Scott dropped the letters and put his hands down flat on the table, as if grappling for balance. He looked as if he might cast up his breakfast all over the table. “His Lordship,” he croaked. “He’s the only person . . .”
“His Lordship,” Charlie said scornfully, although his heart sank at the words. There was someone else—of course . . . But the question of whom wiped away any elation at the prospect of discovering the truth. Charlie had a bad feeling he knew what name Scott would say; he’d heard it in Bath, although only in passing, and he’d brushed it aside, telling himself it was too incredible, merely a coincidence. Perhaps he’d been wrong all along . . .
But he kept his attention focused on Scott. “This sounds like evasion. You sent someone else’s letters, and yet knew nothing of their purpose?”
“No, no, I did it purely as a favor.” Scott eyed the letters with dismay. “If I’d know—if I’d had any idea what he wrote, I never would have sent them!”
“I find that very hard to believe. You’re not the soul of honesty, are you? Telling Mrs. Neville you’ve got a full slate of subscribers when you’re actually scraping for funds and calling for more capital from current investors. Trying to extract an investment from me, knowing full well your primary investors are beginning to demand their money back because the locks are proving too expensive and difficult to build. You’re a swindler, Mr. Scott, and swindlers go to prison.”
Scott jerked his gaze up. His initial dismay heated into anger. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“And a blackmailer,” agreed Charlie.
“Who told you the locks are failing? We’ve had a few troubles, but with some time—”
“I don’t care about the canal,” said Charlie curtly. “Only these letters.”
“I didn’t write them! I had no idea what was in those letters, or I should never have sent them! How dare you call me a swindler—”
“I dare because this threat you sent my father has caused a bloody lot of trouble!” In the blink of an eye Charlie lost his poise and shot out of his chair, slapping his hands down on the table and leaning toward Scott with murder in his heart. “When did your mother die?” There was still a chance this could come out right. Scott said he’d been a child, and the man was probably a good decade older than him. As long as Dorothy had died before April of 1774, Durham’s marriage to his duchess would be legal and binding; Charlie and his brothers would be his indisputably legitimate heirs. It all hinged on the date . . .
“How dare you—” began Scott furiously, but Charlie cut him off.
“I can ruin you,” he promised in a low, hard tone. “I can, and I wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep regretting it. When did your mother die?”
“ ’Seventy-three!” shouted Scott. “In November of ’seventy-three. She caught a chill in the first frost.”
Seventeen seventy-three. Charlie inhaled a ragged breath. The date sounded like an amen to a long, desperate prayer. His shoulders slumped and he hung his head as the pulsing fury inside him bled out; 1773. “Thank God,” he muttered.
Scott shoved back his chair and lurched to his feet. “I regret my participation, however unwitting, in your troubles, but you have gone too far, sir!”
Charlie took a deep breath. “Allow me to explain. You are not my adversary, it seems.” He took his seat again. He found he wanted to know the entire story, and now that he knew what happened to Dorothy Cope, there was no reason to keep it silent. “Your mother did not merely know my father; it was not merely an affair. For a few weeks in 1752, they were married.”
Scott had been eyeing him with a mixture of distrust and dislike, but now his jaw dropped open. “What?”
“She didn’t mention that? Perhaps not, if she had also married again.” Charlie shrugged. “It was a Fleet marriage. All I know of the matter is what my father wrote on his deathbed, begging pardon for keeping it secret for so long.”
Scott flushed. “You have proof of this, of course.”
“I have my father’s letter detailing their marriage and parting, and the register recording their names, signed by their own hands. You may see it if you wish.”
“Merciful heaven.” The man had gone gray. “But then—that makes my mother a bigamist,” he said slowly. “And my brother and I . . .”
