Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I don’t understand,’ Farrah said in a distant voice, her gaze focused upon her father. ‘Your wife is at Dalton House.’
The confusion filtering through her expression perfectly matched Reuben’s own. ‘You have some explaining to do, Dalton,’ he said in a cutting tone when the earl didn’t immediately respond, ‘and I am not accustomed to being kept waiting.’
Dalton stood a little straighter and tugged at the hem of his crumpled waistcoat.
‘In private, with my daughter,’ he said, but his attempt to exert himself fell woefully short of the mark.
He looked to Reuben like a man caught in the crosshairs with no obvious escape route, which increased Reuben’s curiosity about the hold this woman had over him.
‘The duke remains,’ Farrah said, much to Reuben’s relief. He wouldn’t have put it past her to send him away, but he would have refused to leave even if she’d insisted. Her father would not get away with bluster and bullying while Reuben was in the room.
Dalton opened his mouth, presumably to insist that his family affairs were a private matter. One glance at the rigid set of Reuben’s features and he wisely refrained from opposing him.
‘Daphne and I are old acquaintances,’ Dalton settled for saying in a weak voice that fooled no one. There was obviously more to it than that. A great deal more.
‘Acquaintances?’
Farrah imbued the one word with a wealth of sarcasm as her hostile gaze now flitted between her father and the woman who had kept him away from his family, leaving Farrah to juggle with his debts.
Dalton fell into the chair beside Mrs Armstrong when that lady reseated herself and audaciously reached for her hand.
Farrah gasped. Mrs Armstrong looked triumphant.
Dalton, despite his dishevelled appearance, was still a handsome man – and an earl to boot.
Mrs Armstrong doubtless saw him as her passport to grander things.
Why she would claim to be his wife was less obvious.
‘We are waiting,’ Reuben said acerbically.
‘I fell desperately in love with Daphne the moment I laid eyes on her more than twenty years ago.’ Dalton smiled. ‘She was a sight to behold, and I knew then that there would never be another for me. Her father, a vintner of some renown, supplied our cellars at Dalton House.’
‘But was not of our social standing,’ Farrah muttered.
She looked so pale, so shocked, that Reuben longed to comfort her.
He obviously couldn’t do so, at least not physically, but there was nothing to prevent him from using his authority as a duke to challenge Dalton’s account at every turn, pointing out to the selfish, self-centred sorry excuse for a man just how much damage he had caused his daughter and the rest of his family.
Reuben touched Farrah’s shoulder, a gesture designed to reassure. She flashed a brief smile but did not tear her gaze away from her father.
‘Precisely so. My father said that I should take her as a mistress but that he would disinherit me if I defied him and married her.’
‘But you did precisely that,’ Farrah breathed, her entire body trembling, presumably accepting that Mrs Armstrong really was his legal wife.
‘We were married over the anvil,’ Dalton admitted, ‘but I quickly realised that my father was a man of his word. He told me that if I did not walk away from Daphne then I would have nothing other than a meaningless title with no estate attached to it. My father could and would have denied me my birthright. What could I do?’ He looked at Farrah and Reuben as though he actually expected their sympathy.
Reuben shook his head. Unbelievable! ‘I had no personal funds, no way of earning a living that would keep us in style, and so …’
‘And so he toed the family line at my insistence and married your mother,’ Mrs Armstrong finished for him.
‘How could you, Papa?’ Farrah fixed him with a quelling look. ‘You had made your bed without thinking about the consequences and then married Mama bigamously.’ She shook her head. ‘How could you?’ she repeated.
‘If you had ever been in love then you would understand.’ Dalton spoke dismissively, obviously thinking that he had made the ultimate sacrifice in giving up Mrs Armstrong and that Farrah had no cause for complaint.
Reuben clenched his fists, afraid that if he didn’t do so, he would plant the man a facer in retaliation for his casual disregard of his daughter’s finer feelings.
‘The two of you clearly did not lose touch,’ he said, his tone heavily laced with vitriolic contempt.
‘For a while we did,’ Mrs Armstrong took up the story. ‘I married Armstrong and sorted out his failing business for him. I had seen how badly his imports were doing and how well the moneylenders were faring in the backstreets of London, and so I steered him in that direction.’
‘Congratulations.’ There was a sarcastic edge to Farrah’s voice. Percival, sensing a crisis, pushed his nose beneath her hand. She absently bent to stroke his silky head.
