“I am so sorry, Oliver,” Theo said, putting his hand on Oliver’s back.
“I must go. I need to speak to my father about this.” Oliver left them.
Theo looked questioningly at Beaujean, who raised his eyebrows and remarked, “Did you not see the dates upon the letters?”
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“Yes, I knew,” Mr. Hodge admitted. “Your mother, she confessed it to me, when she became with child.”
“Then I am, then I am really his…” Oliver broke off, his voice choked with tears.
“Ye bemyson, in all the ways that matter, Ollie!” Mr. Hodge declared, pulling his son into his arms. “I ne’er thought o’ ye otherwise, even knowin’ the truth o’ it! Especially after she died givin’ birth to ye. I couldn’t abandon ye, ‘n Lord Connally couldn’t claim ye for his own. He already had Theodore as his heir, and he didn’t want ye growin’ up as a bastard. Olivia and I had always wished for a child o’ our own, n’ ye were the answer to that prayer, even if ye came by way of another man. I always thought there must be summat wrong with me, seeing how we couldn’t produce a child o’ our own before then. I sometimes wondered if’n that’s what drove her into his arms. We tried so long, and she grew so distant from me. She worked up in the big house, ye might remember me saying, as housekeeper as it were. Began spending more time there, coming home later ‘n later. I didn’t sort out what was going on, not until she told me.”
“But why? Why would she choose a man like Lord Connally, a cruel hard man, when she had you?”
“Grief does strange things to a person. Hers was a grief over summat she never had. He weren’t always so cruel either. Before his lady died, he were a good man. I expect his grief is what led him to turn to her for comfort. Theo was only a babe when Her Ladyship died. I remember it so clearly. Most women be so joyful after the birth of a babe, but some, like Her Ladyship, take on a strange melancholy that they canna seem to shake. One day, I be workin’ in the orchard. It was early-like, just before sunrise. I saw Her Ladyship walkin’ out in her nightdress. I thought it odd, so I followed her. She went down to the ocean. It was high tide, and the waves were smashing against the cliffs. I shouted to her to stop, to come back. But ‘tweren’t any use. His Lordship told everyone ‘twas an accident, but I were the one who dove after her body, almost lost my own life in the process. ‘Twas already too late, however. I were the one who had to go up to the big house, carrying her in my arms.”
Oliver was sober. “Does Theo know all this?”
Mr. Hodge nodded. “I told him years ago, the last time he came back before going to Oxford. He knew I’d been the one to find her. He asked me how she died. Felt he ought to know the truth. Maybe it were a mistake, tellin’ him. I think it made him blame his father for it. He thought his father’s cruelty drove her into the sea.”
“Did it?”
“Hard to say. He weren’t understandin’ of her melancholy. Kept telling her to get over it, that she had a babe to think of and no reason to be sad. Maybe if’n he’d have got her a doctor or summat, she’d have made a recovery.”
“Such a tragedy,” Oliver shook his head.
“Indeed.” Mr. Hodge sighed. “As for the other matter, it be yer own choice whether to tell people ye be Lord Connally’s son, now that ye know.”
“No,” Oliver shook his head. “It would bring nobody honor, and besides, you are my real father, in all the ways that count, as you said.”
“Yer a right honorable man, Oliver Hodge, and I’m proud to call ye me son.” Father and son embraced once more.
Chapter 15
The resignation bond was found in one of Lord Connally’s bedside table drawers. For whatever reason it was never sent to his solicitor, but it clearly bore Mr. Bird’s signature as well as Lord Connally’s. Theo speculated that the Birds must have destroyed the copy held in the parish office.
Armed with the resignation bond, Theo gave the Birds three weeks to vacate the parsonage; just enough time for the Banns to be read before Oliver and Miss Greenbough’s wedding. Mr. Bird wanted to fight the document in court and claim that his signature had been forged, but Mrs. Bird, for the sake of seeing her favorite niece established as the rector’s wife, decided it would be better for all if Mr. Bird were to relinquish the living, as had been agreed upon. Mr. Bird’s uncle in Morley was doing poorly, they were told, and as he had no other heirs, they might come to receive an establishment even better than the living there. With this in view, they made ready to remove to Morley.
Oliver was to go to Oxford to receive his ordination there, and return in time to marry his bride in the very church he was to be rector of.
“I think it is time I departed also,” Beaujean told them. After the scandal with the Lord Mayor’s wife, he could no longer show his face in town. Their fight had been splashed all over the papers, for little made greater news in Scarborough than a fist-fight between a prominent member of the town and the guest of the baron. Thanks to it, his mother learned of his misadventures and threatened to cut off his allowance if he did not come home.
“I am to wed my cousin, at long last,” Beaujean said. “I have escaped the noose long enough, it seems.”
“Congratulations, Beau,” Oliver said. “Soon we shall both be married men.”
“Don’t congratulate me,” Beau laughed. “She has a face like a mare, and if it were not for her having a boatload of money, I should be very sorry to be wed to her. Though I do not suppose the bonds of matrimony shall stop me from pursuing pleasure where I like.”
Oliver shook his head. “You never know, Beaujean, you may come to fall in love with your ‘mare’. Give your marriage to her a fair chance, and do not go running after the first pretty skirt you see.”
Beau sighed. “If she can put up with living with a vainglorious fop, then I suppose I ought to.”
“There may be hope for you yet, Beau.” Theo smiled.
Beau's scandal had one positive to it: it eclipsed the revelation of Theo's being the real Lord Connally in the townspeople's minds. The result was that while the fight made the papers, the people were happy to whisper amongst themselves how odd it was that Lord Connally had chosen to return to Scarborough incognito with his friend in his place. Some attributed it to the eccentricity of the nobility, while a few who had remembered Theo and Oliver's childhood pranks, attributed it to more of the same boyish nonsense and declared that they “ought to have known better now that they were grown.”
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