THREE HEROES

by Jo Beverley

  “Very strange. But I talked to a couple of them and it was more a matter of getting a handsome dowry for nothing. I gather in recent years at least the earl was ... incapable.”

  “Impotent?” Amelia asked, but then she pulled a face. “He’d still have wanted to touch and such, wouldn’t he? Tom Marshwood tried to handle me in a most offensive manner at a picnic last week.”

  ‘The swine! What did you do?“

  “Told him exactly what I thought of him, of course. He won’t be so foolish again.”

  Such simple solutions among essentially decent people. Susan wondered if living in Crag Wyvern drove away all sense of proportion.

  She recaptured the shears from her cousin. “This small garden can’t afford such extravagance with flowers. Come to the kitchen and we’ll have tea.”

  As they strolled there she chatted, but underneath her mind was fretting about the meeting between Con, David, and Swann. It should all be business, but it could turn to other things....

  Whatever was happening, she reminded herself, there was nothing she could do about it, and she had resolved to stop trying to force life into the channels of her choosing.

  She settled to the haven of a session of light chatter and gossip with Amelia, wondering if there’d ever been a chance for her to be as straightforward as her cousin, or whether she’d been cursed from her irregular birth.

  Con was glancing through a book about witchcraft when there was a rap on the door and Race walked in.

  “Mr. Kerslake awaits below at your command, my lord,” Race said like a bad actor in a poor play. His manner had become stranger over the past day, and Con wondered what the hell he was up to.

  “But yet another waits below!” Race declared. “To be precise, in your great hall.”

  “Swann, I assume.”

  “So I am told, my lord, but it could be a mere goose, and the maid mistaken.”

  “A gander, at least, or the poor maid would be very much mistaken.”

  Race grinned. “Touché.”

  “And don’t you forget it. Back to your den of archival iniquity, and prepare for invasion.” Con realized Race’s nonsense was infectious. “Are we ready to get everything straight?”

  “Can a twisted tree branch ever be straight? We’re ready to discuss matters as they are.”

  “That will have to do.”

  Con lingered a moment after Race had left and realized that he didn’t want to set the earldom’s affairs in order. Because then he would have no excuse not to leave.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Tea and simple talk with Amelia seemed to bring some normality back into Susan’s life. Perhaps it was helped by the awareness of other people in the house, though the kitchens had always been an oasis of sanity.

  She and Amelia were sitting at the big table along with the other servants. With all the “betters” engaged in business, there would be no need of them in the other side of the house.

  An aromatic soup simmered on the back of the modern stove Mrs. Lane had insisted be installed five years back, and fresh spice cakes sat cooling on a rack—those that weren’t already on the table to be consumed.

  She’d come to feel a sisterhood with the servants here. They were all, like her, at Crag Wyvern because in some way they didn’t fit in elsewhere.

  Ada and Diddy had come to try their luck with the earl and then stayed on. Diddy, at least, had tried her luck a number of times at twenty guineas a go. She was the one who’d told Susan that the earl was impotent.

  “A lot of groping and complaining,” she’d said, “but I can put up with that for a year’s pay in a month. Pity, though. It would have been grand to be my lady, wouldn’t it?”

  When the earl had died, she’d said, “That’s it, then. Time to start looking for a husband. With my nice little dowry, though, I’ll be the one doing the choosing!”

  Ada had spent only one month as a trial bride. Apparently the earl had been certain that a thin woman couldn’t conceive. However, when Susan had realized that Ada had only a cruel father back home who had sent her up to the Crag, she’d added her to the staff and to the books, and if the earl had noticed, he hadn’t cared.

  That was four years ago, when she’d been secretary.

  She’d employed Maisie and Ellen, too. Because of her twisted spine, Maisie couldn’t find good employment, and Ellen had been scared out of her wits by her first position with the Monkcroft family over near Axminster. What she’d said about that violently argumentative family had been a revelation to Susan, and when Ellen had found Crag Wyvern a happy haven it had shown that everything depended on the point from which one viewed it.

  Mrs. Gorland had been cook here for nearly twenty years, and with her skills could work anywhere. She was, however, of a somewhat republican disposition, and would find it hard to deal with a lady of the house who demanded deference.

  Susan knew she would miss this assortment of women as much as she would miss her family at the manor.

  Though Amelia hadn’t been in Crag Wyvern’s servants’ dining room before, she was at ease with the servants, sharing tales of the local families, and absorbing stories of the old earl. Reasonably decent stories, Susan was pleased to note, though perhaps there was no need to protect Amelia. No country girl with all her wits was naive.

  At fifteen, and never having kissed, she’d known enough to seduce Con.

  She settled into a mellow contentment with the moment. Eventually, however, Amelia had to leave. Susan walked with her to the main entrance, feeling extraordinarily better. It was only at the door out of Crag Wyvern that she remembered Amelia’s arrival. “Didn’t you say you had an excuse for coming here?”

