A Sense of Purpose

by Soliman, Wendy

  ‘I believe I saw him arrive on horseback a moment or two ago, my lord.’

  ‘Then have him sent in at once. Then see that we are not disturbed.’

  Woodley acknowledged his orders and closed the door softly behind him. Luke returned his attention to Archie. Luke would have recognised him anywhere, even though his hair was now greying at the temples and the lower part of his face was decorated with thick whiskers. Pain was etched into his eyes, but his angular features and chiselled jaw were unmistakably Archie Hardwick.

  Unless he had a twin whom Luke knew nothing about.

  ‘I don’t know whether to hug the life out of you or smack you on the jaw for not being dead,’ Luke said in a contemplative tone.

  ‘Nor I,’ Paul agreed, his expression still frozen in shock. Since Paul had sacrificed more than the others in the defence of Archie, who’d thrown it all back in Paul’s face, his reaction was hardly to be wondered at.

  ‘It was not my wish…’ Archie glanced at Flora and his words trailed off.

  ‘This is Miss Flora Latimer, my grandmother’s companion. Flora, this is Lord Archie Hardwick. You have heard me mention his name in passing.’ Both Paul and Archie looked surprised by that admission. ‘He is quite dead, of course, as you can see for yourself.’

  Archie inclined his head and sent her a flirtatious look that was quintessentially Archie. If Luke had doubted his identity, that look dispelled any lingering uncertainty.

  Flora bobbed a curtsey as Archie’s behaviour brought a smile to her lips. ‘I will leave you gentlemen to become reacquainted,’ she said, ‘if you will have the goodness to excuse me. I dare say you have a lot to talk about.’

  Luke crossed the room and opened the door for her himself. ‘Archie’s resurrection must remain a secret, at least until I understand what the devil is going on.’

  ‘I understand perfectly.’ She touched his hand. ‘This must be hard for you. Send for me if I am needed.’ She paused, her expression sympathetic enough to cut through his defences. ‘If you need me.’

  ‘We will talk later, once Charlie returns, about the other business.’

  ‘Don’t worry for now. You have more pressing concerns. Miranda is in no immediate danger.’ She paused. ‘Woodley recognised your friend. You do realise that?’

  ‘I do. But he knows how to keep a secret.’

  ‘Very well. Until later then.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Good luck.’

  Before Luke could close the door on her retreating form, Alvin Watson bustled through it. ‘Where’s the fire, Luke? I’ve never seen Woodley half so…what in the name of God?’ He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Archie as though he had two heads. He pointed an accusatory finger at Archie. ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘So these two will keep insisting. It’s becoming tiresome.’

  At the sound of Archie’s familiar voice the time fell away, as did Luke’s resentment at being kept in the dark for nine long years. They were all back at Oxford again with nothing more pressing on their minds than the pursuit of pleasure. He clapped Archie’s shoulder and counted his blessings for having his closest friend restored to him. The other two did likewise.

  ‘You’d best sit down and tell us what the hell’s going on,’ Luke said. ‘Standing clearly causes you discomfort. Not that you don’t deserve it, but still…’

  Paul stood and poured four glasses of whisky. ‘Let’s show our deceased, much lamented friend, our tradition when we get together,’ he said.

  Archie watched as the three of them stood in a semi-circle and lifted their glasses to the fourth, untouched one.

  ‘To absent friends,’ they said in unison, draining their drinks in one swallow.

  ‘Seems I have some lost drinking to make up for, gentlemen,’ Archie said with a wry smile that failed to disguise the moistness in his eyes.

  ‘You have some talking to do first,’ Luke replied, handing him the fourth glass. All four of them watched, swallowing down their emotions with much greater difficulty than Archie swallowed his drink.

  ‘I apologise for the deception. If I’d known it was being perpetuated I would have taken you into my confidence.’

  ‘How could you not have known?’ Alvin demanded.

  ‘We all thought you were dead,’ Luke said, his mind swamped with images of Archie’s body after he’d tumbled two stories from Magda’s window. He hadn’t actually witnessed the accident, or seen the body, but that was no impediment to his imagination. No one could have survived such a crushing fall. ‘Damn it, we attended your funeral and mourned your loss! We still were, until five minutes ago, in our individual ways.’

