Chapter 16 #2
“We took rooms in a small village nearby. Fitzgerald wrote to his father, who replied straightaway with a declaration to cut off Fitzgerald altogether. There would be no money, and the viscount would not welcome us in London or anywhere else unless we annulled the marriage immediately. Fitzgerald was fond of his father, and respected the man greatly, so I knew this pained him, but he acted as though it did not. Over the next fortnight, we tried to pretend that all would be well, that we did not need the viscount’s money or acceptance.
But I knew the truth. I saw the regret in my husband’s eyes nearly constantly.
We’d acted rashly, and he wanted to annul. ”
“Did you go through with it?” A flicker of hope warmed Hugh. But she shook her head.
“You must know that Fitzgerald was far too good a man, too loyal and gallant. No, he decided to go to London to speak with his father. Convince him of the marriage. Before he left Scotland, I told him I would agree to an annulment. They are difficult to obtain, but I thought that it might be best. He grew angry and defensive. He couldn’t admit he’d made a mistake. ”
“Or perhaps he loved you and didn’t want to annul, as you suspected.”
Miss Barlow sealed her lips against an instant retort. The sitting room went quiet. The whole house seemed to be so. Neither Lady Gibbons or her maid had returned with tea, and Hugh knew it was purposeful. They were being given privacy.
“I do think he cared for me,” she said after a moment. “But enough to withstand the weight of the challenges against us? No. And in truth, my love for him was equally impressionable.”
She spoke with nearly no emotion. These were all simple facts to her, past events that she had come to terms with, had lived with, for nearly three decades now, while Hugh sat across from her, struggling with them, much like a landed fish, gasping for breath.
“He left for London, and shortly after, I left the rooms we’d let together. I thought it would be best to disappear, in turn relieving him of the decision he could not, and would not, make.”
Had he returned to Scotland, only to find empty rooms? His wife gone? Hugh felt a strike of pity for his dead father and what he must have gone through.
“Where did you go?” he asked, keeping to himself his low opinion of her choice.
“My late mother had a cousin in Wales. She agreed to my stay, and when, shortly after my arrival, I realized I was with child, she kindly did not turn me out.”
Hugh lowered his head, suddenly weary. He rubbed the back of his neck, the muscles there corded with tension. “You did not send word to him.”
“No. I wanted him to return to his life in London and forget me. If he knew of my condition, he would never have been able to do that.”
“You made all the decisions for him, it seems. How benevolent of you.” Hugh shot to his feet and stalked to the window. Outside, a fine freezing rain fell.
That his father might have wanted to remain married to her, that he might have loved her more than he feared the burdens of his father’s displeasure, had not even occurred to her? How dare she strip him of those choices?
“Are you angry? I anticipated that you might be,” she said, still seated in her chair.
Hugh turned back to face her, astounded. Did she truly not know? The searching look upon her face gave him an answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “There are important things I need to know.”
“Such as?”
“Did my father annul the marriage in your absence before he married Joanna?”
With the solemn shake of her head, Hugh’s world began to crumble. A chiming in his ears joined with Miss Barlow’s voice as she explained.
“My sister has always been my confidant, and after four months away, I decided I could bear it no longer. I sent word to her, asking her to keep my whereabouts secret. She was ecstatic to hear from me, and furious as well. It seems my father and Fitzgerald’s covered up our elopement so well that there was no scandal, no whispers at all in regard to our trip to Gretna Green.
Fitzgerald had apparently traveled to France to sow his wild oats, while I went off to care for my mother’s sick cousin in Wales.
Imagine! I had been hiding right where they’d lied about my being. ”
“Go on,” Hugh said, impatient.
She did not bristle as any other woman might have when being given such a brusque command. In fact, she seemed not to hear his tone of voice at all.
“My sister informed me that the viscount had died, quite suddenly, some months before. And that Fitzgerald, the new Viscount Neatham, had posted marriage banns to Miss Joanna Paulson.”
Audrey’s supposition that it had taken a matter of months—one winter season—for all of this to unfurl had been spot on. For him to have proposed marriage to Joanna, Hugh’s father had to have believed April Barlow was lost to him forever.
“Why didn’t you go to him?” Hugh asked, flummoxed. “The man opposing your marriage had died.”
“Yes, but nothing had changed. Fitzgerald still needed to marry well, now more than before. His estate was in shambles. Joanna’s dowry would save it. And besides, after some months apart, I realized I didn’t want to be his wife any longer.”
And she didn’t appear to feel a lick of remorse about it, either.
“What were your plans then, because I cannot fathom what was going through your head,” he said, honestly and utterly confounded.
“You were with child, hiding out in Wales. You were going to allow your husband to marry another woman, who, by the way, was walking into a marriage that she did not know was invalid. I have no love the woman, but she was duped and for that I feel pity for her.”
Miss Barlow sat still, gazing up at him with a placid expression. The notion came to him that perhaps this was no act. Miss Barlow could, in all actuality, be a woman of little feeling and compassion.
“I planned to have you, and I did, in late November. I planned to raise you at my cousin’s home, and she and her husband were willing to take us on as wards.
However, after a few months of motherhood, I began to comprehend that I lacked a certain…
attitude that I’d witnessed in other mothers.
I felt no ill will toward you. I felt mild affection, but I knew enough to know that was no way to feel for my own child. ”
It was a painfully honest statement, and Hugh felt it like a clamping vise around his heart.
“I went to London and arranged for a meeting with Fitzgerald. He was furious. I’d hurt him terribly by running away.
He sent a private detective to search for me but then, his father died, and he was faced with the estate’s insufficient funds.
