LORD CAVENDISH RETURNS
The Cavendish Mysteries
Book Five
By
Rebecca King
Lord Cavendish Returns
By
Rebecca King
© Rebecca King 2015
SMASHWORDS EDITION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PROLOGUE
Mildred glanced up at Sebastian beseechingly and drew him toward her with surprisingly strong hands. She gasped and coughed with the effort the simple action took, but refused to give in to death’s icy grasp. The fierce glint of determination in her watery grey eyes immediately began to dull, but she kept her gaze locked steadily on his and tried desperately to find the best way to tell him. This was her final chance to put things right and she simply would not relinquish her hold on life until the secrets of the past were revealed. It was far too late for her to make sure that the Cavendish brothers actually did something useful with the information she was about to impart. However, she knew that they were a determined group of men who would not stop until they had unearthed the truth and welcomed the past into the present. She just had to find a way to break the news to them.
“Come closer boy, I do not have the energy to shout,” she grumbled, and frowned at Sebastian in disapproval when he rolled his eyes and leaned toward her. If she had been fit and agile she would have reached up and clipped him behind the ears. Even as tall and grown up as he was he wasn’t too big for clout at the back of the neck. Now that she lay on her death bed though, she had to settle for a dark look that did little to appease the growing concern of everyone present that she was running out of time.
Sebastian patted the back of her bony hand absently as he smiled gently down at her. His eyes held a hint of challenge, as though he dared her to step away from the grasping hands of death and scold him, but she couldn’t.
“What is it, aunt? What do you want to tell me?” He flicked a look at his brothers who stood on the opposite end of the bed.
Half an hour ago, they had all been summoned by the butler to gather around their aunt’s deathbed because she had some grave news she wanted to tell them. Now that they were there, nobody knew what to say. Aunt Mildred was clearly struggling to stay alive long enough to tell them what she felt she needed to, and they could do nothing but stand patiently, wait and hope that she didn’t succumb to death before she had eased her burden.
She glanced at each man in turn. Her eyes turned faintly challenging, as though she knew they wouldn’t like what she was going to say but she was going to say it anyway. She released Sebastian’s hand and waved him to stand beside his brothers so she could see them all together without too much effort.
“Your mother was immensely proud of all of you, you know that.” Grief heightened the emotional atmosphere within the room at the mention of their mother, and Mildred’s sister, Alice, who had died several years earlier in a carriage accident with her husband. The grief was still strong in all of them, but Mildred had no hesitation in speaking ill of the dead now. In fact, she had the strangest feeling that her dearest sister was up in heaven, urging her to tell Dominic, Sebastian and Edward everything. At least she hoped so, because the shock she was about to lay upon them was going to change all of their lives.
“Your mother was a wonderful woman. So kind, strong, gentle, with such a deep adoration of all three of you. You were her pride and joy, you should know that. However, she spent her life plagued with regrets. You have mentioned the sadness she seemed to carry with her on occasions, and wondered many times where it came from.” Mildred swallowed and wet her lips. “She had a secret, you see? A secret that was very close to her heart which caused her a lot of pain.”
“What secret?” Dominic demanded with a frown when Mildred lapsed into silence and stared off into the distance.
They all knew what Mildred was referring to. Although their mother had outwardly appeared happy and content with her life and the love of her husband, there had been many occasions when she had been so indescribably sad that it was almost as though she was miles away. She carried the pain around with her like a cloak around her shoulders and although she laughed and sounded gay, her smiles never really reached her eyes. She never spoke about what brought tears to her eyes so frequently. Whenever someone had the temerity to ask, she had merely smiled a watery smile, wiped her tears away, and denied that anything was amiss.
The men looked at each other. They knew they were on the cusp of finding out what their mother’s distress had all been about. Had it been an old paramour perhaps or a mistake in the past that she bitterly regretted? The silence within the room was broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantle as they watched Mildred struggle to fight for life. They all fervently hoped that she would hang on long enough to tell them, but none of them were prepared for her next words.
“You have a half-brother,” she gasped.
She fervently hoped that she hadn’t left it too late to ask them to gather around her. It was suddenly so very difficult to breathe. If only she hadn’t caught that blasted cough last spring, she would have had at least a couple of years in her. Now that she was at death’s door, the ghosts of the past seemed to have resurrected, as though they were determined to be released out into the open while there was still a chance. She fought the heavy weight on her chest and stubbornly refused to acknowledge the uneven beating of her heart as she studied each man in turn.
“She was a lovely young woman, your mother. Very pretty and much sought after. She had already married your father and had you, Dominic but at first their marriage was not a happy one. He spent most of his time in London, and had a mistress. Your mother preferred the country and stopped here to look after you. At some point, while they were living their separate lives, she met and took a lover of her own, and I am afraid that a child came from that union.”
