“It must be a relief to you to know that such a person has gone away, my lord,” Kate said, a note of polite concern in her voice. “Did he return to his mother?”
“I have not been interested enough to find out, Mrs. Mannering,” Lord Barton said. “I have assumed he has gone to Shropshire, where he has property, left him by a doting grandfather. Really I think Nicholas Seyton does not need the pity of any of us. He has done quite well for himself considering the lowness of his birth.”
“Do you think it will be safe for Kate and me to drive into the village this morning, Papa, if we take some extra servants?” Thelma asked. “I wish to discover if there are any shops worth patronizing there.”
Kate found that she had been almost holding her breath. But she relaxed again now. The subject had been effectively changed. And it was quite obvious anyway that the earl was not going to let slip any of the real truth concerning his relationship with Nicholas Seyton. She was pleased with her minor triumph, though. She was going to be allowed to work in the library. Somehow perhaps this activity would lead her to the discovery of some fact pertinent to Nicholas. And even if it did not, she had been quite sincere in saying that working in the library would be preferable to sitting idle in her room while Thelma was involved in activities with her guests.
The two ladies left the breakfast room and retired to their rooms to get ready for the proposed trip to Trecoombe, the small fishing village that was a mere four miles from Barton Abbey. Kate took her gray cloak from the wardrobe and arranged her gray bonnet over her smooth hair. She pulled a face at herself when she glanced into the pier glass in her dressing room. Perhaps she should have worn brown today. It was hard to decide which color was the more unbecoming. She remembered Nicholas’ reaction when he had seen her the night before, wearing just these garments.
And she must stop thinking about Nicholas in any remotely personal way, she told herself firmly as she tied the ribbons of her cloak at her throat. She would try in any way she could to learn more about him at the Abbey, despite his command that she involve herself no further in his affairs. But she would do so merely because she needed something to add a small measure of purpose and excitement to her existence. She would not think of him as a person at all.
But she did just that as she drew her worn black leather gloves slowly over her hands. Why must he have turned out to be such a selfish man? She had thought while he was kissing her that he was deliberately trying to make the experience pleasant for her. She had not realized that her own pleasure had been quite incidental, of no real concern to him at all. In reality he had been concerned only with his own sensations. He could not have proved that point more cruelly. Suggesting taking her to bed indeed! Had he really expected her meekly to agree? Of course, perhaps he really had been deliberately trying to please her, hoping that she would be so caught up in the delight of his embrace that she would consent to show her gratitude by allowing him to do “that” to her. Some chance indeed!
And when he knew that she was not going to allow him that liberty, he had quickly changed his attitude. He did not want to see her again. She must not try to visit him again. If she needed to see him urgently, she must send a message via one of the servants. Well, and so she would, too. She had no wish whatsoever to see Nicholas Seyton. His kisses were quite delightful, but she could never enjoy them again, knowing as she did that he used them merely as a trap to hurt and humiliate her. He did not need to order her to stay away, or even to ask. She would stay away from him of her own free will. The idea that she would give him freely what she had been obliged to give for five years to Giles all those dreadful times he had felt “that way”!
“I am no desirable suitor for you,” he had said, or words to that effect. Did he think she was quite mad? What woman, having once lived through the experience of marriage and been granted the blessed release of her husband’s demise, would ever freely subject herself to a life of such degradation again? And yet there were such women. Kate pitied them heartily. They must have far less freedom of choice than she had enjoyed in the previous year. The boredom that life with Lady Thelma promised was sheer heaven in comparison with the life she might have been called upon to lead. Her father could have put much pressure on her to marry again, she supposed. And it was very difficult to be an openly disobliging daughter.
Kate felt almost cheerful as she left her chamber to join her employer for their morning drive.
Three days later Nicholas was riding back along the road to Dorset. He was alone, though Parkin had wanted to go with him. The elderly valet could never quite accept the fact that Nicholas was a grown man now and perfectly capable of looking after himself. Of course, sometimes the poor man had plenty to worry about. But not on this occasion.
The journey into Wiltshire had been worthwhile after all. Dalrymple had been at home, and as luck would have it, he really had been invited to join the house party at Barton Abbey and was intending to come. Nicholas had not been at all confident that it would be so. Even if the new earl had decided to invite all his relatives, Charles Dalrymple was quite a distant connection, his grandfather having been a cousin of the old earl and the new earl’s father.
Nicholas had met him at university. The discovery of their fairly remote relationship had brought them together at first. They had become fast friends later because of their similar interests and compatible personalities. Dalrymple was one of the few members of society who had visited the Abbey in the last few years of the earl’s life. And Nicholas had visited him a few times. His parents had apparently raised no objection to Seyton’s illegitimate birth.
Now the two friends had met fleetingly again, and Charles Dalrymple had agreed, though reluctantly, to Nicholas’ request. It was a mad scheme, he had said. Even if the earl and his son and daughter would not know Nicholas, just about everyone else for miles around certainly would, including all the servants on the estate. It was all very well for his friend to claim that everyone in the vicinity was his friend, with the possible exception of the coast guard. Even friends sometimes made mistakes or dropped their guard. It was just too much to expect dozens of people of all classes and occupations to remember for a few weeks that he was no longer Mr. Nicholas Seyton but Sir Harry Tate. Someone was bound to slip up.
Nicholas had argued that he had proved over the past year that a large number of people could be trusted to keep secrets and to protect one another. He had trusted these people with his life during that year. Surely now he could trust them with this extra secret. Most of them were people who lived dull lives. They would welcome this extra challenge to their ingenuity. All he needed from Dalrymple was an introduction to the house. The rest could be left to him.
