Chapter Sixteen #3
Maximilian heard his own words regurgitated from her mouth. “I suppose he was thinking of what was best for Bretherdale,” he said, his gaze drifting to the baby. “I have a son now. Who is to say that he will not do what I tell him to do and marry whoever I choose for him?”
Anna Maria looked at the baby too. “My father already has plans for him,” she said. “He says he will marry a princess from Navarre.”
Maximilian cocked an eyebrow at her. “He is the son of the Earl of Bretherdale,” he said, using his new title. “I will decide who my son will marry.”
Anna Maria, usually so compliant, shrugged. “You will have to discuss that with my father.”
Maximilian frowned. “Then where is he?” he said. “We will discuss it now.”
He was raising his voice, and Anna Maria held up her hands to quiet him. “Shh,” she said, looking at the baby with concern. “Do not wake him.”
Maximilian couldn’t believe the woman was actually telling him what to do, no matter how small it was. The shock of his father’s passing was contributing to an unhappy mood.
“I did not come here to have you dictate my son’s life, nor my own,” he said. “I came to tell you that I may not be able to come by for a time. I must make arrangements for my father’s burial and assume the mantle of the Earl of Bretherdale.”
Anna Maria was watching him with her big brown eyes. “You are an earl now,” she said. “That is a proud thing. Mayhap… mayhap you should acknowledge your son so that people will know he is the child of nobility. He deserves everything your name can bring to him.”
“You know I cannot do that.”
“Why not?”
Maximilian didn’t want to argue with her. He threw up his hands and turned for the door. “I am leaving now,” he said. “I will be back… sometime. I do not know when.”
She was trailing after him. “But why can you not acknowledge that you have a son?” she said. “You said you would.”
He rolled his eyes. “I said nothing of the sort.”
Anna Maria was on his heels as he put his hand on the door latch. “Before he was born, you told me that you would take care of him and of me,” she said. “Your father is dead. You are now the Earl of Bretherdale. Why would you deny your only son?”
“Because he is a bastard. Must I really explain this to you?”
“But he should not be,” she insisted, grabbing his arm. “You told me months ago that you would marry me. Do you remember?”
He had told her that in the weeks leading up to Emmeline’s accident, but he hadn’t really meant it.
He’d only told her that so she’d stop crying, because she’d wept through her entire pregnancy.
She wept because her child would be a bastard, wept because all of Penrith was gossiping about it.
It was no secret who the father was, and she wept about that, too.
So he’d told her things he didn’t mean simply to quiet her.
Or mayhap he did mean them at the time. He wasn’t sure.
But he surely didn’t mean it now. Becoming the Earl of Bretherdale changed things.
He’d changed.
“I am already married,” he said quietly, with annoyance. “You know this.”
“But you said—”
“I only said it so you would stop weeping,” he snapped. “I said it so you would quiet down, so I could bed you without having to listen to your constant sobbing and complaining. The truth is that I cannot marry you, and you know it.”
Anna Maria was grossly unhappy and growing more unhappy by the moment. “Then I will marry someone else,” she declared. “I will tell them that my husband has died. They will raise your son as their own, and you shall never see him again!”
Maximilian had the door open at that point, with the staircase leading down to the stall behind him. But he paused on the top step, eyeing her dangerously.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. “I will take care of you and the boy, but I cannot marry you. You have always known this, so I do not know why you are having a tantrum about it.”
New mothers were unpredictable creatures. Maximilian had learned that. Anna Maria had been unstable since the day she realized she was pregnant, and the birth of the child had done nothing to ease those symptoms. She was quite angry with him now.
“Mayhap I do not want to be your mistress any longer,” she said. “I have been speaking to my father, and he is certain that if he sends me back to Navarre, I can find a decent husband who will accept my child as his own.”
“If you go back to Navarre, the child stays with me.”
Anna Maria’s mouth flew open in outrage. “He is my child!” she cried. “I’ll not leave him to your shrew of a wife! Never!”
“He is my son. If I want to take him, I will.”
“I would have to be dead before I would let you do such a thing!”
“Dead or alive, he is my son. And you will never take him away from me.”
“I gave birth to him. He’s mine!”
“He is the son of the Earl of Bretherdale and a whore. What do you think being a mistress is, you little fool? The child does not belong to you!”
That threw her over the edge. With a shriek, Anna Maria charged Maximilian, who was at a disadvantage standing on the top step.
Before he could protect himself, Anna Maria rammed straight into his chest, shoving him back as hard as she could.
Maximilian stumbled down a few steps but caught himself on the railing.
The railing, however, was wooden and weak and unable to support his weight when he hit it with the force of Anna Maria’s shove. It cracked and broke, and he went over.
Headfirst to the ground below.
Anna Maria’s brother, Alejandro, had been working in a small shed when he heard the commotion.
He rushed out in time to see Maximilian lying in the dirt, bleeding from the head, and his hysterical sister.
Their father, who had been in the shop, came running out to see what had happened, and when he saw the crumpled figure of his daughter’s lover, he shut the door into the shop so his customers couldn’t see what had happened.
Very quickly, he realized they had a catastrophe on their hands.
Alejandro didn’t think Maximilian was breathing. Anna Maria was distraught. She swore that she hadn’t pushed him off the stairs, but her father knew that they would be blamed regardless. The Earl of Bretherdale would come down on them for killing his only son, and they would not survive.
Fear fed his decisions that day.
Benecio Agoretta y Zubiri, a name he’d changed to the Norman fashion of Benedict de Agoretta, knew what this meant.
Customers would turn away, and his business would not survive.
His daughter might even end up imprisoned.
They would all end up imprisoned. He’d always known the earl’s son would cause them trouble, but he hadn’t imagined this was the kind of trouble the man would cause.
They had to move quickly.
He ordered Alejandro to find Maximilian’s horse and send the animal away.
Then he brought around a handcart while he ordered his daughter and mother to pack up everything they could in the apartment.
While that was going on, he loaded up straw from the small livery in the back of his property into the handcart, and when Alejandro returned from having set the horse free, Benecio and his son picked up Maximilian and carried him, still bleeding, to the handcart.
They covered him up with more straw, and Alejandro took the handcart through the back alleyways and small paths of Penrith until he reached the River Eamont.
The body went in.
After that, it was a mad scramble to pack up what they could, as fast as they could.
Benecio closed the shop early so they could load as much merchandise into two wagons as possible.
Once that was done, and the family apartments were cleaned out, he set fire to the stall, and, under the cover of darkness, his family headed out of town.
While everyone ran to fight the fire, no one noticed the de Agoretta family departing from a smaller road.
Back to Navarre, from where they’d come.
Never to be seen again.