  “Oh, yes!” Amelia dug in her pocket and produced a slightly battered letter. “This came for you. We think it might be from Lady Belle. Do you think she’s reached Australia yet?”

  “I doubt it. It’s been only three months.” Susan took the letter, which had been addressed to her at the manor, but showed nothing about the sender. “Why on earth would she write to me?”

  “You are her daughter.”

  “Which fact she’s ignored all my life.”

  She realized that she didn’t know what her mother’s handwriting looked like. That was strange, but then, her mother had given nothing to her in any practical way. So why a letter?

  It had been roughly handled before it had come into Amelia’s careless hand, and it was impossible to make out the smudged scribble that might have indicated where it had started its journey. It had come from abroad, however, and who else would write to her from abroad?

  Despite a creeping reluctance, Susan snapped the seal on the thick package.

  Perhaps one of her parents was dead.

  There were three sheets of writing and a sealed enclosure, and at the end, the scrawled signature, Lady Belle.

  Not Mother. Of course not. Did she really, after all these years, still harbor a hope that Lady Belle would turn into someone like Aunt Miriam?

  Lady Belle. Not dead. And doubtless wanting something.

  She returned to the first sheet. Lady Belle’s writing was not an elegant hand. It was bold, splotchy, and sloped heavily to the right with big loops. Typically she had not tried to write small to save paper and postage. Instead she’d written extravagantly, and then turned the sheet to write crosswise over the first lines.

  “What does it say?” Amelia asked, leaning closer. “Ugh. What a mess!”

  “That sums up Lady Belle,” Susan said dryly. “‘My dear daughter,’” she read, and couldn’t help rolling her eyes. But then she made out, “ ‘I know the word dear has no real meaning between us, but how else could I open this letter?’”

  Susan laughed. It was so typical. Lady Belle had never made any bones about her feelings or lack of them, nor made excuses. In a way Susan admired her for that.

  Even more, however, she had a sense of foreboding about the letter. “I think I need to read this alone.”

  Amelia drew
back from her shoulder, for once looking conscious of a need for privacy.

  “I understand. How very strange it all is,” she remarked, as if the peculiarities of Susan’s parentage had never occurred to her before. “I should be going home anyway. Mother made me promise not to stay here too long. I’m not sure if she was worried what I would get up to, or that the wicked dragon would snatch me in his claws. And here I’ve not so much as set eyes on him. Remember that ball!”

  With a cheery wave, she sauntered away.

  Susan thought of retreating to her rooms to read the letter, but then instead she walked slowly to the headland, into open air and light, to the spot where she’d talked with Con yesterday.

  Where for a brief moment they had found accord.

  She’d known, she thought bitterly. She’d known that anything carnal would ruin it. But she hadn’t been strong enough to resist.

  Like mother, like daughter?

  She sat down on the ground, smoothed out the paper, and began to pick out the words.

  My dear daughter,

  I know the word dear has no real meaning between us, but how else could I open this letter?

  A sea voyage, I am discovering, offers a great deal of time for thought, and I have thought that my dearest Mel might disapprove of my taking the means to make this journey, though I have no doubt that he will be delighted to see me.

  I have found myself remembering that you said the Dragon’s Horde could be in difficulty due to a lack of funds, and that my son might have to take over control and put himself at great risk. Of course, there is nothing to be done about that now, but. ..

  Susan had to turn the first sheet then and concentrate on the different layer of writing. What? Was there another cache of money somewhere?

  ... there is something which might be of assistance. Though you doubtless think me heartless, I am not completely uncaring about the safety of my only son.

  You threw up at me the fact that I never married Melchisedeck. I would have you know that this was not my fault, or Mel’s either. Unfortunately, I had a prior marriage. I was wed to me Earl of Wyvern.

  Susan tilted the paper to make sure she hadn’t read that amiss. No, that was definitely what it said. Good Lord! Had her mother, too, run mad?

  Wyvern courted me, and I confess that I was drawn to the idea of being a countess. He was not so strange in those days, though strange enough. He already had his obsession with producing an heir, and he actually made to me the proposition which became so infamous later.

  That ended the first page, and Susan flipped it over, having to turn it ninety degrees to get the next lines straight. Lady Belle must have realized that her letter would be long, for the writing became cramped and even harder to read.

  Of course I refused, but he was so mad for me that he came up with another plan. We would marry secretly, and once I proved to be with child, it would be announced. He even offered me a normal wedding then. I was only seventeen, and I admit I was swayed by that. I have much regretted not being able to marry my dearest Mel in the church with all our friends around.

  How was this arranged, you ask?

  Yes, thought Susan. I ask! How could her mother, Miss Kerslake of Kerslake Manor, run off to Gretna Green and back and it never be noticed? Lady Belle had assuredly gone mad, or thought Susan a complete idiot to believe this farrago.

  But irresistibly, she read on.