Charlie gave him a level look. “Bastards? Yes, I understand that’s what it means.” All too well, in fact; until this moment, Charlie had feared, deep down, that it would come out the other way, that he, Gerard, and Edward would be the ones proven bastards, cut out of the succession and disinherited from their father’s wealth. He didn’t know what he would have done had Scott named a date after 1774 for his mother’s death, but now it didn’t matter—thanks be to all the saints in Heaven. It allowed him to feel some sympathy for the man across the table from him. He inclined his head. “I apologize for any roughness of my manner, in the heat of anger.”
“Good God,” whispered Scott, looking thoroughly stunned. “She never told us . . .”
The words of his father’s confessional letter echoed in Charlie’s mind. “My father considered the marriage dissolved, and possibly invalid from the beginning. Still, he resolved not to marry again, and nearly didn’t; only when he inherited his titles was it borne in on him that he might still be married to her in the eyes of the law, if not in his eyes or in hers. He made an effort to locate her, but failed.” He paused. Perhaps Dorothy had wished to forget the marriage as much as Durham did. If Scott’s story was true, by the time Charlie’s father became Durham, she had a new husband and a family to think of. If either of them could be accused of bigamy, surely it was Dorothy more than Durham. Oddly enough, Durham probably could have secured a divorce because of her remarriage, if he’d known of it, and spared them all this trouble. “What did she tell you of her time in London?”
As if rousing himself from a stupor, Scott shuddered. “She told us she had gone to the city when she was young,” he said in a numb voice. “For adventure. Mells is rather quiet and dull, certainly for so bright a creature as my mother. She wanted more . . . but she only found work as a seamstress, and came home two years later.”
“My father said she was an actress when he met her.”
The older man flinched but didn’t protest. “She said she met the fellow who became the Duke of Durham and remembered him fondly. I understood, between the winks and nods, that he’d courted her, or at least been very friendly. She teased my father that she might have been a duchess, if only she hadn’t come home to Somerset and married him. I don’t believe anyone thought she meant it, but . . . my mother was enchanting. My father claimed he was bewitched from the first moment he saw her. As a boy, I suppose I thought that if my mother had set her heart on charming a fellow, no man could resist her, be he a duke or a chimney sweep.” He ran one hand over his face and for a moment it looked as though he would put down his head and weep.
Charlie knew how he must feel. A few weeks ago he’d had the same grief for his own mother, fearing her memory would be tarnished, no longer the beloved and lamented Duchess of Durham, but the bigamous wife who never knew the infamy her husband had exposed her to.
“I would prefer not to speak of this ever again,” he said a touch more kindly, “as I’m sure you also prefer. But I must have proof of her death.”
Scott raised his gaze, hollow and bleak. “My lord—Your Grace—I did not know. I heard a few rumors of a challenge to the Durham title, but never dreamed my mother had any part in it. I did not even know you were the duke! And I swear to you, by all I hold sacred, I did not write those letters.”
For a long moment Charlie said nothing. No longer smooth and confident, Scott looked like a man who’d been taken off guard and attacked, horrified and angry and defensive all at once. “Mr. Scott, I have no interest in dragging your mother’s name through the mud. I have no interest in challenging the validity of her marriage to your
father—quite the contrary. If I could prove she was never married to my father at all, I would. But should the court decide to uphold their marriage—conducted in a tavern near the Fleet, by the by, under the blessing of a dubious minister who never held a parish—should they declare that marriage binding, I must show Dorothy Swynne died before my father married again.”
“So you can inherit,” muttered Scott. “So you can be legitimate.”
Charlie inclined his head. “As you say. And I would very much appreciate your assistance.” He paused, then repeated, “Very much.”
The older man seemed to grasp his meaning; he took a deep breath and nodded. If he wished to, Charlie could cast serious doubt on Hiram Scott’s own heritage. Who knew how much that would matter away from the rarefied air of the haut ton, where lineage was everything, but it would cause a stir in this part of Somerset, and that was the last thing Scott needed as he tried to save his business and entice investors into the canal project. And that didn’t even touch on the emotional anguish it would cause his family to learn about their beloved mother’s secret, scandalous past.