“Did father know?” Dominic slumped down onto the bed, stunned to say the very least. He studied Mildred’s eyes and wondered if she was off with the fairies again, but the calm certainty in her gaze told him that she was completely lucid and determined to impart the truth.
The wheezing in her chest suddenly increased and she coughed so hard that she was left limp and gasping on the bed. Her face paled and he knew with absolute certainty that she didn’t have long to discuss matters before the ability to breathe failed her completely.
“Yes, he found out,” she gasped. “At first he was livid and I understand that there were many arguments, but he had been bedding a mistress in London, and was hardly in a position to judge Alice too harshly for doing exactly the same as him. She went away to stay at a cousin’s in Yorkshire for her confinement. Nobody knew about the baby, except for the baby’s father.” She sighed and glanced ruefully at him. “I don’t know the specific details, but I do know that the child’s father found her in her confinement and took the child when it had been born. She came back here a heartbroken woman, and never spoke of the man or boy ever again.” She dabbed at the tears in her own eyes with a trembling hand. Those years seemed such a long time ago, yet the memories were as vivid as though they had only happened yesterday.
“Your mother’s tears will haunt me forever. They never dried and I don’t think that a day went past when she didn’t think
about him at least a hundred times. Your father seemed to realise that he was going to lose his wife if he didn’t do something to save his marriage, so he gave up his mistress and moved here to run the estates. Of course, then you and Edward came along, Sebastian, and your parents seemed to sort themselves out and settle into marriage, but your mother was never the same after that. She never forgot.”
“Did she try to find him?”
Mildred nodded. “She knew where he was, she just couldn’t go to him because your father wouldn’t permit it. She had you three and her life here to lose if she did go to Yorkshire, and she had handed the baby’s care over to his father. There was little she could do. She couldn’t go back.”
“Who was the father?” Edward gasped. He was stunned, awed, horrified, and glanced at Dominic who looked equally as shocked by the revelation.
“There are rumours, but she refused to say.”
“Do you have any details? I mean names or anything?”
Determination glinted in Dominic’s beautiful green eyes as he studied his aunt. She smiled faintly; inwardly relieved that he would pick up the mantle, and would not stop searching for the lost half-brother until he knew what had happened to him. “I know that if your half-brother has grown up to be anything like you three then he will be a very fine man indeed.”
A further coughing fit wracked her from head to toe, and the room began to dim around the edges. She felt the pressure of time, and gasped several times in an attempt to draw in enough air to tell them the last bit.
“His name is Harper. Harper Lawton.” She began to wince in discomfort, but desperately clawed at Sebastian, who stood at the side of the bed closest to her. They had to know. They just had to know, before death claimed her. “When you find him, you must tell him that he is Lord Cavendish, the Earl of Hopswich.”
With that, Mildred knew that she had done her best to release the family ghosts from the chains of the past. What the men chose to do about the news was purely down to them. She could do no more.
They all watched as Mildred gasped several times and then stopped breathing altogether. Her eye lids drifted slowly closed and silence settled over the room.
“Good Lord,” Edward whispered, stunned beyond words. He had seen people die before, many times, and was sad to have lost an elderly aunt, but nothing had ever shocked him more than her deathbed revelations. “Do you think she is right?”
“She seemed determined to fight to stay alive long enough to tell us,” Dominic replied with a sigh.
Edward covered Mildred’s body over with a sheet and stood back to pay his respects for a moment. Eventually, when their prayers were completed, they solemnly made their way out of the room.
“At least we have a name,” Sebastian sighed when they were in the hallway. He wondered how on earth anyone went about trying to find a person just by name alone.
“We know the baby was born in Yorkshire,” Edward added hopefully and shook his head when Dominic gave him a hard stare.
“Yes, he was born in Yorkshire; along with hundreds of babies in hundreds of parishes. It should be so easy to find one,” he retorted sarcastically.
“We could live to be a hundred years old and never get to the end of searching all the registers in Yorkshire, even if we could find the time,” Sebastian frowned. “Did mother have any personal letters or diaries, at all? Something we can look at to see if she made reference to where she gave birth?”
“We know she had the child in Yorkshire. The only relative we had in Yorkshire at the time was Uncle Malcolm. He passed away several years back but the estate was passed to his son, Terrence. I have a few letters of mama’s tucked away in the safe, but I have already read them. There is no mention of any baby, or a lover for that matter,” Dominic replied thoughtfully.
“One of us needs to go to Yorkshire to speak to Terrence,” Sebastian sighed. He had hoped to spend several weeks with his brothers and their children and didn’t relish any one of them being away for several days while they undertook the journey, but there were so many unanswered questions that he knew none of them would settle until they had the answers.
“Terrence isn’t likely to have mama’s letters,” Edward countered.
Sebastian rolled his eyes and shook his head as he moved to the stairs. “I know that, but he could have his mother’s diaries, which may mention whether our mother and her baby were in residence.”
