. So much so that the orphanage in Abbot’s Holcombe was under his patronage. It made a convenient place to dispose of his bastards.”
Helena’s countenance went pale as parchment. No doubt it was the most vile, despicable thing she’d heard in her whole life.
“Forgive me,” he said gruffly. “This isn’t the sort of thing one speaks of in front of a lady, is it? Yet another failing you may mark down to my lack of breeding.”
She didn’t appear to register his apology. “What of your mother?”
He shrugged. “A child herself and happy to be rid of an unpleasant burden. She likely went on to find employment somewhere more respectable. Either that or was sent to the workhouse. I never discovered what became of her. I couldn’t even manage to find out her full name. The orphanage didn’t keep very good records, you see. The proprietor was one of Sir Oswald’s cronies. He counted us little better than vermin.”
Helena said nothing. She merely looked at him, her mahogany brows knit in an elegant line. He hadn’t the slightest idea what she was thinking or feeling.
He stroked Hiran’s neck. Every instinct told him to cease talking. To keep the rest of the sordid history to himself. No good could come from sharing it. But something deep within him urged him to continue. He wanted her—needed her—to know him for who he really was.
“The first time we encountered Sir Oswald, he was riding through the gates of the orphanage, mounted atop the finest piece of horseflesh we’d ever seen. His clothes were equally fine. I can still recall the gloss on his boots. A blacking made with champagne, we surmised. Something mixed up special by his valet.” Justin managed a wry smile. “He rode past us like he was royalty. You can imagine the effect such a dashing figure would have on the imaginations of four young boys. Neville thought he was the king. But I—pathetic fool that I was—hoped he might be my father.”
“Because you resembled him?”
“I did, in a general way. He had black hair and blue-gray eyes. And he was tall—though I suppose every man seems tall to a lad. But I’d be lying if I said that was the reason. The truth is, I’d always dreamed I was destined for better things. A lost heir or some such nonsense. I could never accept my circumstances. It had to be a mistake, I reasoned. A mix-up by a local midwife or some cruel revenge plot which resulted in my being stolen from my well-to-do parents and hidden in an orphanage.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “I read a great many penny dreadfuls as a boy.”
Helena didn’t seem to find this fact amusing. “How did you discover who he was?”
“We followed him. We eavesdropped on his conversation with Mr. Cheevers, the fellow who ran the orphanage. Later, Finchley went through the files in the orphanage office. There wasn’t much to be found there, but there was enough to confirm our suspicions. The following week, we climbed down the cliffs at Abbot’s Holcombe. A fisherman kept an old boat tied in a cove nearby. We used it to row to the Abbey.”
Hiran chose that moment to nudge him in the shoulder with his muzzle.
“He’s growing impatient for his oats,” Justin said. “We’d better start back.”
He offered her his arm and she took it. Hiran walked along beside them on a loose rein.
“Why did you go to the Abbey?” Helena asked. “Was it because you wished to see him?”
“I wanted to meet him. To explain to him who I was. I thought, if he properly met me, if he could see how intelligent I was, how capable, he’d realize I didn’t belong in the orphanage.”
Her hand tightened on his arm. “What happened?”
“Suffice to say, it wasn’t the homecoming I’d envisioned. Sir Oswald was in the garden, tending his rosebushes. He wouldn’t admit to having sired me, or any of us. He wouldn’t even allow us into the house. When we pressed him on the subject of our mothers, he became vulgar and abusive. He ended by cursing the lot of us and chasing us off the property.”
Sir Oswald’s scathing response to the mere suggestion that Justin, or any of th
e orphans, might come and stay at the Abbey echoed in Justin’s mind.
“Are you mad? Do you think I’d let the bastard brat of some slut of a scullery maid live in this house? You aren’t fit for my stables, lad.”
“But you kept going back,” Helena said.
“So we did.”
“To what purpose?”
“In the beginning? We thought we could bring him round to us. It didn’t quite work out that way.”
Justin refrained from sharing the precise details. There was little point in telling Helena how Sir Oswald had thrashed Archer on their next visit. Or how, on their third, he’d leveled a pistol at Justin in a drunken rage.
