“No I don’t, dear.”
“So, Johnson, I am afraid that all of your scheming has been for nothing. We have retrieved the records and discovered that Harper is a Cavendish. As of this moment, he is entitled and owns the Hopswich estates. He has vast wealth and is now the first Earl of Hopswich, so I suggest that you are very careful about your illegal activities around him. As the head of the Cavendish family, I warn you now that I take any crimes committed against the family personally and I, for one, am not going to stand by and allow you to get away with your behaviour. Harper’s title was generated because of the connections our mother was born into. It was a title that was created for him and has been kept specifically for him should he choose to accept it. You will not stand in the way of his legal right to claim it.”
“He is nothing to do with my father,” Harry bit out. “He is an ill-bred country ingrate.”
“No matter what you think of him personally, you cannot ignore the fact that you share the same father with him. That is written in the parish records for the world to see,” Dominic countered dismissively.
“Records we have retrieved and intend to keep safe, just in case you intend to question his birth-right legally,” Sebastian added menacingly.
“I don’t intend to question his birth-right, but I have no intention of allowing anyone to come along and help themselves to everything I have sacrificed my life for,” Harry snapped.
“What the hell are you talking about? I have only just found out that my mother is not who I thought she is.” Harper struggled to contain his temper. In spite of the evening’s revelations, he was deeply disturbed by the image of Arrabella gagged and bound to a chair.
“My father does though,” Harry nodded to the Cavendish brothers. “As soon as they turned up on his doorstep and demanded to know all about my father’s abhorrent behaviour, he has insisted on making further provision for you in his will,” Harry snapped. His voice was a mixture of pain and bitterness. “As if the house, the fortune and the title weren’t already enough,” he whispered starkly. “I was forced into the life I lead. I was the son he was forced, through marriage, to keep and I was the one who had an expectancy placed on me to continue in my father’s footsteps. Nobody bothered to ask me what I wanted to do with my life. Whenever I tried to reason with my father and suggest that I do something I wanted to do, I was always slapped down and told that as his son, it was my duty to protect the family name and take over the family business. I have hated each and every day that I have been made to do a job I despise, while working for a father who spent most of his time thinking something else. He has always been a bit vague and distant, but I always put his distraction down to the pressure of his work but it wasn’t, he was busy thinking about you.” As he spoke, the fight seemed to go out of Harry. His shoulders drooped and he stared blankly at the floor. “I thought that if I could keep the records and stop you finding proof of your links to my father, he would have no grounds to hand you the business when he died. Since they paid a visit,” he nodded briskly to the Cavendish brothers again, “he has changed his will again, and given practically everything to you. Guilt still plagues him, you see. He feels that he should have made better choices and raised you himself. Given that he cannot go back and do it all over again, he has decided to throw money at you in the hope that you can forgive him for being the stupidly foolish and weak man that he is.”
“He cannot have cut you out of the will entirely, surely to God?” Edward growled and frowned ferociously across the room at Harry, who nodded.
“No, he has given me the business, which I run anyway. Other than that, everything else goes to him,” he nodded toward Harper. “The huge mansion in London, the bank accounts full of money, bonds, everything, are all his. I have worked all of my life doing a job I hate in the hope that my father would at least notice me but he never has. As soon as I knew my father was changing his will, I knew that if I could get my hands on the register, I could refute the latest change in the contents of his will citing lack of evidence.”
“So you stole the register,” Harper whispered. While he could understand the man’s actions, he didn’t agree with them. “Why didn’t you sit down and speak to your father about this? I mean, why just break the law and actually resort to theft to protect your future?”
“It is hardly as though you have no job or home to go to. Unless I am mistaken, solicitors are paid well for the work they do,” Dominic drawled with a sigh. Now that the threat of danger was seemingly over, he rested his shoulders against the wall behind him and crossed his ankles in a casual pose that was at odds with the seriousness of the situation.
“I did try to speak to him, but he kept saying over and over that he should have done more to provide for you himself. He has purchased the house here and arranged for people to look after you. Apparently he has visited on a number of occasions throughout your childhood to see how you were getting on, and has also been overseeing the maintenance of the massive mansion your mother left you in case you decide to live there, but to him it is still not enough. He regrets that you went into the army and weren’t educated and able to undertake a worthwhile occupation, and so decided that he needed to make it up to you even more.”
Harper snorted at that. As far as he was concerned, the work he did with the Star Elite was far more commendable than the work of solicitors. “I have no regrets about my life choices.”
“You may not, but father doesn’t know that. I have worked all of my life to get that man to at least be fair to me but the bitterness that has grown inside him over the choices he made over you is something that has haunted him. Now that he has the chance, he is going to make sure that you have a home and enough wealth to make sure that you don’t have to be in the army anymore.”
“I am not in the army though. I left years ago.”
“You work for the War Office,” Harry countered. “As far as he is concerned that is still the army.”
“I thought the work I did was confidential.” Harper shook his head and studied the Cavendish brothers. For a so-called ‘secret’ organisation, an awful lot of people knew about the Star Elite now and he wondered how the men who worked undercover had survived for as long as they had.
