Chapter 1 #3
“Your recitation brings me no joy, St. Didier. You would have me believe that Mama went into service rather than return to a doting husband. That makes no sense.”
“Abernathy Blackstock was doting, but also perhaps dull. When she left Yorkshire, Marie would have reached the grand age of nineteen. Perhaps she had misjudged her affection for Blackstock. Perhaps she’d strayed with a footman.
In the alternative, it’s possible that Blackstock, for all his doting, found it hard to give up the freedoms of bachelorhood. People make odd choices.”
Clearly, Dolforth was having to rearrange his perspective on his late mother—and very likely on himself. He’d been holding his glass of lemonade without drinking for the past two minutes.
“Your mother came to Town,” St. Didier went on, mindful of the time, “registered with the better agencies under the assumed name of Marie Wolfinger, and tried to learn the art of the parlormaid with indifferent success. She was pretty, hardworking, and well-spoken—despite a hint of the northern shires in her voice—but she had little stamina for the heavy work and was prone to catching the eyes of the young gentlemen in whatever household employed her.”
“Those eyes being ever so easily caught. I am one of four extant bastards Lord Jerome left behind, and the Dolforth family has other fruit on wayward branches besides we happy four.”
Oh, the Quality. “Marie caught Lord Jerome’s eye, and she caught a fair amount of his coin, enough that when he showed signs of tiring of her, she could take up a housekeeper’s post in Hampshire while posing as a widow. You came along very shortly thereafter.”
“How inconvenient of me.”
“The greater inconvenience was that Blackstock was still quite alive. You are technically his son, his legitimate, sole surviving son. Your mother noted your legal patrimony in the registry of the Hampshire parish where you were born.” She had also been clear about the date of parturition, which Dolforth—Lord Swidhelm—would doubtless discover for himself.
“Where is Blackstock buried?”
“If I tell you, will you piss on his grave?”
“Not likely, but I will assure myself that evidence of his passing is credible.” Dolforth glanced at the watch ticking away beside the tray. “Blackstock, in all of this, is among the injured parties rather than those making mischief. If he’s extant, he can spare me the burden of the title.”
“If it’s any comfort, Blackstock was dead for several years before a third cousin went to his reward.
The family claim their solicitors expended a great deal of time and effort searching for you before they came to me for aid.
Orla knew of your existence and knew you were named Richard, but little else. ”
Dolforth ceased pretending to count the tulips. “Quite a tale.”
“A well-documented tale. I have affidavits, copies of parish registries, your mother’s last will and testament, copies of the registration of your birth.
Marie observed the legalities where you were concerned, probably because she feared Lord Jerome by then more than she feared Blackstock, who had unknowingly committed felony bigamy. ”
The watch showed five minutes remaining in St. Didier’s allotted half hour.
“What your mother lacked in discernment, Dolforth, she made up for in determination. She made a dodgy choice, dealt herself lower cards than she anticipated, and she yet made the best of them.”
Dolforth turned on St. Didier a gaze so cold that a lesser host might have sought the safety of the house.
“You do not know what low cards my mother dealt herself and which she was handed by the law and Society. Why was she so anxious to leave her father’s house at seventeen?
Why flee a devoted husband by dark of night and travel two hundred miles to a city she’d never seen, there to take up a life in service?
Why would a woman reared with rural propriety accept Lord Jerome’s dishonorable advances?
None of this makes any sense, and my mother was a sensible woman. I will await your letter.”
He rose, collected his watch, bowed, and decamped by way of the house, while St. Didier tried to let the peace of the garden settle his nerves.
The heir-hunting business had seemed like a productive use of obscure talents developed trying to salvage family fortunes headed for escheat. The last few ventures, though, had involved men who wanted nothing to do with titles, rather than fellows who rejoiced to hold a place in the peerage.
Dolforth would have a difficult time of it should he travel north to his newly acquired holdings. He was angry, resentful, suspicious, shrewd, hurt—he’d hate admitting that—and nobody’s fool.
He was also, at bottom, a gentleman, if his sentiments toward Wealtha and his defense of his late mother were any indication. That honorable legacy—the one he’d fashioned for himself—would be the most troubling inheritance he took with him when he made his bow at the family seat.
St. Didier silently toasted the viscount’s good fortune and began planning a trip to the gorgeous purlieus of the West Riding in spring.