“After that, we began to go there purely out of spite. The very sight of us riled Sir Oswald like nothing else. We’d play on his beach and muck about in his outbuildings. We’d dig holes in his gardens, or sneak in through a half-open window and replace his liquor with seawater. Stupid childish pranks.” Justin looked up at Greyfriar’s Abbey looming in the distance. “It escalated from there.”
“My goodness,” Helena said. “He could have had you arrested. Or worse. I can’t imagine why he didn’t.”
“Boothroyd talked him out of it.”
She frowned. “I hadn’t realized Mr. Boothroyd’s tenure as Sir Oswald’s secretary was of such long duration.”
“He’d come to work at Greyfriar’s Abbey a year or two earlier.”
“And now he works for you,” she said. “I find that very strange.”
Justin could see how it might seem so. To anyone who knew the substance of Boothroyd’s character, however, it made perfect sense. “He corresponded with Finchley and me over the years. He advised us on investments and the like. Boothroyd had a conscience, you see. He was a decent man—a loyal servant looking for a worthy master. It hadn’t taken him long to realize what sort of man Sir Oswald was.”
“Yet he remained in his employ.”
“A fact he regrets to this day. You might say that working for me is his penance. God knows it’s a thankless enough job.”
“He is faithful to you,” Helena conceded. “But that hardly excuses his having stood by and done nothing when you were a child.”
“Don’t judge him too harshly. After Neville’s accident, it was Boothroyd who arranged apprenticeships for Finchley, Archer, and me. He knew it was the only way to be rid of us.” Justin paused, adding, “Solving problems is Boothroyd’s particular skill.”
“He seems to have failed in this case. You’re here now, aren’t you? You own the Abbey.”
“True, but it kept us out of trouble for a time. With Finchley gone to London and Neville hurt, it was just Archer and me. And then, one day, Archer was gone. He broke his apprenticeship. Disappeared without so much as a word. I could find no trace of him anywhere.”
“Is that when you joined the army?” Helena asked.
He nodded.
“You must have done very well there.”
“Well enough.” He’d always been willing to put himself in danger. To take extraordinary risks. Some had called him heroic. The truth was, in the beginning, he simply hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. As a result, he’d earned the respect of his superiors—and risen swiftly through the ranks of enlisted men.
“How did you gain your captaincy?”
“A field promotion during the early days of the rebellion.”
“And Sir Oswald?”
Justin hesitated. It wasn’t a pleasant story. “I went to see him one last time before I left for India. It was the only occasion I ever confronted him alone. We stood, facing each other at the top of the drive. He’d been drinking.”
“How well you remember.”
“I could hardly forget. It was the day he admitted that I was his son. He said some foul things about my mother, and then he laughed. He told me that no one wanted me. That I was nothing, not to him or anyone. That I never would be. That’s when I promised him—” Justin broke off.
The memory left a taste in his mouth as bitter as poison. Never before, not even in his darkest days in the orphanage, could he recall having felt so alone. So unwanted. So angry.
“What did you promise?” Helena asked softly.
Justin looked down at her. “That I would come back to Devon one day. And that, when I did, I wouldn’t just take Greyfriar’s Abbey from him. I would take everything.”
Helena’s mind was in turmoil. She spent the rest of the morning on her own. She required time to think. To make sense of everything. She needed to make a decision about her future.
Such serious thinking was no small matter. She was restless with it. Unable to be still. She went to her room and sorted out her clothes. Her underthings would have to be laundered. As for her gowns…
She held up her other gray silk dress to the light, examining the wrinkles in the fabric and the stains on the bodice and skirts. Dirt, merely. A remnant of her tramp out in the rain yesterday and her ill-advised encounter with Justin’s muddy clothes.
“Gin,” Mrs. Standish said when she arrived to take away the laundry. “If there’s any left after Mrs. Whitlock’s had her tipple.”
Helena shot the housekeeper a questioning glance. “Gin?”
Mrs. Standish draped Helena’s soiled petticoats over her arm. “A boiled mixture of gin, soft soap, and honey. I’ll brush it over the stains. After it’s soaked awhile, I’ll give the silk a good sponging.” She narrowed her eyes at the gray silk dress Helena was currently wearing. “Those stains will be more difficult.”
