Chapter 22 #2
Impossible. Deranged. He sliced his hand through the air as if he could ward off the revelation. They did resemble each other in certain ways. More than that, if he considered it, Danforth did favor his father from certain angles. “This cannot be true.”
“I did not know the truth at first,” she said, hardening again as she sat hunched in the chair.
“I was made to welcome him to the parish, the new young vicar for the living! He was eager and devoted, a blessing.” She coughed out a dark laugh and shook her head.
“Here I should stop. Here I could stop. You will never regard me the same way again. But no, the secrets are out now, let them come. Clafton burned the night your father told me that the young clergyman I had grown so fond of was his blood, his son. He had gotten a serving girl from Pressmore with child. I don’t remember her name, why would I?
Creatures like her deserve to be forgotten. ”
The blood drained from his body. Sir Jonathan, the man he admired, worshipped, had foolishly let his passion lead him astray, then brought the fruit of that mistake into their home.
“My God,” he breathed. “You must have been furious.”
“He hid the child in London for a time, with a family of lamplighters,” she continued.
The shawl fell back from her, and she seemed lighter somehow, as if releasing the secret had pulled back a stifling veil.
“That night, that horrible night, we quarreled; suddenly the flames were everywhere. I don’t think I started it, but how could I be sure?
I was just so angry, angry as I had never been before.
He had made a mockery of the life we built together, made a mockery of the love I bore him.
And I couldn’t punish John. John hadn’t asked to ruin everything, had he?
He simply was, and when he learned that he had issued from sin, he was contrite.
All his life, contrite, interested in nothing but this family and earning my forgiveness. ”
Alasdair pushed away from the mantel, sickness roiling in his gut. “Danforth knew?”
“Yes, he put the pieces together himself,” said Lady Edith.
“He devoted himself to me, the child of sin bringing me ever closer to God, and perhaps to one day finding my own forgiveness. I have often failed. The last time Mildred Richmond and I were in the same room, she laughed and asked me to keep your father away from her maids.”
“Where is he now?” Alasdair asked, afraid.
“London, I would think,” Lady Edith replied, smiling faintly at something across the room. “That’s where I told him to go. I gave him a letter with our family seal. The letter instructs our solicitor to give him access to the storehouses.” She sniffed and raised her shoulders. “To the art.”
Alasdair spun and slammed his fist down on the mantel, upsetting a candlestick and several vases. “It has taken me years to collect those pieces! They were meant to fill Clafton, not to furnish this…this damned altar to your shame! Why must we suffer now for Father’s mistake?”
Lady Edith retreated behind a blank mask. “We must all suffer together. That is the way of families.”
“Is that what you told Cousin Muriel when she was sent away to be forgotten?”
A muscle fluttered under Lady Edith’s left cheek. “I did not think you would remember her.”
“How could I not, when I see now that I am so like her? Yet of the two of us, she is the less cowardly, refusing to comfort you all with a mask of civility, becoming the victim of your judgment and discomfort.”
Alasdair refused to accept it. He hurried to his desk, ripping the paper in his panicked haste to begin a letter to Violet.
His mind began to work quickly, spinning, spinning, spinning, churning toward the narrow margin for success he hoped existed.
The most important thing was to stop Danforth, make sure Mr. Finny hadn’t given him the keys to the kingdom in London, then return him to jail.
Afterward, he could make the arrangements for his marriage to Violet.
His eyes filled with hot tears; all those works of art he had loved and curated, all the beautiful things he had expected to show her…
“What are you doing?” Lady Edith asked from her cold throne.
“Fixing this,” Alasdair hissed, scribbling furiously.
“He has had weeks to make his arrangements.”
“Then I will undo them in a day if I must!” Alasdair shouted, throwing the pen across the room as he finished the letter.
It was short and insane, but it would have to suffice.
He called for his valet—there was still so much to do, and time was unavailingly short.
An hour would come later, likely on the road to London, when he could make sense of everything his mother had said. For now there was only the urgency.
As he left his bedchamber behind, he paused in the doorway, sparing a single glance at Lady Edith. “When I return, that painting will be returned. Violet Arden will be my wife, and the name John Danforth will never be spoken in this house again.”