He could also bring the canal scheme down around Scott’s ears. The books had been altered to show a rosy picture, but a few questions, a few indiscreet remarks, or even a call for an investigation in Parliament, would shred that picture. The canal would probably fail, eventually, but Charlie could make it happen overnight.
But if Scott cooperated . . . he would have earned the gratitude of a duke. And he knew it.
“Go to the church in Nunney,” said Scott softly. “The curate there will be able to show you; she was married there”—he winced at the word—“and is buried in the churchyard. Her name was Hester Dorothy Swynne before she married my father. I never heard anyone call her other than Hester, but I suppose she used her second name in London to keep her actions quiet.”
“Of course.” Charlie gathered up the letters. He already suspected he knew the answer to his last question, but had to ask it anyway. “You say you sent these letters as a favor for someone. Who?”
Hiram Scott swallowed. “One of our largest investors. I told him my mother’s story in a moment of boasting; there is no other word for it. I may have . . . implied a certain connection to the late duke. But he was very amused by the story, saying he had an old acquaintance with His Grace but hadn’t spoken to him in years. He asked me to send the letters when I would depart for Bath or Bristol, since the post is unreliable and infrequent in the wilds of Somerset. He invested quite generously in the canal and lent his support in Parliament, and I was delighted to do him that small favor . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the letters in revulsion, as if realizing he had unknowingly tied his own noose.
“And his name?” prodded Charlie, steeling himself. Every word had sent another prickle of dread down his spine.
Scott looked up, and gave the answer Charlie had feared. “The Earl of Worley, sir.”
Chapter 18
The village church of Nunney was small and ancient, with a crenulated gray tower rising above the neat gardens around it. Charlie opened the gate and led Tessa inside, up the path, and through the stout wooden doors. It was cool inside the church. Tessa had the feeling of stepping back in time as they walked up the nave, the stained-glass windows casting multicolored light across the weathered stone floor. Off to one side she glimpsed effigies in full armor lying in close quarters, right up to the windowsill as if they still guarded the church from invaders. It was hushed and peaceful and her chest hurt with how much she wanted Charlie to find the answers he sought here.
They reached the carved oak screen on the altar. No one came out to meet them. Charlie cleared his throat. “Good day,” he called, his voice echoing off the arched ceiling. “Is there anyone here?”
Silence was the only reply. Tessa glanced up at him. She could feel the tension in him through his grip on her hand. “We could go look in the graveyard ourselves,” she suggested.
He looked around the church once more. “Yes.”
They went back out into the churchyard, skirting around the building. The graveyard was neat and well-tended, with lines of graves winding along the edges of a narrow path. It wasn’t a large graveyard, and they were looking for a stone of some vintage, so it didn’t take very long.
“Here,” he said, stopping abruptly. Tessa looked down at the stone in front of them. Weathered and leaning to one side, it was at the head of a well-tended grave. Cowslip grew amidst the grass waving gently in the breeze.
HESTER DOROTHY, WIFE OF JEREMIAH SCOTT
AGED 40 YEARS
BURIED THIS 7TH DAY OF DECEMBER 1773
Here was the proof.
She felt the silent shudder that went through Charlie. His fingers eased around hers, just a little, but enough to make her realize she’d been holding her breath and could let it out.
“May I help you?” Tessa started and turned at the pleasant voice behind them. A middle-aged man in vicar’s garb stood on the path, smiling at them. “I am Edgar Thomas, the curate.”
She curtsied. “Thank you, sir. This is Lord Gresham, and I am Mrs. Neville.”
“I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. Are you seeking a particular grave?”
“Yes,” said Charlie. “This one. Have you had this curacy for long, Mr. Thomas?”
“Oh, my, nearly twenty-five years,” he said with a smile. “The gentleman I replaced was here for over forty!” He glanced at the stone behind them. “Are you a relation of the Scott family?”
