Chapter Five
He’d surprised her. Henry could see it in the part of her cupid’s bow lips, the arch of her gold brows, the widening of those incredible grassy-green eyes.
She blinked once—twice. Said, in a dazed tone, “I beg your pardon? Surely you’re not implying you are not your father’s son.
I recall having seen you together a time or two, before”—here, her lips pursed just briefly, as though she feared touching upon an uncomfortable subject—“before he passed,” she concluded.
“You’re the very image of him. No one could possibly say otherwise. ”
Oddly, he appreciated the delicacy. It had been only a year since his father’s death, and still it was difficult to believe he was gone.
“It’s not my parentage which is in question,” he said.
“In fact, that might sting the worst of all, as it wouldn’t matter, legally speaking, even if it was.
A child born to parents who are wed is presumed to be the husband’s child, even if he or she is obviously not. ”
That little furrow between her brows. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You are your father’s child, then? His eldest son?”
“His only son.” Another complicating factor.
“What, then, is in question?”
“The date of my birth as it relates to the date of my parents’ marriage.
” Henry blew out a rough sigh, gave another vicious yank of his hand through his hair, and wrenched free the tangles that had formed in the light breeze.
“Will you sit, Miss Seymour?” he asked, with a gesture toward the small table he’d had placed near the side of the house, well away from any windows—or prying eyes or ears.
“I suppose I had better.” She sank into the chair he offered to her with an effortless elegance, folding her hands in her lap.
“I confess, my lord, I’ve been out in society for five years now, and I still find the ways of the aristocracy rather odd.
I don’t suppose you could be…a bit more elucidating? ”
He’d have to be, it seemed. “It’s old gossip now,” he said, “though there are certainly still some who hold it against my family. But before my parents married, my mother was my father’s mistress.”
Those gold brows shot up again. “Oh,” she said. “I’d never have suspected.”
“It was thirty years ago. It’s not bandied about as it once was.
But some people have long memories, and even after their marriage, there were many years in which my mother found most doors in London firmly closed against her.
” Even if the censure had faded over the years, Mother had never been particularly strong-willed.
Without the reassurance of Father’s presence at her side, she had withered, wilted.
Shut herself away from society. “When my mother found herself in a delicate condition—”
“Pregnant, you mean to say.”
Henry tapped his fingertips upon the surface of the table in agitation. “I did, but I prefer to use a modicum more tact.”
“Why? There’s no sense in mincing words in such a situation as yours.”
Goddamn it all, she had a point. “When my realized she was pregnant,” he corrected, “my father was traveling. Letters were slow to reach him, if they arrived at all. I don’t believe Mother expected that he would marry her—but as soon as he learned of my impending birth, he came back at once.”
“Good of him,” Grace allowed.
“He loved her,” he said. “And she loved him. She hadn’t expected him to save her from her predicament, but he defied his family’s wishes and married her as soon as he’d arrived.”
“I’m sensing a but.”
Of course there was a damned but. They would not now be having this conversation had there not been a damned but. “He arrived too late,” he said. “By a matter of days.”
“Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh. So you’re—”
“Illegitimate,” he said. “By way of a damned technicality. I am my father’s son—his only son.
But being born outside of wedlock makes me a bastard.
” Not the earl at all. “My birth was a scandal anyway. Plenty of couples advance their vows. I can name a dozen or more lords who arrived less than nine months after their parents’ marriages. ”
“Early babies,” Grace said. “That’s what they say, isn’t it? That the first babe can come at any time. To save face, I assume, and most just pretend that it is so.”
“For some, I suppose, it must be true. But it would be a damned miracle for a child to arrive so early as I did, and everyone knew my mother had been my father’s mistress, besides. What they managed to hush up—or so they thought—was the fact that my birth had preceded my parents’ marriage.”
“How did they do it?” Grace asked, and to her credit her expression was interested, not horrified.
Henry managed an awkward shrug. “I’m given to understand it involved a sympathetic clergyman—a distant relation of my mother’s—who was willing to issue a common license and change the date of their wedding to make it appear that it had occurred earlier than it had.