  ‘I was pronounced dead,’ Archie said. ‘Apparently. Don’t remember anything after jumping onto that vine to escape. It held until halfway down, which is what they tell me saved my life. I had time to prepare and although the fall broke virtually every bone in my body, my head came through comparatively unscathed.’

  ‘Told you that hard head of his would come in useful one day,’ Alvin quipped.

  ‘When the undertakers started laying me out they discovered a faint pulse. But my body was broken, seemingly beyond repair. Father was told that I still breathed, but he assumed I wouldn’t survive. He was left on the horns of a dilemma. Simpson was still fighting mad because I’d dabbled with Magda. It wouldn’t have been enough for him to know that I was quite literally a broken man. You all remember how vindictive he was. A hardened soldier from an influential family, with rank and authority, he would have extracted financial satisfaction from Father, and a public apology that would have been humiliating.’ Archie waved his empty glass in the air. ‘Thirsty work, all this talking.’

  ‘Some things never change,’ Luke complained, standing to refill all their glasses.

  ‘Father made arrangements for me to be taken to a discreet facility close to Oxford, where I was expected to die within days. But you know how stubborn I can be, and I didn’t oblige. That left the pater in an even bigger quandary. Rather than admit that I was still alive, he went ahead and arranged my funeral.’

  ‘What in the name of God possessed him to jump the gun?’ Luke asked, perplexed.

  ‘He wanted to be left alone, or so he says. Part of me wonders if he always suspected that I would pull through and that he needed time to see how well I recovered. Despite all the scrapes I got into, all the trouble I caused him, Father was always willing to overlook my transgressions. I think he saw part of himself as a young man in me. Anyway, he knew that Simpson wouldn’t let up until he had proof of death, so to speak. He would have publicly shamed me, which would have meant bringing shame upon the family name, if he even suspected that I still breathed. He probably realised that Magda had fallen for me and didn’t want to risk the added humiliation of her leaving him.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Luke said sharply. ‘Even if that’s true, you wouldn’t have encouraged her to leave Simpson. You played fast and loose with her affections, but it takes two. Besides, you wouldn’t have forgotten your duty to that extent, blinded though you were by her charms. You are—or were—a marquess’s heir. You had responsibilities.’

  ‘I know that, old chap.’ Archie held up his hands. ‘But the pater was convinced that Simpson didn’t. A husband humiliated, and all that.’

  ‘So we endured a big public display of mourning at your funeral,’ Alvin said. ‘We carried your coffin into the church, the three of us and your brother.’

  ‘Who did we bury?’ Paul asked.

  ‘No idea. I was still out of it, drugged to the eyeballs to keep the agony at bay until I died.’

  ‘But contrary devil that you are, you pulled through,’ Luke said.

  ‘After a fashion. I couldn’t move my legs. All the quacks told me I’d never walk again. So Father had me moved to a facility in Switzerland under a false name. I was there for two years, determined to prove them wrong.’

  ‘And you did,’ Alvin said. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘After a fashion,’ Archie replied. ‘Th
is is as good as it will get. Better than the most optimistic of doctors predicted but, as you say, I’m a stubborn so and so. I can walk short distances with a stick, but I can’t sit astride a horse. Can’t do anything much else other than stagger about like an old man.’ He shrugged. ‘Still, it’s my own damned fault. I know that very well.’ He laughed and for a moment the pain left his eyes, the years fell away and he was their old, irreverent leader again. ‘But, you know, part of me doesn’t regret it. We had some times. Sowed our wild oats good and deep. And now here you are, Luke. The epitome of the responsible earl with everyone dancing to your tune.’ He turned to face Paul. ‘I’m sorry you had to give up so much for my sake. You probably think that I have a damned odd way of showing my gratitude. But still, I’ll never forget what you did.’

  ‘I’m content,’ Paul replied, ‘and for reasons I struggle to comprehend, I’m glad to see you again, you old rogue.’

  ‘And look at you, Alvin, about to marry Luke’s sister. The first of us to take the plunge. We’ve all had to grow up.’