He let me go, and moved on with his life, as if he had never married. ”
To let all and sundry know that he had wed Miss Barlow, but she had run off on him, would have been a damaging blow to his reputation.
Applying for an annulment would have made him a social pariah, which would also stamp out any possibility of saving the estate through a beneficial marriage.
Hugh couldn’t fault his father for his choices.
“He was married and expecting his first child,” she continued.
“It was quite a blow to him, to realize he already had an heir. There was nothing to be done about it, however. To come forward with the truth would ruin him. It would ruin Joanna, and their child would be ruined even before birth. The potential scandal was too great. We agreed that the only way forward was for him to raise you as a ward. You would be given a gentleman’s upbringing and he would provide you with a living once you came of age. ”
And being the good man that he was, his father had stood by his word.
He’d arranged for a kind and loving woman to mother him, he had given him the same education he did his other children, and he had endured not only the whispers and admonishments made behind his back but the slow decay of his marriage to Joanna due to his actions.
Due to his devotion to his son. His heir.
Fucking hell.
Hugh was the true heir to the Neatham viscountcy.
Barty, Eloisa, Thomas…they were illegitimate.
“Someone else knows the truth,” he said, his mind fleeing from the distant past and toward more recent events.
“Eloisa Neatham heard your name many years ago on her mother’s lips.
She insinuated that Barty was not heir. Last week, Eloisa asked me to track you down and get the truth, perhaps proof, and she was murdered for it. ”
At this, Miss Barlow did shift her expression. Interest and alarm brightened her eyes.
“I read in the papers that she was killed. And that you were wanted in connection. But I did not know that she was searching for me.”
“Who was the man who warned you off at your school?” he asked.
“How do you know of that?”
“I just do,” he said, unwilling to explain his every move. “And I believe he is connected to the murder.”
Hugh’s tension subsided somewhat. This was more familiar ground. Investigating, asking questions, and attempting to piece together answers all brought Hugh’s reeling head to a standstill.
Miss Barlow canted her head. “I don’t see how.
The man you speak of had nothing to do with Miss Neatham.
He gave no name, though he was quality, I can tell you that.
He warned me to reject Mrs. Susan Smith’s application for her daughter to attend my school.
I had not yet even met with the woman; her letter of introduction and interest had barely been received when this man appeared late at night at the school with his threats. ”
“What threats?”
“That if I didn’t heed his command, Mrs. Smith and I would both find ourselves at the bottom of the Thames,” she answered coolly, as though not at all unnerved.
“You mean to say he mentioned nothing about the Neatham heir, or your secret marriage?”
She shook her head. “But it did worry me. I thought it best to stay away from the school for a short while, and I instructed my assistant to tell Mrs. Smith, who was due to visit the school, that there was no room for placement.”
Susan Smith. When Miss Carey had mentioned her, Hugh had deduced that was the nom de guerre Eloisa had used to gain entry at the school. The excuse that she wanted to place her daughter there had been a ploy.
Hugh looked again out the window. Rain was still falling, driving at a sideways clip.
It was an hour’s ride back to London; he would be soaked through when he returned.
He could go to Thornton’s clinic and use the key that he still had in his pocket.
But first, he’d have to find a way to return Audrey’s horse.
“You are a Bow Street officer,” Miss Barlow stated. “You are gathering information to help your case, I presume.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you are running from those whom you would normally call colleagues.”
Though she likely didn’t intend for it, the observation cut to the quick.
Miss Barlow hadn’t an ounce of delicacy.
Hugh had met other people like her before; odd sorts, unable to converse or act appropriately when with others.
He suspected that this trait of hers had led her to make the decisions she had.
And he found that although he wished to be angry with her, he couldn’t.
Hugh went to the chaise longue and retrieved his hat and greatcoat. “I will take my leave.”
“You can stay here. My sister and her husband will offer you shelter.”
“No,” he said, and though he meant to follow up with a reason why, his tongue fell useless.
He shook his head and started for the sitting room entranceway.
It had all been such a disappointment. This meeting, Miss Barlow’s story, the lack of a connection to the man who’d taken the folio.
Hugh drew back a moment at the thought of official papers.
“Is there proof of the marriage? A certificate?” he asked. If one existed, whoever possessed it could be in danger.
“I have it at my school, among my things. I thought of destroying it a number of times, but there was always something that stopped me.” She frowned, and Hugh thought he saw a glimmer of remorse.
Or perhaps it was only calculation; the certificate held some value and she had known it.
However, the man who’d threatened her had not been aware at all.
“I will return to Field Street and have the certificate delivered to you,” Miss Barlow said.
“No, do not leave Wanstead for now. It is safer to keep your distance from that certificate,” he said. “I’ll send word here when you can return to your school. It is enough for now to know that you have it.”
“You wish to prove you are heir?” she asked.
Hugh bristled. “No. What I want is to prove I had no motive to silence Eloisa.” Her killer wanted the truth hushed up, and that pointed to someone tied to the current holders of the Neatham title.
Barty? Thomas? Thomas had been at Lady Reed’s the next morning. Audrey had spoken to him. Hugh wanted to speak to him as well, but as he was currently a fugitive from the law, showing his face anywhere would be too dangerous.
He said good day to Miss Barlow and again, turned to leave. However, he paused. Though this time, he did not look back at her when he spoke.
“I thank you,” he said, surely startling her as much as he did himself.
“When you made the choice to give me to my father, he asked a woman who had never married but always wanted a child to raise me. Her name was Catherine Marsden. I thought you should know that she didn’t just raise me.
She loved me. And I loved her, as a son loves his mother. ”
Hugh swallowed the lump in his throat and left the room. There was nothing more to say.