“We are acquainted with Mr. Hiram Scott of Mells,” Charlie said. “He directed us to you. Might we speak inside?”
“Yes, of course.” Mr. Thomas led the way to the nearby cottage, where he sent his serving girl for some refreshments. “Now, how can I help you?” he asked again when they were seated.
Charlie explained, in circumspect terms, what he needed, and gave Mr. Thomas the letter Hiram Scott had written, asking his help. When the tea arrived, Tessa poured it in silence and listened.
After Charlie found the marriage lines in the register, she had gone back to Frome feeling almost as though an idyll had ended. She knew he’d gone to see Scott the previous morning; he had called in Frome afterward and asked if she would come with him to Nunney to find Dorothy’s grave. But he had been somber and preoccupied, and told her about his visit to Scott without any of the emotion she’d expected to see.
And then he conspicuously avoided her questions about the true blackmailer, Lord Worley. Aside from a vague recollection of Mr. Scott mentioning him the night of the awful dinner, Tessa had never heard of the man, but when she wondered aloud why he would send threatening letters to the duke, Charlie changed the subject. She wasn’t much of a liar herself, but she certainly recognized that he didn’t want to tell her, for some reason. She let the question fade away, unanswered, but it planted a seed of worry in her heart that Charlie’s troubles weren’t ended by the discovery of Dorothy Cope.
“Well, my goodness, that is a delicate problem,” said Mr. Thomas when Charlie was done. “Of course I shall be glad to testify to the facts of when Mrs. Scott died, only I do hope it might be done without undue imposition on the family. Mr. Jeremiah Scott and his younger son are still parishioners here, and I hesitate to cause them pain or public censure. These events happened decades ago.”
“I assure you, I don’t wish public notoriety on any of them,” Charlie replied. “I don’t plan to mention the lady’s name except to establish that she died before my parents married, relieving any need to examine her clandestine marriage to my father, and thus sparing her family further distress. Hiram Scott agreed that his family would not wish to imperil my rightful claim to my title.”
“Very good, my lord.” The curate got to his feet. “I shall be glad to provide a letter, if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes.”
After he left, Tessa looked uncertainly at Charl
ie. He was still distracted and tense, his hand resting on his knee in a fist. “Isn’t this all you need?” she finally ventured to ask. “Is there something else that would make your petition absolutely unquestionable?” He had let her read all the documents sent by his brother, including the legal petition filed in London with the Home Office. Tessa was no lawyer, but she couldn’t see anything except this clandestine marriage standing between Charlie and the dukedom.
He started at her voice, as if he’d been deep in reverie. “No, I don’t think there’s anything else I need produce for the lawyers.”
“Is something else wrong?” She almost feared the answer. Something clearly was wrong, and she had no idea what.
He didn’t answer for several minutes. “Nothing that isn’t my own fault.”
She didn’t like the sound of that at all. She lowered her gaze to her cup and turned it around and around on the saucer. Neither of them spoke again until Mr. Thomas came back into the room, bearing a letter.
“Here you are, sir.” He handed it to Charlie. “I shall be glad to seal it, after you’ve read it.”
“Thank you.” Charlie read it and handed it back. “You have been most helpful. I shan’t forget it.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Mr. Thomas bowed and hurried to seal the letter. “If there is anything else I might do, you have only to ask.”
“I will. Good day.”
They drove back to Frome in silence, Charlie still consumed with his own thoughts, and Tessa caught off guard by her own. There was no way to describe Charlie’s behavior in Nunney except haughty. He wasn’t her laughing, charming lover, but a regal duke with an air of lofty restraint. How silly she felt, after all the times she had reproved him for not being serious, for wishing now that he would revert to his usual irreverent self.
But perhaps that was her mistake. He wasn’t hers at all, and perhaps this was his usual self, not the other.
The Way to a Duke's Heart: The Truth About the Duke Page 22