“Father has moved heaven and earth to keep track of you throughout your life apparently. He struggled to contain his fears when you disappeared into the army and has been using his contacts to find you as soon as it became clear that you had left the army and vanished. I don’t know if he managed to locate you or not but, as soon as the Cavendish brothers appeared, he seemed to have more drive and determination to provide for your welfare than he ever had for me.”
“You know this for a fact, do you?” Dominic drawled casually.
“Father told me,” Harry replied carefully. “After your visit he asked me to call at his house for a visit because he had something to discuss with me. He told me everything.”
“Look, as far as I am concerned, my father will always be the man who raised me, Bartholomew Lawton,” Harper sighed. “Whatever issues you have with your father are something you need to discuss with him, not me. My concern is your illegal activities in Hambley Wood. Taking the register is theft, and is illegal.” He glanced at Arrabella. “Why tie Arrabella up? I mean, what is she to you? What are you even doing here?”
“I didn’t want her to run for help. There are two women and only one of me so I had to do something. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I just wanted to give her a warning to pass on to you to make you stop looking for the register.” Harry walked past him and sat wearily in a chair before the fire. He stared at the floor for several moments before he turned his attention to Mrs Able. “But then the lady here started to get troublesome and I was faced with a dilemma. I could either leave and hope that I got out of the area before they raised the alarm, or stay and speak to you directly. I just didn’t know that your brothers – your other brothers – had turned up.”
“This is important to us,” Sebastian si
ghed around a yawn.
“Harper is our brother. He is a Cavendish. We needed to know whether he is Lord Cavendish, the Earl of Hopswich, or merely Mr Harper Lawton from Hambley Wood,” Edward added.
“There is a lot riding on the truth. Not just your father’s change of will, but the entailment that is now his, and the future of the estate his mother set aside in her will for him,” Dominic added. “We knew nothing of the provision our mother made for him either, but we don’t bear any grudges over it. She saw to our welfare too in her own will, although my father provided the most. We are all self-sufficient and just grateful to have a new brother whom we can now get to know and spend some time with.”
Harper studied the floor at his feet. He was strangely touched by the calm certainty in Dominic’s declaration and felt his world begin to settle a little more.
He sighed and turned to Harry. “I didn’t ask your father to change his will, nor do I want any of his fortune. I am sorry to tell all of you but I have amassed more than enough to keep myself in luxury for the rest of my days. I have the house in Hambley Wood that has been mine all along, and don’t really need anything from anyone else. Harry, I would strongly suggest that you speak to your father about how you feel. It seems that it isn’t just your father who has bitter regrets about the past. I cannot condone your actions; attacking an unarmed man who is only trying to uncover the truth is a cowardly way to behave. I could get you thrown into jail, for terrifying the lady if nothing else, but I am going to order you on your way instead. I don’t know who you are, but I don’t really want to right now.”
The kinship he felt toward the Cavendish brothers had nothing to do with their matching stature, it was more their attitude toward the man before them, as well as the protectiveness they had shown toward Anabella. He glanced at Dominic, who nodded.
“Go home, Harry, but I warn you now that I shall have no qualms about using my contacts amongst the Ton to end your days as a solicitor if you endeavour to ever pose any threat to anyone in my family, especially the lady here. She has been an unfortunate victim in all of your schemes and machinations, and I don’t take that lightly.”
“I haven’t done anything to her,” Harry argued with a frown. “I am not the kind of man to behave like that toward any woman. I am sorry I hit you on the head with the candlestick, Harper, I was angry and confused. I don’t know what came over me.” He seemed more than a little befuddled about his actions but Harper didn’t really care.
“What do you mean you didn’t do anything to her? You locked her in a crypt with a stranger,” Harper countered sharply. “She was damned lucky that it was me in there with her, and not some lecherous lothario who would be more than happy to ruin her.”
Arrabella felt her cheeks burn, but she was shaken out of her discomfort when Mrs Able spoke.
“It wasn’t him,” Mrs Able declared quietly and looked Arrabella in the eye. “It wasn’t him who locked you into that crypt. It was me.”
“You!” Arrabella cried. “Why? You know I hate the dark, and spiders. He was a stranger; you could have destroyed my reputation if anyone found out about it.”
“I was hoping you would be hideously compromised, but those blasted cleaning ladies didn’t turn up when they should have done. Mrs Boulter took poorly and they decided to leave cleaning the church until she was well again. When I realised that nobody was going to let you out I came back and did it.”
“You tried to ruin me?” Hurt filled her words and she fought the urge to cry.
Mrs Able had been someone; the only one of late, whom she thought she could rely on. She had no idea how much Mrs Able had been behind any of what had happened to her and Harper, and struggled to focus her thoughts on anything other than the fact that the housekeeper – her friend – had betrayed her.
