“But then one of your students caught you together in a compromising situation and reported you to the headmaster. You lost your job.” Nate paused. “So how is it that both of you ended up in Westmorland with her married to Groby?”
Collins ruffled his blond hair and sighed. “I didn’t abandon her if that’s what you think. We were going to run away together, but her father discovered our secret and kept her under lock and key. He watched her every move. I had the idea of paying him off. But of course, there was the problem of money. I didn’t have enough, so I was forced to return home to Kent to borrow some from my father.”
“Kent? You said you were from York.”
Collins shrugged. “As you can see, I had things in my past that I wished to stay hidden.”
“Fair enough. And did your father give you the money?”
He chuckled sadly. “Of course not. I don’t know why I thought he would. He’s always been a bastard. But I was desperate.”
Nate nodded. He could relate. He knew what it was like to have a father who was constantly disappointed and refused to trust you. It was hurtful, and he’d made the same mistake Collins had madecountless times—thinking things would change. They never did.
“He’d received a letter from the headmaster, detailing my dismissal—as though I was a rusticated schoolboy and not a grown adult and schoolmaster. It was humiliating. He was furious to learn that I had been dismissed, especially under the circumstances. As far as my father was concerned, I’d disgraced the family name and dragged everyone down into the lowest gutter, and he wanted nothing more to do with me. He threw me out and cut me off without a penny.”
Nate could not help but feel some sympathy for the man. He knew all too well his pain. But he reminded himself, Collins could be a killer, and if so, he was likely a liar as well.
“Did the headmaster tell your father about the child?” Nate asked.
Collins paled.
“Mrs. Groby’s boy is your son, isn’t he?”
“How did you find out?” Collins said in a whisper.
“I guessed. It wasn’t difficult. I saw the way you looked at him.”
Collins ran a hand over his face. “None of this means that I killed Groby.”
“Agreed, but you have to admit it doesn’t look good. So why don’t you tell me how she ended up married to Groby instead of you?”
“Her father found out that she was with child, and near beat the babe out of her.” He swallowed as if the thought choked him. “Then he forced her to marry Groby. Sold her to him like one of his cattle.”
“All of this happened while you were in Kent, I presume,” Nate said, and Collins nodded.
“By the time I returned to Yorkshire, she was gone. He refused to tell me where she was. I inquired—begged—the surrounding farmers to tell me what they knew, but they all refused. I was an outsider—an interloper—and moreover, they were afraid of Lockwood.”
“So what did you do?” Nate asked. “How did you find her?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
Nate remained silent, watching the man. Whatever had happenedhad obviously taken an enormous toll on him. He’d paid a heavy price to find the woman he loved and his child, and it had been humiliating. That much, Nate could tell from the pained look on the man’s face. Nate felt a lump in his stomach. He, too, was having to pay a price and act the fool to stay in his son’s life. And that would continue for as long as Helen desired. He was at her mercy.
“Lockwood said if I worked on his farm for a year, he’d tell me where she’d gone. He said he’d turn me from ‘a posh know-it-all’ into a real man—a farmer who worked the land and a butcher who brought home his own supper. So that’s what I did.” He hung his head. “But one year turned into two and then three. He kept saying I wasn’t ready.”
“Good God!” Nate said.
“Then one day, his heart gave out, and he keeled right over in the field. I thought I would never find Alice, then, but a few days later, she arrived at the farm with Groby and my son, and another babe in her arms. I could hardly believe it when I saw her. All that time, Lockwood had been lying to me. Alice was already married.”
“But you weren’t prepared to lose her again, were you?”
He shook his head. “I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if I had to. Even if she didn’t love me anymore. I wanted to be close to her and to my son. But as it turns out, she did still care for me. Groby was good to her, but she didn’t love him.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Not in so many words, but I knew. I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me.”
“Still, she was married to him, so that should have been the end of it.”