  The means was so simple I wonder if it is not often done so. James Somerford was mad, but he was by no means stupid. He found a young whore who resembled me and went with her not to Gretna, but to Guernsey, just off the coast, where apparently the same convenience of marriage exists. Wasn’t that clever? There the impostor declared herself to be me, and thus I was married without any inconvenience or discomfort at all!

  When he returned with the marriage lines, we commenced our secret marriage, but without sullying your maiden’s ears, daughter, it was not at all to my taste. In fact, it was quite shocking, and when I fled him in the night, I encountered Melchisedeck Clyst. It was a smuggling run, of course, and he kept me by him as he took care of business.

  I am afraid, from what I know of you, Susan, that you lack the more sensitive emotions or a passionate heart...

  “From what you know of me?” Susan muttered, switching to the next sheet. But she was totally caught up in this impossible tale. It was so impossible that she knew it must be true. And it did explain the great mystery of why her parents had not married.

  ... but to one such as myself, there comes a bond that cannot be denied, and that is for life, and such it was for me and Mel. I assure you, nothing short of an overpowering, tumultuous force could have impelled me into the arms of a mere tavernkeeper without the blessings of matrimony!

  Susan laughed aloud at that. It was so completely Lady Belle.

  Discovering that he was Captain Drake, and that smuggling was profitable, was some solace. It was also to my advantage that he was powerful enough to protect me from James, who could have claimed a husband’s rights.

  In brief, Susan, we all three agreed not to mention the marriage. That meant that James would be able to marry another if he managed to get a woman with child. In return for my discretion, James agreed not to interfere between Mel and I, and to protect the Dragon’s Horde, for an outrageous tithe of ten percent of the takings. However, he vowed that if I attempted to go through a ceremony of marriage with Mel he would produce the marriage lines and exert his marital authority over me.

  You can imagine that I prayed for a child at Crag Wyvern as ardently as James— except that he did not believe in holy prayer—for then I would have been free and able to openly plight my troth to my dearest Mel. I am a widow now, however, and thus I will do that as soon as I find him.

  You see, of course, what this means for you.

  “No,” muttered Susan, almost dizzy from this strange story. Or perhaps it was just the strain of reading the crossed writing. She started the third sheet.

  By the law, a child born of a marriage is legitimate unless there is evidence to the contrary. James never claimed David, of course, but nor did he deny him or you, and his clear evidence of insanity can doubtless be brought into play there.

  For my son’s sake, and to spite James, I admit, I have drawn up the enclosed sworn testimony that my children were fathered by the earl, but that in his insanity he threatened them, leaving me no choice but to give them into the care of relatives. That he then, in his madness, repudiated them.

  You may not know, being a mere child at the time, but in the first years of my relationship with Mel, all was in secret. I continued to live at home, going on long visits for my confinements. My parents and older brother hoped I would come to my senses and make a good marriage, you see. Once I was twenty-one, not long after the birth of David, I left my home forever. You will see, however, how this too could support the idea that you and David are the children of my marriage to the mad earl.

  If you are wondering about evidence of my whereabouts at the time of the marriage, I went with my old nurse to visit a friend near Lyme Regis. Nurse is long dead, and I doubt anyone can remember the name of the friend. I certainly cannot.

  I have no idea if this can be done, but the marriage certificate is somewhere in Crag Wyvern. James would never have destroyed it when it gave him power over us. Perhaps you can use it to make David earl, which would take away the need for him to risk himself as Captain Drake. And you, of course, will be Lady Susan Somerford, and may at last find yourself a husband.

  There, I have done my duty to make amends. Do with it as you will.

  Lady Belle

  Susan sat back half expecting the letter to crumble to dust in her fingers like some mysterious artifact in a gothic novel. But it sat there, presumably still carrying its bizarre message.

  David. She shot to her feet. She must speak to David about this!

  But then she realized that he would be with Con.

  Con.

  If she used this
information, Con could lose the earldom.

  But David as earl would be virtually untouchable. Leaving aside the benefits of rank and fortune, he wouldn’t hang or be transported for smuggling. In fact, this whole area would probably enjoy decades of peace and illegal prosperity.

  It wasn’t right to use it. David wasn’t the earl’s son. But it was as tempting as the serpent’s apple.

  But Con.

  They would be stealing title and fortune from Con.

  She should destroy this letter and take the contents to the grave. She began to tear it, but after the tiniest beginning, she paused. Shredding it and burning it wouldn’t scour the knowledge from her mind.

  David or Con?

  Lies or truth?

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Truth, she decided. Once settled, it was so clearly right that Susan could have wept with relief. She could see now that last night with Con had been a web of lies and untruths. Her intentions had not been bad, but all the same, it had been dishonest, and thus had fallen to pieces in her hands.

  If she ventured into untruths again, her intentions would not be bad, but she would be back to her old ways, trying to manipulate life to suit her needs. She was through with that.

  But then she realized that she really should put this in David’s hands. It wasn’t entirely hers to decide. Whatever David decided, however, she was going to tell Con the truth.