“Of course I did dear. You are stuck here in this God forsaken little village with little hope of a decent future. That idiot Joseph,” she glanced at Harper. “Sorry, but he is; didn’t make any advances when he should have done. Instead, he just stands and stares at you with those calf eyes. It hardly bodes well for a lasting relationship, does it? If the stupid man doesn’t have the courage to approach you, how in the hell do you ever expect to get married?” Her voice grew louder and louder and was heavily laden with frustration.
“I don’t want to marry Joseph. I never have. He is a nice man but he is one of the villagers; he is as familiar as the bench that sits on the village green. He is part and parcel of the area. I have never been inclined to see him as someone who is marriageable.”
“Why not? He is a man,” Mrs Able challenged. “What are you waiting for?”
Arrabella lifted her brows. She was aware of the avid gazes of the men who watched the interplay with stunned surprise. A part of her wondered if she should ask them to leave while the other part of her wanted to get this out into the open so they could all go and leave her in peace. Even Harry seemed to have forgotten his own problems in favour of hers.”
“I am not waiting for anything,” Arrabella countered. She couldn’t bring herself to even look at Harper, but could feel his gaze burning into her.
“Well you should get a move on then,” Mrs Able snapped. “Your mother has gone to take the sea air for a reason, Arrabella. You know she is not well, and left without making any arrangements to return.”
“She said she would be back in a few weeks,” Arrabella argued. She didn’t like what Mrs Able was suggesting.
“Yes, but she is poorly Arrabella, and has declined steadily over the last few months, you know that. Don’t put blinkers on in the hope that this is all going to go away if you ignore it for long enough. It won’t. Even if you discount your nearly bed-ridden mother, what about your father? Hmm?”
“He has gone to York,” she replied weakly. “What is wrong with that?” She knew before Mrs Able spoke what she was going to say.
“He has been away with the fairies for long enough. We all know it. You know that the villagers come to you if they want anything because if they ask your father, he gets no more than six feet away from them before he has completely forgotten having even met them.” She pointed one long finger toward the church. “You have to hand him his sermons and lead him up to the pulpit so that he can conduct the service for God’s sake. Even then he has to be guided through it all. Heavens above Arrabella, think about it. What are you going to do when it becomes obvious to the Bishop that your father can no longer carry out his duties? Your father is getting to the point where he is unsafe to be let out on his own. He went to Moldton the other week to conduct the service there only once he got there he came straight back and completely forgot about the service, and the church full of worshippers who were waiting for him! What if the Bishop gets wind of it? Your father, God bless him, will be out of a job and, when that happens, you will be out of a house, without any source of income and will have not one, but two people to care for but no income to do it with.” Mrs Able took a breath and shook her head sadly. “Although the villagers will do what they can to help, they cannot provide you with a home and a steady income.”
Arrabella couldn’t argue because she knew that Mrs Able was right. Humiliation, embarrassment and fear swept through her in rapid succession. She had never felt so defeated in her life and didn’t quite know what to say, especially in front of the others.
“He,” Mrs Able pointed to Harper. “He is the best thing since sliced bread. He is strong, capable, determined and more your age. I saw him growing up and have known him since he was a young boy. You will not get a finer man than that one.”
“But -”
“No buts. As soon as I heard that he was back in the village, and saw the way he looked at you, I knew that you wouldn’t get a better man in your life than him. You, however, are so wrapped up chasing around after that father of yours, and doing things for your mother that she should be doing for herself but cannot be bothered to, that you wouldn’t have noticed him if he had walked around under your nose stripped
to the waist. So I admit it,” she held her hands up in a helpless gesture. “I locked you into the crypt with him. I hoped that having some time alone together would force you to talk to him and recognise him as a man. I had hoped that the cleaning ladies would find you, and you would be hideously compromised into marrying him so that someone can look after you for a change.”
“I am perfectly capable of looking after myself,” Arrabella declared defiantly.
“I know you are, but it is about time that you thought about settling down with a man and having a family of your own to look after. Your father needs constant care and he needs to be looked after by someone who can see to his needs. He cannot continue to do the job he is doing for much longer, you know that. At some point it is all going to go horribly wrong and there will be nothing you can do about it.”
“What about Harper? Didn’t you think about him in all of your machinations? I mean, he is from London, which is stacked to the rafters with beautiful women. I am a country miss. There is a bit of a difference.”
Harper lifted his brows and watched the interplay with interest. He wasn’t sure whether to laugh and applaud Mrs Able for her endeavours, or groan as he waved goodbye to any chance he had of ever leaving Hambley Wood without Arrabella as his wife.
“He is a man. You are a woman. You have men who are interested in you both in Hambley Wood and Moldton, but that man there is the best there is.”
“It was you who hid the keys.”
“Yes I did. I took the keys out of the drawer and followed you to the church when you went to search for that register.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Harper turned toward Harry. “I am sorry, because of everything else that was happening I thought it had been you who had locked us in the crypt.”
Harry shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I went to the church and found the back door open so let myself in. This woman was fumbling with the lock on the door at the back of the ante room and didn’t see me take the register and leave.”
Lord Cavendish Returns Page 19