“I think that we need to keep this matter private for the time being.” Dominic followed his brothers to the top of the stairs and studied the hallway below. “We don’t know whether it is a scandal that we need to keep hidden.”
He nodded sadly to the maids waiting at the end of the hallway, and sent one of them off to fetch the footmen to move the body down to the cold rooms at the bottom of the house.
They made their way to the study and helped themselves to liberal doses of brandy before they each took a seat before the fire. They sat in quiet contemplation for a long time; each lost to their own memories of Mildred’s presence in their lives and her stunning surprise.
In the end, it was Sebastian who asked the question his brothers were thinking.
“Do we even bother to try to find him?” Sebastian sighed. “I mean, it is so long ago now that the man has to be in his thirties. If he was brought up as a tradesman, how is he going to adjust to life as an Earl? He won’t have been raised to cope with the responsibilities of running an estate, or a house like this, let alone handle the benefits that having a title will bring.”
“I quite agree. He could be a wastrel or, even worse, in prison. What do we do then? I mean, he is a relation and has entailments. We have a duty to ensure that he is at least made aware of what he is entitled to. But -,” Edward held a hand up when Sebastian took a breath to speak, “but, we cannot risk the reputation of the rest of the family by just walking up to anyone and inviting them to become one of us,” he added with a frown.
“We have to find him and see what he is like. Then we will have to decide whether we tell him or just walk away.”
“Did Mildred ever mention the Earl of Hopswich before?”
Dominic shook his head. “It rings a faint bell but I cannot remember much. I think it is from mother’s side of the family. We have to speak to Johnson, and see what he says.”
“One thing I want to know,” Edward sighed as he refilled his brandy glass and lifted the decanter toward Dominic and Sebastian, who both nodded. “Why hasn’t Harry Johnson told us about this missing half-brother before now? I mean, with mama and papa in their graves, why keep it a secret still? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Dominic had a strange feeling that trouble was brewing and almost groaned in disbelief. He had thought that the days of the family having to deal with mystery and strife were long gone. Unfortunately, it appeared that Fate had other ideas.
One month later
Dominic sat with Edward and Sebastian in the study of the house that seemed to be as decrepit and aged as its owner, and watched Harry Johnson senior settle his trembling frame into a high backed chair before the fire. Although the man was in his early seventies, he had not aged well and carried himself with an air of someone who was more like a hundred years old.
Silence settled over them as Harry Johnson gazed absently into the fire.
Sebastian studied the man carefully and wondered if they would get anything useful out of him. He seemed off in another world somewhere and, although he hadn’t been rude to them, he didn’t seem inclined toward friendliness either.
However, they hadn’t called for a social chat. They had travelled to London specifically to find out what Harry Johnson knew about their half-brother. So far the only thing they had been able to discover about their half-brother was that he had been born in Yorkshire, and their cousin Terrence didn’t have any of his mother’s old letters anymore because they had been lost in a house fire several years earlier. There had been no mention of a baby, an affair or anything untoward in either Mildred’
s diaries, or their mother’s personal papers. They knew because while the family had been together, the men and their wives had spent hours trawling through the copious amounts of personal papers, documents, diaries and letters that had been carefully stored in the attics. It appeared that any record of the birth had been carefully destroyed or hidden in some secret place that they had yet to find.
Hungry for information, Dominic had made arrangements to visit Harry Johnson senior, who had served their family at the time of the scandal.
“Thank you for seeing us today, Harry,” Dominic sighed when he couldn’t stand the silence a moment longer. “As I said in my letter, our Aunt Mildred passed away recently. Unfortunately, she told us something on her deathbed that has shaken us and left us asking questions that only you can answer given that you were the family’s solicitor at the time.”
“I know what you are here to ask,” Harry said quietly. “Mildred would know because she was Alice’s sister.” He suddenly turned his calm gaze back to the men and looked each one in the eye. “The child is mine.”
Stunned silence settled over them.
“Yours?”
Harry Johnson sighed and nodded. “I was engaged by your father to work on several legal matters pertaining to the estate. Unfortunately, your father preferred to carouse around London, and remained in Mayfair while I visited the estate on business. Your mother loved the country, as I did, but felt incredibly lonely there by herself. Things were not well with her marriage and, although she had you, Dominic, she had no husband to guide and support her. It was a difficult period in her life. At the time, because of your father’s absence, I spent many hours in the study at Havistock Hall acting as, well, a sort of man of business. Your mother and I grew very close and spent many hours together.” He drew in a deep breath and threw his shoulders back almost defiantly. “I make no apology for falling in love with your mother. Alice was a delightful woman; very pretty, with a rapier wit and a love of life that made me smile. I adored her. She was very gentle and deserved to have a man in her life who would appreciate her. I was considerably older than she was, but that didn’t seem to matter to either of us. We never planned to fall in love, and certainly never expected matters to take the course they did. It was a shock to us both when she found herself with child.”
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