Nicholas had decided, after some deliberation, to tell his friend the truth. There was no reason to lie, after all. Dalrymple knew, then, that the new earl was possibly an impostor, that he had quite probably covered up the truth surrounding Nicholas’ birth. He knew that Nicholas felt it necessary to be at the house, free to look and listen and to take advantage of any opportunity to find out more about himself. The plan was no more definite than that. Nicholas did not know what it was he looked for or listened for. He knew only that he must find a way to make his cousin talk.
And so it had been decided that Nicholas would meet his friend on the morning of the latter’s expected arrival at Barton Abbey. In the meanwhile Dalrymple would write to Lord Barton announcing that an old friend of his had arrived unexpectedly for a visit and asking that he be allowed to bring that friend with him to the Abbey. They had decided to provide the fictitious Harry Tate with a title to make his acceptance by the earl more probable.
During the intervening days Nicholas was to return home and spread the word of his intentions among the people of the neighborhood. This was not such a formidable task as it might have seemed. There was already a quite effective network of communications in the area. If Barret, the head groom, were given some important information, the whole staff of Barton Abbey, from the butler to the lowliest scullery maid, would soon know it too. If Russ Evans had the same information, all the fishermen and their wives and all the inhabitants of the village of Trecoombe soon possessed the knowledge also. And if a significant word was dropped in the ear of Mr. Markham, gentleman farmer, that word would he in the ear of all the other members of the gentry for a five-mile radius within a day.
The efficiency of this system had been proved several times over the year since Nicholas had become aware of it. Now he used the network to spread the word that Sir Harry Tate, a young gentleman bearing a remarkable resemblance to Mr. Nicholas Seyton, was to join the house party at Barton Abbey the following week. An important part of the message, of course, was that the earl was not to be informed of the interesting resemblance between this visiting baronet and the bastard grandson of the late earl.
Nicholas felt no qualms about the workability of this scheme. The only people he had to fear were the soldiers of the coast guard, some of whom had met him when his grandfather was still alive. They were the only people he would have to avoid at all costs.
And then, of course, there was Katherine Mannering. It was very unlikely that she would recognize him from his appearance. Some details might give him away: his smile, perhaps; some chance mannerism that he was unaware of; his voice. He was thankful, at least, that he had always talked to her in that French accent, which she must have realized was fake, but which might now make his own voice less recognizable. But he was going to have to playact a little. He must practice over the days ahead.
He had not told Dalrymple about Katherine. He had not seen any necessity to do so. He had also not mentioned what she had told him that evening as he took her back to Barton Abbey. In fact, he had not thought of it a great deal himself until his journey home from Wiltshire. What on earth was the earl searching for in the library? He had not been there long enough to have lost anything. And he had been away for twenty years. Of course, perhaps he was not searching at all. Perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what Katherine had seen.
But Nicholas had so little to work with by way of evidence. His mind was prepared to grapple with anything that appeared in any way out of the ordinary. Assuming the earl was searching, what was he searching for twenty years after he had left? That letter from Nicholas’ mother? The old earl, always methodical and well-organized in his business dealings, had not been able to produce that letter for his grandson, yet he had not destroyed it. It had just disappeared, he had said, and the loss had annoyed him for years. He would have liked to have that at least to give his grandson when he himself was on his deathbed.
For how long had that letter been missing? Had Clive taken it? Or had it been lost some other way and he too wondered about its whereabouts? But would a man search for something lost twenty years before in a house that had been inhabited for all of those twenty years?
Would he? Nicholas tried to put himself in Clive’s place. He tried to think himself into his position. He had defrauded a boy of his birthright, and documentary evidence that could lead to an exposure of that fraud had disappeared in a building that he searched and left almost five years later. Twenty years after that his fraud finally paid off in a big way and he returned to that same building. Obviously that document had not been found in the meanwhile, or his fraud would also have been exposed. What would he do?
Nicholas knew what he would do. He would search, against all reason. He would feel anxious and insecure until he had found that letter.
If it was the letter. It was actually very unlikely that that would have disappeared purely by accident. What else could there be, equally important, perhaps even more so? What other document? It must be paper if the new earl was searching between the pages of books for it. Anything he had brought back with Nicholas as a baby he surely would have guarded with such care that it could not be lost. It would have to be something else. Something his father had brought back from France with him, perhaps?
What would his father have brought back? Nicholas had not been born yet, presumably. If he had and if his father and mother had been married, then surely he would have brought the two of them home with him. And they probably had not been married long. Again, if they had, surely his father would have broken the news to the old earl sometime before his death. His father and mother must have been married, then, shortly before the former’s return to England. But if they were married, then his father must have intended to return for his wife and child after the latter’s birth. Yet he had not told the earl during the few days that elapsed between the day of his return and the day of his death.
Had he been afraid, then, to broach the topic? What would he have brought with him from France? Some letter from his wife? He would have destroyed that surely if he did not wish anyone to see it. Papers, some certificate, to prove that the marriage really had taken place? Would he have felt that such papers would be necessary to prove the truth to his father when he finally summoned the courage to break the news to him? What would he have done with those papers in the meantime? He probably would have kept them safe in his room.
Yet if that were the case, they would have been found soon after his death, either by the earl or by his cousin Clive. Nicholas frowned. He was concentrating very hard to try to think his way back into the past. Had he completely missed the mark? His grandfather had never talked a great deal about his father. But from the little he had said, Nicholas had gathered that the earl had somewhat despised his son for timidity. If it were true and his father had been unnaturally afraid of revealing the truth about his marriage to the earl, how would he have felt about leaving those marriage papers in his room, even if they were safely secreted in a drawer? Would he have tried to hide them in a safer place?
