She looked down at the registry on the table.
“He has ‘such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness,’” Simon said loud enough for Sir Williamson to hear.
She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Simon quoting Shakespeare at Sir Williamson’s expense was adorable. His mischievous wink before he pulled himself back into his chair with a barely perceptible wince, seemed to hint at how they could quote Shakespeare in the future.
“Are you quite finished with your tedious insults?” Sir Williamson asked as he stalked back toward them.
“‘A pox damn you, muddy rascal.’Muddy rascal!” Charlotte chirped from her perch as she began flapping her wings.
“I was about to say I thought his hearing was better than Charlotte’s, and although that may be true, it is obvious she has a better appreciation for Shakespearian insults.”
She laughed, a sense of weightless joy coming over her in a way she couldn’t quite explain. It was as if she had been carrying around a huge sack of guilt, sorrow and anger over the past year, and Simon had lifted it from her shoulders.
Sir Williamson returned to his seat and touched the registry. “Would you like to see the recording of your parents’ marriage?” He asked in a tone that was as detached and self-possessed as it had been before her display of emotion.
Over a decade ago, her world had been turned upside down, and Sir Williamson was about to give it all back. This was the evidence that would prove their legitimacy that had been in question since she was twelve years old.
She looked down at a worn red ribbon with frayed edges sticking out of the bottom of the book, nearly three quarters of the way through the registry. “Yes,” she said, and watched as he opened it to the page marked by the ribbon, then pushed the book closer for her to see.
Caillen scooted to the edge of her seat to scan the writings. Various names were scrawled across the page, along with the vicar’s signature at the end of each line.
Sir Williamson right index finger glided down the page and stopped toward the bottom where she saw her parents’ names neatly written on the eighteenth day of May 1788: Lady Elizabeth Marie Sinclair Blair and Mister Duncan Dorian Blair witness by Margaret Mary Sinclair and Edward Bradley Timothy Sinclair with Reverend Bishop’s signature at the end.
“My mother’s aunt witnessed the ceremony? But that means there were witnesses all along who could have vouched for our legitimacy,” she said, stunned.
“Your mother’s aunt and uncle died before she did, and her parents soon after. The vicar died a month before your father at age of seventy-five. There was no one who had first-hand knowledge of your parent’s wedding except the vicar’s younger brother.”
“Even he was in his late seventies when I obtained the book from him,” Simon added.
She turned to him. “But how did you know where to find him, and that he still had it?”
“Let’s just leave it at a bit of luck, and that the man had a change of heart and wanted the book to be back on British soil where it belonged.”
Simon met her gaze and a smile broke out across her face. “I’m not a bastard.”
“You’re not a bastard,” Simon repeated matching her smile with one of his own.
“My sisters will be ecstatic!”
“You cannot tell your sisters,” Sir Williamson declared as he thumped the book closed, almost taking her fingers with it.
“But they have a right to know,” she protested.
“This is what almost got you killed the night of the fire,” Sir Williamson said.
“But why?”
“The man who ordered the book destroyed was desperate to hide your parents’ marriage. I can only surmise that it was the same reason your father was killed.”
“For their land,” Simon said.
“For the land,” Sir Williamson confirmed.
“You think my father’s heir killed him for the land?”
Sir Williamson’s voice took on a quiet, deadly air. “No, I believe it was the Duke of Ross.”
“That’s absurd,” Simon responded instantaneously.
