“No, indeed, for I should not like to be plain Mrs Fielding.”
He folded his arms and looked askance at her. “Are you so set on a title? Is it really so important?”
“It is. I want to be respected, Papa. I want all those superior folk at Marshfields to acknowledge that I am every bit as good as they are.”
He was silent for a long time, then he said slowly, “But you are not, Bea.”
It was as if her heart had stopped beating. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “I know you were an attorney once but—”
He waved her to silence. “It is not that. Not entirely that, anyway. Bea, your mother was already with child when I married her. She had… there was a man, he left her in difficulties, she told her father, and he asked me to marry her. I was only two and twenty, and still learning my trade under her father, but I had been in love with Eloise since the day I met her. I had always hoped one day to be made a partner in the business and marry her, but there it was, offered to me at once. We were married within days.”
“But who is my father?”
“Iam your father!” he said with fierce intensity. “In every way that matters, I am your father. I held you in my arms the day you were born, and I have loved you unreservedly ever since. I will always love you unreservedly, because that is what fathers do.”
She was shaking, she realised. Why had she never been told this before? “Who knows about this?”
“Everyone in Newcastle, of course, for they can all count and you were born seven months after we married, and since your mother was staying with her cousin in Hartlepool, you are clearly not of my blood. But no one there treated you in any way disrespectfully, or Eloise, either. In an attorney’s family, noone cares. It was only when I came into my fortune and we moved up in the world that it seemed to matter, so I told your stepmother of it. Unfortunately, her relations found out about it, too, probably from connections at Newcastle, and now they hold us in contempt — you for tainted blood, as they see it, me for accepting another man’s child, and your stepmother for marrying into such a disreputable family.”
“I do not see why anyone needs to know,” Bea said with sudden heat. “It is what I am that matters, surely, not who my father was.”
“For my part, I agree entirely, but these aristocratic families are obsessive about blood lines. There is also your mother’s behaviour — getting herself with child before marriage. That shows a certain wildness, which might also show itself in you. When you come to marry, your husband will have to know, naturally, but if there had been any defects in your ancestry, they would surely have manifested themselves by now. So now you know why some of the Marshfields family look down on us, and many of their acquaintances in town, although not all, happily. The Athertons never minded about it. And I suspect that no one here knows of it, for you have been treated with every courtesy, have you not?”
She nodded, not sure she could trust herself to speak. She was as good as illegitimate! Her mother had been… she did not even know the word for it, except the Biblical ones that even Mr Dewar would not speak out loud.
“What can I do?” she whispered.
“You can forget all about it and be your own natural self,” he said promptly. “I once thought… well, part of the reason for marrying your stepmother was the idea that she could teach you to be demure and ladylike, but I have come to realise that I like you much better the way you are, bumptious and unladylike as you sometimes are.” He grinned. “And so will your husband,when you find the right man. So do not focus your search too narrowly on noblemen. A title is no guarantee that a man is of good character. Let your heart be the judge, Bea. Find a man who loves you for yourself, just as you are.”
“Unreservedly?”
“Unreservedly,” he said, smiling at her. “That is a love that will last for your whole life, and is a thousand times better than a peer’s coronet, believe me.”
21: A Lady In Distress
Bea was stunned. She felt just the way she had when she had fallen out of the old apple tree at the age of six or seven, all the breath knocked out of her and her lungs incapable of bringing in more. Everything she knew about herself was wrong. Even Aunt Betty, her father’s oldest sister, who had looked after her for years, was not her aunt at all.
After her father had gone to change, she walked blindly out into the garden, finding even the high ceilings of Landerby too oppressive in her current mood. She needed air, cool air and a fresh breeze. What she found was air that was still damp from the rain, but at least it was pleasantly cool, and there was a slight breeze to fan her.
She walked here and there, although she hardly knew where, but only one thought was uppermost in her mind — how arrogant she had been, to think herself just as good as these people! To aspire to marry into the nobility! And all the time, she was no one at all, the child of an unknown father and a mother who was what Mrs Dewar described with a sniff of disapprovalas a‘fallen woman’.Someone who conceives a child without a husband, although Bea was hazy about quite how that could happen. Nobody took much notice if it was Maisie Whyte, the smith’s daughter, but if it happened to a gentleman’s daughter she was described as‘ruined’and obliged to marry in haste to the nearest man who would have her. It was the same with an attorney’s daughter, apparently, for her mama had been swiftly married to her father.
And if she had not, Bea would have been a bastard and not a respectable, or at least arelativelyrespectable daughter of a gentleman.
She found herself beside the nymph fountain, without the least idea how she had got there. It seemed a suitable place to stop her agitated perambulations, however, since the marble bench had been sheltered from the rain by the shrubs towering over it, and so was merely a trifle damp.
It was there, as she sat contemplating the poor, neglected statue, that she reached a resolution. She must stop chasing after the mirage of a titled husband, now that she knew her true origins. In fact, she was not at all certain that she was a fit wife for anyone. She would go home and be good and work at her tapestry, and try to be worthy of whatever man deigned to offer for her. Perhaps she should accept Mr Fielding after all, and live in the snug parsonage…? No, she was not quite that desperate.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she almost jumped in shock when a tall figure loomed over her. But it was only the marquess, his face creased in worry.
“You are s-s-s… unhappy, Miss F-F-Franklyn.”
“Oh… not really… it is nothing that need alarm you, Lord Embleton. I have just received a shock, that is all.”
At once, the worry lines deepened. “Not a death in the family? Not a t-t-tragedy?”
He sat down beside her, taking her hand in his. Without gloves, it felt scandalously intimate to hold hands in that way, but she did not want to insult him by snatching her hand away. He had attractive hands, she decided, soft and white and cool. Not as shapely as Bertram’s, which were long and slender, but very pleasant to hold.
“No, no, nothing tragic. Nothing recent, in fact. Some family history of which I was unaware, that is all. Something a little surprising… about myself, so I have come to realise that I have been very foolish, and setting myself up for failure. I came to Landerby to find—”