  ‘What happened after Switzerland?’ Luke asked, drawing Archie back to his explanation.

  ‘You know my brother, who after my death became my father’s heir, himself died in a boating accident.’

  All three men nodded. ‘We expressed our regrets to your father,’ Luke said. ‘We decided at the time that your family was cursed.’

  ‘His death left the pater in a bit of a quandary. He knew he had a living heir whom everyone else supposed was six feet under. What was he to do about it? Then fate intervened, as it so often does. You are aware that I have an uncle?’ All three men nodded. ‘He and my father had been estranged for years. My uncle married a French heiress and lived in that country, tending the vineyards his wife inherited upon her father’s death. They had one legitimate son, but the wife died giving birth to him. In my case,’ he added, ‘the apple didn’t fall far from the family tree. My widower of an uncle had several illegitimate children that he knew about, and probably more that he did not. Anyway, he contacted Father when I was still in Switzerland, making a painfully slow recovery, begging to bury the hatchet and asking for a loan. His son had contracted a wasting disease and my uncle had spent all his savings sending him to one expensive clinic after another. Then his grapes were infected by a blight and his harvest failed.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Luke said pensively. ‘Your father saw an opportunity. He would bail his brother out if you could live with him, thereby reassuming your position as your father’s heir.’ He frowned. ‘But what of your cousin?’

  ‘That’s where fate intervened. Just as Pa and his brother were discussing matters, my cousin died. So, I returned to burgundy as the prodigal and have been living there as Pascal Hardwick ever since.’ He spoke the last sentence in heavily accented English that would have made Luke believe he was French, had he not known better.

  Luke exchanged a look with Paul and Alvin. ‘Of all the luck…’ He shook his head, wondering if he was hallucinating. It seemed so far-fetched, and yet truth was so often stranger than fiction. ‘Only you could have pulled it off. You’ve risen from the dead and somehow managed to reassume your position as your father’s heir. You’ll get away with it, too. No one will ask questions and the French accent will gradually fade.’

  Luke felt the anger, the tension created by the deception drain from him and started to laugh; a deep, belly laugh that caused the others to glance at him, then see the funny side of it and join in. Soon, all four men had tears streaming down their faces.

  ‘My one regret,’ Archie said, wiping his eyes, ‘well, I have more than one. My main regret is that I couldn’t bring you three into my confidence. The pater insisted on secrecy and I’d caused him so much anguish that I had to toe the parental line this time. Besides, it was far from certain that I would survive, and if I did I was only ever going to be a shell of the man I used to be. I didn’t want anyone to see me the way I was. What I’ve been through…’ He shook his head. ‘Sometimes—often, if I’m honest—I would have preferred to be dead. So I hope you will all find it in your hearts to forgive me.’

  ‘For my part, I’ll forgive you,’ Luke said. ‘Just like we’ve done countless times before.’

  The others agreed and glasses were refilled in order to toast the occasion.

  ‘Why have you chosen to come home now?’ Alvin asked.

  ‘My uncle died a few months ago, so I’ve sold up in France. There was nothing for me there so I returned to English soil for the first time in nine years just yesterday. The old man is frail. He needs me here and I’m reasonably confident that I can play my part without rousing suspicions.’

  ‘Talking of suspicions,’ Paul said. ‘Didn’t your uncle’s servants suspect that you weren’t his actual son? I mean, they must have known the real Pascal well.’

  ‘We were uncannily alike, I gather. And I was much more withered then than I am now, which ain’t saying much.’ He gave a disgusted snort, the only sign of self-pity he had thus far displayed. ‘They accepted me.’ He paused to sip at his drink. ‘Anyway, I’ve been aching to come back and finally I was summoned for another reason entirely, which indirectly has to do with you, Luke.’

  Luke sent his friend a startled look. ‘Me?’

  ‘Father was approached by a near-neighbour of yours a week or so ago. A neighbour who’d been widely travelling across Europe and beyond for two years.’

  ‘Cooper!’ Luke and Paul said together.

  ‘Ah, I see you’re ahead of me. Their party spent a week or two in burgundy. I encountered them by chance in a local tavern.’

  ‘And was recognised,’ Luke surmised.

