Chapter Fourteen
It was their third day at Avelynd when word reached them in the form of a simple missive delivered bearing a black-and-gold wax seal.
There was no mistaking from whom the familiar stationery had come.
Fletcher opened the missive even as Daphne, having recently luxuriated in a bath of heated rainwater, dragged a comb through her damp hair before the fireplace.
“What has she said? Are they still searching for us?” she asked.
Fletcher read it once more to be sure. “There is no they. Only he… and your father has returned to London alone. Lord Pozenby has expired from a seizure of the heart. According to reports from the innkeeper in Nottingham who sent his earthly remains to his next of kin, said seizure was brought on by Pozenby’s own foul temper…
We are not hunted. At all. I’m not certain how to feel about that. ”
“Why on earth not?”
He shrugged. “Because now we have no reason to continue hiding away here in our little sanctuary… we will have to return to London and deal with business matters.”
“You mean my inheritance,” she said.
“I mean your fortune, yes. And it is that… We may have embarked upon this journey—each of us for our own reasons—to marry and escape our problems, but I don’t want you to think that is the only reason.
Your inheritance, Daphne, is the thing that brought us to this point, but it isn’t why I wish to stay.
I’d live here like this, just the two of us fending for ourselves until the bailiffs cart everything away, but for one thing. ”
“And what is that?”
Fletcher passed her the note, paying particular attention to the way her hands trembled.
Lord and Lady Aldwyn,
I write to inform you of the recent demise of Lord Cecil Pozenby.
A seizure of the heart induced by his own discontentment led to his death at the Wellbridge Public House and Inn at Nottingham just two days past. Upon his death, Mr. Reginald Acres returned to London alone and promptly petitioned a suit against you for Criminal Conversation.
I’d advise an immediate return to London to manage the situation lest scandal become untenable.
Yours,
Mrs. BDL
“He wouldn’t!” Daphne cried. “Surely, he would not be so selfish as to drag us all through the mud and muck for financial gain!”
“Daphne, he was willing to force you to marry Pozenby,” Fletcher replied easily. “I think it safe to say, he’d do anything.”
The letter fell to her lap. “Of course. You are entirely correct… he’s shown me time and again how heartless and unfeeling he can be. My mother—well, she simply can’t be bothered, can she?”
“We will do what you want in this situation. If you wish to give your father enough of the money that he goes away and leaves us be, then we will. We will find some way to make everything work, otherwise.”
“No. I don’t want him to have anything… the point of fact is that the inheritance is from my maternal grandfather.
The woman I call mother is in fact my stepmother.
My father married her when I was but an infant after my own mother died.
And he never allowed anyone to speak of her, as if she were somehow a dirty secret to be kept.
I was twenty before I even knew her name, and then it only occurred because my grandfather, her father, passed away and left me with this ridiculous sum of money.
Then my father had to own the truth of it or I’d have never known,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.
“I wonder how different things might have been had she lived. Would she have bowed to his wishes as my stepmother did in all things? Or would she have defended me? Would she have refused to let him barter me off to Cecil Pozenby like some sort of prize cattle?”
Fletcher wondered what it would feel like.
He’d known love as a child. Not for nearly long enough, certainly.
He’d lost his own parents so early that sometimes he wondered if he remembered them accurately or if he only had some idealized version of them that he’d created in his own mind.
That aside, he knew, without question, they had loved him.
And Daphne had never known that. Not once in her life had anyone expressed real love for her.
It created a strange ache in his chest to think of it, to think of how lonely she must have been as a child.
For himself, he’d had his uncle and his often very distant aunt, but they’d cared for him.
Certainly they had never been cruel to him.
“I am sorry. I am sorry that you’ve never had the family you deserve,” he told her.
“Will we do better? I assume, of course, that at some point you and I will have children of our own. Will we do better for them than others have done by us?”
The very idea of it was staggering. In part because he’d never considered himself being a father, and in part because he suddenly realized that he wanted that.
He wanted that with her. “We will endeavor to do so every day… but for now, we must return to London. We will seek the aid of Bessie Dove-Lyon and even Viscount Lynley, if need be, to put as quiet an end to all of this as possible. Then, whether we see or speak to any member of your family ever again, is entirely at your discretion… You’re the one who has suffered the most from their cruelty and coldness, after all. It ought to be your decision.”
“I think that will depend very much on how my father behaves once we return to town. To that end, I’ll dress and we can be off. We can take the barge back to Nottingham and, much as it pains me to say so, if we take the mail coach we can be back in London by tomorrow and put an end to this.”
And that is what they did. Braving the cold and the rough road and the brutally jarring ride of the mail coach, they made for London and an end to the unpleasantness that was her father’s machinations.