She abruptly turned and all but ran from the room.
Edward clomped back down the stairs, anger and suspicion giving way to regret and dejection. In truth, he had taken the extortion letter to the schoolroom not believing Miss Keene a party to it at all. But then he had seen her hide the letter she was writing and he’d jumped to conclusions.
He took himself to the library to join his father. Lord Brightwell was asleep in his favorite chair before the fire. He was startled awake when Edward closed the door.
“Hello, Edward,” he said, straightening himself in the chair.
“Better remain seated,” Edward advised. “We have had another letter.”
The earl sighed wearily.
“From the hand, I assumed it was from a tradesman and opened it with the other estate correspondence, as you’d asked.” Edward retrieved his father’s spectacles and handed them and the note to him.
His father read, cursed under his breath, and dropped the letter to his knee, staring blindly at the fire.
“Who could have written this?” Edward asked. “I have accused Miss Keene, but—”
“Olivia? Are you serious? I cannot believe you!”
Edward squeezed his eyes shut. “I know, I know. I have made a muddle of it. I walked in while she was writing a letter—one she quickly hid from me. I suppose I snapped.” He ran a hand through his hair. “All that plagued secrecy since she arrived. Her silence about her past and even where she lived. Is it any wonder I suspected her of some plot?” He shook his head. “I will apologize. I don’t really believe she would do this. But who else knows? Perhaps someone who was there at the time?”
“It is possible. The girl’s father knew, but he swore his secrecy. Nurse Peale attended your mother and must have known, though I don’t recall her asking any questions.”
“Loyal Nurse Peale. I cannot imagine her having anything to do with it.”
“Nor I.”
“Anyone else?”
“The physician and the midwife who told your mother she was unlikely to bear a living child must have suspected, but neither was actually present when I brought you here.”
“When you switched a living infant for a stillborn, you mean? And passed me off as your own?”
“Yes. Do you judge us so harshly for it?”
Edward rubbed his eyes with his good hand and exhaled. “No. Forgive me. I am grateful you raised me as your son. But obviously, someone else is not.”
Edward spent a restless night, tossing to and fro in his bed, tortured by echoes of his unforgivable words to Olivia.
In the morning, he dressed without care, not bothering with a cravat, and struggled into his boots without calling on Osborn. He trudged downstairs to the empty breakfast room. The thought of food sickened him, and even the coffee he poured was too bitter to drink. He slumped into a chair and rested his head in his hands. A soft scratch on the door roused Edward from a doubt-induced fog. “Come.”
Mr. Tugwell stepped in, hat in hand.
“Hello, Charles,” Edward said bleakly, not bothering to rise.
“I am returned to see how you fare,” the parson began, closing the door behind him. “I have been concerned about you, my friend, since the fire and”—he lowered his voice—“the letter. I have been praying, of course. Is there nothing more I can do?”
“Nothing. Unless you can rewrite the past. Unless you can conjure a father who was actually wed to the woman who bore me. A peer, ideally, that I might take his seat in the Lords and fulfill my life’s ambition.”
His friend regarded him with drooping hound eyes. “There is no need to conjure a father. For He already calls you His own. And no mere earl or duke, no. The very King who reigns forever.”
Edward sighed. “Thank you, Charles. I know you mean well, but I am not talking about religion—”
The vicar’s voice rose. “Neither am I!”
“Faith in God will not change the facts of my past.”
“No, but it could make all the difference to your future.”
Edward leaned back in his chair. “What future?”
“Oh, really, Edward. I have had quite enough. You are behaving like a spoilt child. Lord Brightwell will not leave you penniless, will he?”
“No, but—”
“Where has God promised to fulfill our every whim according to the minutia of our earthly desires? Where has He promised to keep us from suffering or disappointment? Things He did not spare His own Son? You were raised in one of the finest manors in the borough, by a man and woman who could not have loved you better. You have been given the best education, the best of everything. You are sound of mind and limb, and yet you dare to rail at God? I for one grow weary of it. Now leave off simpering like an ungrateful brat and make something of this new life you’ve been given.”