  ‘I must have grown careless over the years, I suppose.’ Archie waved a suave hand in a gesture that Luke remembered well from their youth. Archie always had been the most elegant of the four of them. Now he was a virtual cripple, but aspects of his former charm endured. ‘I’d met any number of Englishmen passing through and none of them had doubted my credentials as a fully-fledged Frenchman, or made the connection to my father.’

  ‘Cooper bears the marquess a grudge,’ Luke replied. ‘We’ll come to the reasons for that in a minute. Seeing you, he convinced himself of your true identity and suspected a cover-up.’

  ‘How did he recognise you?’ Alvin asked. ‘You would have been a child, probably away at school, when Cooper’s father had dealings with yours. Besides, Philip Cooper, the current head of the Cooper clan, would not have been a-party to those dealings.’

  Archie shrugged. ‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid. There have been pictures in the newspapers over the years, if anyone cared to look. I’m told there was a plethora of them when I died. When Cooper was admitted to Father’s inner sanctum he pointed to a photograph of me he keeps on his desk, taken a decade ago, and swore that was the man he’d seen in Burgundy.’

  ‘Cooper must have felt as though all his Christmases had come at once.’ Luke shifted into a more comfortable position as he thought the matter through. ‘At last he had a means of gaining revenge on the man he holds response for his family’s failings. I imagine he tried to blackmail your father.’

  ‘He did. Needless to say, the pater told him to go to hell and had him thrown off his property. That is why he sent for me. He knew the time had come, that I was no longer needed in France, and that is why you find me here today.’

  ‘The marquess once sponsored Cooper’s father’s export business, but called in his loans when it failed to produce results,’ Luke explained. ‘Cooper was verbally persuasive, but unable to fulfil his obligations with it came to the cut and thrust of competitive business. Your father was right to cut his losses.’

  ‘He explained that to me, but what is that to do with the current generation?’

  ‘Revenge,’ Paul said.

  ‘Family pride,’ Alvin added.

  ‘Greed,’ Luke surmised, going on to explain how the Coopers had inveigled their way into the Defoe family and now threatened Miranda’s w
ellbeing. ‘It seems to me that he needs Miranda’s vast fortune to rebuild his export business and eclipse the competition, if only to prove an obscure point. He wanted to extract money from your father to gain his ultimate revenge.’

  ‘I agree,’ Paul said.

  ‘This is the first I’ve heard of all this,’ Alvin put in. ‘But I tend to agree also.’

  ‘You’re got your mind on other things,’ Luke said with a droll smile.

  Alvin looked smug. ‘That is undeniable.’

  ‘I seem to remember Matthew Cooper,’ Archie said. ‘He was in his cups in that tavern, loud and abusive. He and his elder brother exchanged cross words. Can’t recall the precise nature of their disagreement but Matthew was kicking up a hell of a fuss about a commitment he was being asked to make.’

  ‘Trouble in paradise,’ Paul said scathingly.

  ‘What will you do about Cooper?’ Archie asked, wincing with the effort it took him to rearrange his legs.

  Luke answered his question with one of his own. ‘More to the point, what are we to do about you? I would invite you to dine but Miranda Defoe is with us tonight. I suspect your father has plans to introduce his nephew to society as his heir in his own time. My brothers will recognise you and ask questions. I would prefer to defer that moment and for my sisters not to see you until your father has properly reinvented you.’

  ‘I could wish for a warmer welcome,’ Archie said with a self-deprecating grin.

  ‘Your welcome is far warmer than you deserve, given the anguish you caused us all,’ Alvin replied.

  ‘Point taken.’ Archie’s expression sobered. ‘What of the rather fetching young woman who was in here when I arrived, Luke? She appeared to know all about me. Can she be trusted?’

  All eyes turned towards Luke with varying degrees of curiosity. ‘Flora Latimer is, frankly, a godsend. She keeps my grandmother more or less in line, as much as anyone can, and has proved her loyalty in the short time she’s been employed here.’ Luke paused, sensing that his explanation wouldn’t be enough to satisfy his friends. ‘You wouldn’t be aware that Magda has inflicted herself upon us again, or tried to.’