” With just the scrawl of a pen, Henry had become the heir he ought to have been instead of the bastard he had been born.
Just enough to render him legitimate in the eyes of law—unless it could somehow be proved otherwise.
“So you didn’t know?”
“I hadn’t the faintest idea until a few days ago.
” Married in the nick of time, they had always said.
“Apparently my uncle—my father’s younger brother—paid a call upon Mother recently.
Said he’d learned the truth of my birth.
” His fingers tapped out a brisk rhythm upon the table, growing more frantic as the seconds drew out.
“It was a threat,” he said. “My father has no other legitimate son. If my uncle were to make claim of my illegitimacy—if he were to have proof of it, as he claims to—then I could be declared illegitimate. Not only would I be ruined, but so too would my mother and sister by association. We would lose…nearly everything, I expect.”
“And this uncle would be the legitimate earl, then?” Grace asked, with a little cant of her head. At his nod, she added, “I suppose this veiled threat was accompanied by some demand of money?
“Five hundred pounds.” The words emerged on a snarl.
“For years, my father paid my uncle a healthy allowance, but he found it necessary to cut him off a year or so before he passed. Uncle Nigel had developed the habit of overspending that allowance by a significant sum each quarter, accruing debts that my father then felt honor-bound to pay. They had a terrible row when Father cut him off at last. He was bequeathed a sum of money by my father in his will, but he must have known he wouldn’t get more from me. ” So he had gone after Mother instead.
“I see,” Grace said, her voice low, speculative. “It is too late now, of course, but she shouldn’t have paid him. And you must tell her not to do so if he should come asking again.”
“What else ought she have done?” Henry asked, offended on his mother’s behalf. “What would you have done—”
“I would have let Uncle Chris sort him out,” Grace said, without hesitation.
“But I know better than to pay off an extortionist. They always come crawling back, hand outstretched, as soon as the money has run out. The good news is that your uncle almost certainly doesn’t have—or, at least, doesn’t yet have—the proof he claims exists. ”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because one doesn’t show one’s cards to one’s opponent,” she said.
“If he had what he claimed, he’d hardly have needed to extort your mother for funds.
He’d simply have taken that proof and petitioned to have your claim to the earldom invalidated.
Everything would have become his in one fell swoop, and you would have had no recourse. Much cleaner; much neater that way.”
Christ. Henry dropped his face into his hands and scrubbed his cheeks.
Grace pulled a grimace. “The bad news,” she continued, “is that it’s likely the funds your mother provided to him will be put to use in obtaining that very proof.”
Blast and damnation. “How do you figure?”
“It’s been thirty years,” she said, “and there hasn’t been a whisper of it before now, has there?”
“No, but my father passed only last year. If there had been—”
“If there had been, he would have strenuously denied it, and likely no one would have doubted his word,” Grace said.
“But now he is no longer here to defend himself, or your mother. It’s only now that that proof has become valuable.
When there are few living who might refute it.
When it might be sold to an interested party. ”
Uncle Nigel, of course.
“And if your uncle is still a spendthrift, as you said,” she said, “it’s possible he’s run through the amount your father left to him.
What better way to ascertain if there were any truth to the claim than to threaten your mother with it?
He finagled for himself some extra funds, and what was practically a confession of guilt besides.
Which is why she mustn’t pay him again, should he come calling.
Once might be written off as a misunderstanding, but twice… ”
“I’ll make certain she knows,” Henry said slowly, as a dull cramping ache settled in his belly.
It was going to devastate his mother, he knew, to learn that she had likely contributed more than she had imagined to their present predicament.
But if Grace had judged the situation correctly, then what they did going forward would make all the difference.
“It’s not her fault,” Grace said, and Henry had the strangest sense that she meant to be soothing—sympathetic, even.
“Good people are rarely in the position where they must consider such things. Those with a conscience are at a distinct disadvantage when dealing with those without. People guided by morals will invariably walk a predictable path and follow a prescribed set of rules. It makes them easy prey for the ruthless.”