‘You married Lady Dalton bigamously,’ Reuben said, wincing as he repeated Farrah’s earlier assertion.
‘If what Papa says is the truth, Mama is not Lady Dalton,’ Farrah pointed out.
‘Mrs Armstrong is the countess and we – Sophia and I – are bastards.’ She spat the word between clenched teeth but her eyes remained dry.
She was probably holding herself together through sheer determination because she refused to give Mrs Armstrong the satisfaction of seeing her break down.
‘No, no.’ Papa shook his head. ‘That might be true in actual fact, but those facts will never come to light. I could not do that to you and Sophia. And it is not what Daphne wants either.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Mrs Armstrong shook her head.
‘If I had ever harboured a desire to join the ranks of the aristocracy – where I would not be made to feel welcome anyway – yesterday afternoon at the duchess’s parody of a tea party would have caused me to change my mind.
I am not accustomed to being idle, talking about the weather and gossiping about my neighbours.
’ She shuddered. ‘It is all so pointless, and I want no part of it.’
‘It’s true,’ Dalton said. ‘You, your sister and your mother would have retained your titles and your dignity.’
‘While you took off with this woman, reliving your youth, and we inherited your debts, no doubt.’ Farrah sighed. ‘How dare you speak of dignity? And why Mama? What had she done to deserve the questionable pleasure of becoming your stooge?’
‘She was fit to be tied when Bartholomew passed her over in favour of her sister, and needed a proposal from a man of stature in order to salvage her pride. I knew she did not love me, and I definitely did not love her, but the marriage was a convenience for us both. She has no cause for complaint.’
‘No cause?’ Farrah shook her head, looking totally bemused. ‘If one puts aside the trivial fact that you were already married, I suppose she does not. Mama is not an easy person to live with, that much I will grant you, but even she did not deserve to be treated so disrespectfully.’
‘You remained friendly with Bartholomew,’ Reuben said. ‘Does Lady Bartholomew know of your bigamous marriage?’
‘No, absolutely not.’ Dalton shook his head decisively.
‘Bartholomew was the only person who knew, and I swore him to secrecy. He would not have broken his word and burdened his wife with my secret. He loved her too much for that. She was already at odds with her sister, and if Ruth also knew that her marriage was a sham it would have been too much for her to bear.’
Farrah let out a long breath and sent Reuben a brief smile of gratitude.
‘Why come to Hampshire now, Mrs Armstrong?’ Farrah asked. ‘You have kept your distance all this time but have not, I suspect, been absent from Papa’s life. I now better understand his long, unexplained absences.’
‘As Daphne said, we did lose touch for years,’ Dalton explained, ‘but Templeton invited me to invest in a business he wanted to undertake in Liverpool. I travelled to the city with him to take a closer look and our paths crossed.’ He sent Mrs Armstrong a fond look.
‘I knew her at once and she me. My partnership with Templeton failed.’
‘Templeton bears you a grudge over it,’ Farrah said, almost reluctantly. ‘He said something about embezzlement.’
‘Rubbish!’ It was Mrs Armstrong who spoke. ‘He seemed to think that I had given Dalton more favourable terms and started spreading rumours. I thought I had put a stop to that,’ she added, almost as an afterthought.
‘Armstrong bailed us out, and thus I was thrown back with Daphne,’ Dalton explained. ‘I could not have been happier.’
‘Even though you were being fleeced in terms of interest rates, which obliged you to let the estate flounder in order to keep the payments up,’ Farrah said.
Dalton merely shrugged. ‘Armstrong’s death changed everything,’ he said. ‘The moment you married and there was someone else to take responsibility for your mother and sister, it would have been our time,’ Papa said, gazing fondly at Mrs Armstrong’s profile.
‘I cannot believe what I am hearing,’ Reuben muttered through clenched teeth.
‘That is why you pressed me so hard to accept Mr Jackson’s proposal,’ Farrah said. ‘Now things start to make more sense. You had taken precious little interest in my affairs up until that point.’
‘You always were a contrary individual,’ Papa replied in a critical tone. ‘I knew Sophia would soon be taken. It was you whom I was concerned about, even though you probably don’t believe me. I am not totally without a sense of responsibility.’
Farrah’s jaw dropped open, and she simply gaped at him.
‘I have had enough of waiting.’ Mrs Armstrong’s voice filled the heavy silence. ‘If Robert Dalton could not be with me because of you, then I could at least be closer to him, which is why I took this house.’