Edward stared. His old friend, the docile Charles, had utterly disappeared. The man before him was suddenly every inch the Reverend Mr. Tugwell, someone to be revered indeed.
Emotions wrestled for preeminence within Edward. He rose, wanting to strike the man, stalk off, or . . . laugh. Absurdly, the latter won out, and he felt a smile crack his scowl and he chuckled.
“What?” Charles said peevishly.
Edward laughed, bent over, and laid his hands on his knees as he did so.
The vicar frowned. “I fail to see what I said that has so amused you.”
Edward placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I wish you could have seen your face just then. I wish your father might have seen. How it shone with righteous wrath! He would have been proud indeed.”
“You are mocking me.”
“Not at all. Everything you said was quite true.” Edward slapped his friend’s back and the smaller man jerked forward. “You have woken me from my stupor, Charles, and I am grateful to you.” He put his arm around the vicar and turned him toward the door. “You really ought to deliver your sermons in such a manner. The old men would stay awake and how the widows would swoon.”
Charles Tugwell took his leave, but Edward saw not his friend’s retreating figure. Instead, other scenes filtered past his mind’s eye, bits of memory and conversations with Olivia. Finding Andrew in her bed, grooming his horse together, working on the doll’s house in stolen moments in Matthews’s shop, ice-skating with the children, hearing her speak his name in her sleep, that delicious dance lesson . . .
What a fool he had been, what an irrational fool. And he realized, there and then, that he could not do it anymore, he would not hold on to what was not his. It was making him a defensive, suspicious lout, snarling at everyone, dreading that at every turn his secret would be revealed. It had to stop. It was not worth it.
Edward strode quickly down the corridor with an urgent sense of purpose, realizing there was one benefit to the new life Tugwell referred to, the one thrust upon him. He was free to marry without regard to rank and connection.
He took the stairs up to the nursery by threes, ignoring the wide-eyed stare of a young maid, who was slowly making her way down. He knocked on Olivia’s door and, when there was no response, stepped quickly down the corridor and pushed open the schoolroom door. He was startled to find his father there, standing at the window, peering out.
“She is gone, Edward.”
Edward’s heart lurched. “Gone? Run away?”
“Not ‘run away.’ I was able to prevent that, if barely. Patching up after you is not an easy task.”
“I was wrong, I know. Utterly, unforgivably wrong. Did you not tell her I never really believed her responsible for those letters? I was angry, irrational, I did not mean—”
His father lifted his hand. “Yes, yes, but she wished to leave anyway.”
Edward ran a hand over his face. “Where is she?”
The earl sat at the schoolroom desk, looking older than his age for the first time in Edward’s memory. “I think it best not to tell you at present,” he said. “I believe it would be unwise of you to go charging after her now, when she wanted quite desperately to get away from here.”
“Away from me.”
“Well, yes. And can you blame her, after you accuse her of extortion, not to mention your less-than-enthusiastic response to the notion of making her my ward?”
Edward groaned. “She can be your ward. She can be your daughter as far as I am concerned. I am ready to end this charade. Felix can have it all. The title, the estate, the peerage. I just want—”
When he broke off, the earl raised his brow. “Yes?”
Edward pressed a hooked finger to his lip. “There will be time enough for what I want later, Lord willing. In the meantime, let us figure out a way to let the wind out of our adversary’s sails.”
Chapter 41
Men . . . generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a
woman of great parts, and a cultivated understanding.
—JOHN GREGORY, A FATHER’S LEGACY TO HIS DAUGHTERS, 1774
Walking briskly, Edward led his father to his favorite spot in the wood. A branch snapped, and through the trees, Edward glimpsed Croome kneeling on the ground in the distance—doing what, he could not tell. Croome rose and walked away, disappearing into the wood.
“Why do you drag me all the way out here?” Lord Brightwell asked, out of breath.
“Shh. The walls have ears, as they say. Or might.” Edward glanced around. Satisfied they were alone, he said, “Now. I have been thinking about our greedy adversary.”