Helena looked down at her skirts. Among the wrinkles and horsehair, she saw what looked to be oil stains. “Can you get them out?”
“They’ll need pipe clay, my lady. Or French chalk.” Mrs. Standish waited for Helena to strip out of her bodice and skirts. “I’m not a lady’s maid, ma’am.”
“No, indeed.” Helena handed the housekeeper her dress. “Thank you, Mrs. Standish.”
There was little point in explaining why she presently had no lady’s maid of her own, and really no need to do so. Mrs. Standish was the sort of servant who’d think less of her for making excuses. She’d only softened toward Helena when she’d heard Boothroyd referring to her as “my lady.” She expected a certain amount of aristocratic disdain.
It was not Helena’s way. She’d never been particularly top lofty with servants. They mayn’t have been her friends or her family, but in the absence of her mother, the staff at the family seat in Hampshire had looked after her. The cook had spoiled her with chocolate and biscuits in the kitchens. And the housekeeper had fussed over her like an old mother hen.
She would never look down on Justin because of his parentage. The fact that his mother had been a scullery maid in Sir Oswald’s household troubled her, it was true, but not because she was concerned with matters of wealth, rank, and breeding. It troubled her because it troubled Justin. The circumstances of his birth were clearly a source of pain to him.
It had seemed inadvisable to offer him words of comfort. Justin wasn’t the sort of gentleman who would appreciate a lady’s pity. But as he’d told her about his mother, and about his childhood hopes and dreams, she’d ached with sympathy for him.
Their upbringings couldn’t have been more different. She hadn’t been an orphan, and she certainly hadn’t been poor, but she could understand loneliness. She’d felt enough of it in her life. And after Giles had left for India…
She’d spent far too much time being listless and brooding. It was no wonder people had been so willing to believe she’d inherited her mother’s melancholy.
Would they be equally as willing to believe she was well? If they saw her in London, attending the theatre or dancing at a ball, would it be enough to convince them?
Her mind conjured an image of waltzing with Justin in a gaslit ballroom. She in a sleeveless, low-necked dress trimmed in Honiton lace and
he in an elegant black evening suit, whirling about the floor to the swelling sounds of a twenty-piece orchestra.
A romantic daydream, nothing more. But it caught at her heart.
She’d always been somewhat reserved with people. It wasn’t in her nature to giggle and flirt. Nevertheless, she’d once taken great pleasure in the entertainments of the season. She’d attended the theatre, played the pianoforte at recitals, and danced in crowded ballrooms. It had been expected of her. And she’d never minded it. She’d always been sure of herself and of her place in the world.
If only she could return to London with Justin and be as she once was. Confident and carefree. There were so many things she’d like to show him. So much she longed to experience with him at her side.
Why must it be a daydream? Why couldn’t such pleasures be real?
All it wanted was a little courage, Justin had said. Courage enough for her to face her uncle and Mr. Glyde. Courage enough to speak to the man at the newspaper. To risk her reputation.
Was a chance at happiness—at freedom—worth such an outrageous gamble?
She slipped on her one remaining dress and, after arranging her skirts over her crinoline and adjusting the plum velvet ribbon at her waist, she made her way downstairs. She found Justin in the library with Mr. Boothroyd, dictating a letter.
He’d changed from his riding clothes into black woolen trousers, a clean white linen shirt, and a black waistcoat. His frock coat was disposed over the back of a nearby chair. As if he’d removed it while working.
He didn’t hear her enter, but as she crossed the floor to the window, he turned his head and looked at her.
“Please don’t mind me.” She retrieved the copy of David Copperfield she’d been reading the previous day and settled herself in the window embrasure, her legs drawn up under her skirts.
After a long moment, Justin resumed dictating his letter. His voice was a deep, rich baritone. The lines of her book blurred in front of her as she listened. The substance of his words was unimportant. Something about a board of directors and a percentage of railway shares. But it didn’t matter what he said or to whom he was saying it. It was his tone which soothed her. The same tone in which he’d recited his marriage vows to her.
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