26 Home
Cal knew it wouldn’t be as easy to leave the asylum as all that. It had been tricky enough to get inside the place to start with, and getting out again with Cora was bound to be difficult.
Richard Merrington was the main problem, naturally.
He insisted that there had been no wedding, that if there had been, it was invalid, and refused to believe that Cal was a Garth, and so it all had to be gone over in exhaustive detail once again.
Cal had explained it once to Cora, and then again to the elderly parson at High Frickham before they were married.
Now all the documents were brought forth once more — his baptismal and confirmation certificates, the copy of his father’s will, letters from the Garth family lawyers, the special licence and lastly, the marriage lines.
The doctors were easily convinced, especially with Ben Lovell, Hoggart, Burnham, Henry and Timmy forming a protective circle around Cal and Cora, but Richard, nursing painful bruises, was inclined to argue over every last point.
“This is all nonsense,” he said over and over.
“I never believed Hammond’s foolish idea that you were a bastard son of one of the Garths, but the very idea that a legitimate son would choose to masquerade as a gamekeeper’s son is ridiculous.
You may impose upon my mother, but you do not fool me for a moment.
And why would the present Mr Garth not acknowledge you, if any of this were true? ”
“I don’t know what goes through his head,” Cal said equably. “He hates the fact that I still have an allowance from the estate, so maybe he prefers to pretend I really am only a gardener, and not his uncle.” He shrugged. “Nevertheless, it’s the truth. And I never cared to broadcast the connection.”
“But why?” Richard said plaintively. “Why so much secrecy? Why keep the wedding secret?”
“That was my doing,” Cora said. “I thought you would gloat. I never suspected that you would respond by locking me up in an asylum.”
“As for my own lineage, it wasn’t really a secret,” Cal said, “Plenty of people at the Priory knew. Not at Staineybank, but then, it never seemed to matter much.”
“So nothing at all to do with getting hold of my mother’s money, I suppose?” Richard said with a sneer. “Keep the marriage secret, ask for the jointure to be paid through the lawyers and then it will continue indefinitely.”
“Not everything is about money,” Cal said, with an exasperated sigh. “I don’t need Cora’s money, Merrington. Read my father’s will. You can work out how much I’ve been given over the years, and I’ve spent next to nothing. I can keep your mother in some style, if that’s what she wants.”
Richard looked disbelieving, but Cal no longer cared what he thought. Scooping up all the documents, he said, “Enough. Shall we go home, Mrs Garth?”
“Thank you, Mr Garth. I should like that very much.”
Accompanied by their miniature army, and escorted by numerous bowing doctors and guards, Cal led the way to the front door, where their carriage and the patient postilions still waited.
With Henry and Timmy standing behind, and the others crowded onto the box, Cal and Cora had the inside of the carriage to themselves.
Cora wrapped her arms around Cal’s nearest arm, and rested her head on his shoulder, an easy exercise since she wore no bonnet. “How on earth did you find me?”
“I can track most things, even missing wives,” he said, kissing her forehead.
“We knew roughly where Richard’s carriage turned off the turnpike, so we just went from house to house until we heard news of him…
or the carriage, at least. Once we’d found him, we waited until he took off again and followed him.
It’s a pity I could only get you out of there by proving I’m your husband.
Our little secret is well and truly out. ”
She sighed. “Yes, everyone will know, now. Oh! I have just realised — that is why the village shopkeepers want to do business with me again. They know already.”
“Apparently, the Staineybank kitchen maid has a cousin who recently married at High Frickham and noticed the Merrington name in the marriage register, so yes, everyone knows already. And now Richard knows, too, sadly. I hoped we’d have longer, frankly.
Cora, you seem remarkably well, considering all that has happened. Are you truly well?”
“I am now,” she said, smiling up at him.
“It has been… unpleasant, but if you are expecting me to swoon away or fall into hysteria, I must disappoint you. I cannot even be angry with Richard. I should be, but all I can feel is relief to be safe with you at last. I suppose he truly thought it was for the best.”
“To lock you away in an asylum?”
“That was only temporary, he tells me. He was preparing a more comfortable prison for me. So kind of him! I did get angry with him then, but now… I am where I belong. I may never forgive him, and I certainly will never trust him, but it is over. You will look after me now.”
“I will,” he said, bending his head to kiss her.
They were disrupted by shouts from above them, and the carriage drawing to a halt.
“Now what?” Cora said tiredly.
Cal let down the window to peer out. With a laugh, he said, “The duke’s carriage… oh, and the duke himself.”
The carriage door was wrenched open and the duke’s anxious face appeared, which lightened considerably when he saw the occupants.
“Cora, dear! And Garford — well done, boy! Well done!”
Another face materialised behind the duke, causing Cora to squeak in astonishment.
“Souter! Oh, Souter, I am so glad to see you!”
Tumbling out of the carriage, she practically fell into the maid’s arms, bursting into noisy sobs.
“She didn’t cry over me,” Cal said to the duke, who laughed and gave a wry grimace.
“Women, eh! No accounting for them.”
The rest of the journey was accomplished in the greatest comfort in the duke’s carriage, which was provisioned with a hamper of food and wine, as well as blankets and cushions.
Cora ate one small lemon cake, drank two mouthfuls of wine and promptly fell asleep, her head lolling on Cal’s shoulder.
This gave him the welcome opportunity to slide an arm around her waist.
While she slept, Cal and the duke conducted a whispered discussion. The duke was all for sweeping them off to Staineybank so that Cora could be cosseted as she recovered from her ordeal, but Cal was resolute in refusing. He received unexpected support from Souter.
“Madam will want her own home,” she said firmly. “It’s for Mr Garford to look after her… or Mr Garth, I should say. A wife’s place is in her husband’s house.”
“You know all about it, then,” Cal said.
“About you marrying? Yes, madam told me. Said it would set my mind at rest. Not that it’s my business to worry about things like that. So long as madam’s happy, that’s all I care about.”
“Then we’re in accord on the subject,” Cal said quietly.
***
Cora sat in state in the little parlour of Lilac House as a stream of visitors came to pay bridal visits and studiously not talk about the small matter of her son confining her to an asylum.
She found it all rather tedious, but Cal seemed to enjoy it, wearing his Sunday best and handing round sherry with aplomb.
The Templetons were early callers, the parson chiding them for going off to High Frickham to marry.
“I should have been delighted to perform that office for you,” he said cheerfully. “A special licence, too — how charming!”
As he left, he murmured, “We shall see you on Sunday, no doubt.”
“Thank you, but we like All Saints in Brinchester,” Cora said briskly. “We have been made to feel very welcome there.”
When they had left, rather subdued, Cal said quietly, “I thought you disliked the parson at All Saints?”
“Only his sermons, which are dreadfully dull. I shall never go back to St Timothy’s, not after the way Mr Templeton treated me.”
Cora’s daughters arrived in a great gaggle, wailing, “Why, Mama? Why marry in secret?” and she did not know how to explain about freedom and flying and falling helplessly in love at her advanced age. So she merely shrugged.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she murmured, and they shook their heads and exchanged bewildered glances.
The Hammonds came, walking down between showers and bearing the inevitable cake. Jamie Hammond was cock-a-hoop.
“You see, I knew there would be a black sheep somewhere in your history, Garford… or are you Garth, now?”
“Whichever feels most comfortable, and I believe I mentioned that you were on the right track as far as I am concerned?”
“So you did!” Hammond said, beaming. “Indeed you did, and here we are — the son of a gentleman who renounced his heritage in order to be a gardener. That certainly qualifies you as a black sheep.”
“Although it supports the duke’s idea, too,” Georgie said. “He thinks all Mr Goodenough’s chosen ones are the descendants of women he admired in his youth, and he certainly admired your mother, Cal. Fanny Garth. A great beauty in her day, allegedly.”
“She must have been,” Jamie said. “The duke is a connoisseur of feminine beauty, as one may see from the portraits of his three wives that hang in the library.”
The duke himself, together with Lily, was a regular visitor to Lilac House, although he barely had a good word to say for it.
“How many rooms do you have here, Garford?”
“Three, your grace. Parlour, bedroom, kitchen.”
“A mean little place for the mother of a future duke. You had better both move back to Staineybank.”
“Thank you, Duke, but that would never do for Cal,” Cora said briskly. “He needs to be somewhere smaller, in the woods. Now that we are no longer to be ostracised, we can live in the charcoal burner’s hut.”
Cal and the duke said ‘No!’ simultaneously.
“Cora love, I don’t agree with his grace on much, but on this he’s right. You’re a lady. You can’t live in a single-room cottage.”
“Why ever not?”
“You should have servants and a proper dining room and a decent carriage, not a gig.”