“An old man’s braggadocio.” Roderick shrugged his padded shoulders, then leaned against the back of the chair he’d been sitting on. “If he was so virile, how come his first wife had but the one son, and he never impregnated you?”
Before Mina could comment, although Lud knew she did not wish to speak of such intimate things, Roderick held up his hand.
“No,” he said, “do not bring up the cuckoo bird you dropped in Uncle’s nest. It’s a blessing we do not have that brat on our hands.”
A blessing that her baby was dead? Now Mina set her cup down so hard the tea spilled onto the table. “He was my son.”
“And if he had not been taken, he’d have been another botheration.”
“He would have been the earl in your place, you mean.”
“Hah! As if I would not contest his birth, rather than see your love child inherit the earldom.”
Mina used her handkerchief to blot at the spilled tea. “You would have no grounds. Your uncle acknowledged Robert.”
“On his gravestone. When it no longer mattered. And then only to save your good name, and because your father insisted. They both knew the infant was not Sparrowdale’s. With Sparling waiting in the wings, though, the brat’s paternity made no difference. Did you really think Sparrowdale would have let your lover father the future earl? Despite his faults—and I admit they were legion—my uncle still had respect for his name and title. As do I. I would have contested your son’s succession to the fullest.”
“Bringing down on the House of Sparr the same scandal you hope to avoid now. Westcott would slam the door in your face.”
“And if your son were earl, do you think he’d have opened it in the first place? To a plain Mr. Sparr?” He pounded on the chair back. “Hah. I would be out on my ear.”
His laughter was not a pleasant sound. “You would be right where you were before Sparrowdale’s son died.”
“No, never that. Your Robert could not have been earl. His birth date and your wedding day do not calculate correctly.”
Mina set her soiled handkerchief to the side. “The earl anticipated our vows.” That was the Banbury story they had concocted for the servants and the scandalmongers.
“Fustian. Irrelevant fustian, at that. The boy is gone. It is this Peregrine Radway and his ilk we are discussing—and forgetting.”
“I will not forget.”
Roderick came around to stand in front of Mina, looming over her. “You will, I say. You will have nothing to do with that street urchin or his tales.”
Mina sat up straighter. “You do not command my obedience, nephew.”
Her resistance seemed to infuriate Roderick further. A woman was supposed to be docile, subservient. “You are not even lady enough to know your place, by damn!” he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders.
“You forget yourself, sirrah!”
“No, I never forget. I am the Earl of Sparrowdale, madam, and you would do well to remember that. Or else—”
“More tea, my lady?” Harkness asked from the doorway.
Chapter Seven
She was leaving. There was no way in heaven Mina was staying at Sparrows Nest, and no way in hell she would go to Sparr House in London. She would not spend another fortnight under Roderick’s roof, not even when it was her funds that had put new tiles on both of them.
The dower house was hers for her lifetime. She would not go there either. It was too close. Mina wanted to expunge every Sparr thing from her life, including the despicable name. The only way she could do that, however, was to remarry. Bind herself to another man? When pigs sprouted wings.
She was going to London, and she was going to find Perry Radway, and she was going to uncover the truth about those children. Mina would go on her own if she had to. She’d find someone to help her, even if she had to pay him. Hiring that investigator might be the best anyway, for then she might be assured of loyalty, and someone who cared about her wishes. Lud knew, no one else seemed to.
Cousin Dorcas was terrified of leaving. Two women on their own? Without Mr. Sizemore’s advice? Why, the solicitor had not even found them a house to rent yet.
“We can stay at a hotel,” Mina replied. “Or we can buy one. It makes no nevermind. If you would rather go live with your sister in Lincolnshire, with her twenty-five cats and her husband who believes he can teach his horses to count, then I will hire a coach for you and three outriders to make sure you arrive safely.”
London was not quite as unappealing.
Harkness believed the Countess of Sparrowdale belonged at Sparrows Nest. In London she would be at the mercy of untrained servants and unscrupulous trades-men. Hadn’t she been taken in by that young Radway riffraff? On her own, who knew how many dogs madam would have foisted on her?
“Very well,” Mina conceded, “you can come along. Heaven knows what you will do if we find a house that already has a butler, or how Sparrows Nest will go on without you, but I cannot blame you. I do not wish to live another day under Roderick’s rule, so why should you? We’ve both seen his true colors, and they resemble a snake’s.”
They could not leave in a day, or even two, for all that needed doing. Mina did not wish to leave any of her personal belongings strewn about Sparrows Nest, for she never wanted to return. Everything she could not take with her was boxed up and carted to the dower house, to be locked in the attics until she sent wagons for it. The senior footman had to be instructed in the butler’s duties, and the estate agent had to be given the ledgers. Horses had to be hired, and rooms bespoken at inns along the way. Mina needed a few more mourning gowns, and Cousin Dorcas needed a few more bottles of tonics, restoratives, and sleeping potions.
Mina bade good-bye to the few neighborhood acquaintances who cared whether she stayed or left: the vicar whose church was no longer falling down around the congregations’ ears, the schoolteacher whose students had books, the Sparrowdale tenants whose cottages were recently rethatched, and the farmers who had the latest equipment, all thanks to Lady Sparrowdale. She hoped they fared half as well under the next countess, if Roderick managed to snare the duke’s daughter.
Then she placed a last bouquet of flowers on her son’s grave. ROBERT CALDWELL SPARR, the small marker read, BELOVED CHILD. “This is not farewell, my sweet Robin, for you will always be in my heart wherever I go.”
Mina’s final chore was to sort through the Sparrows Nest safe. She had to separate her own jewelry, plus her mother’s collection of gems and her father’s valuables that he had brought with him on his last, fateful visit, from the few entailed heirloom pieces that Sparrowdale had not managed to pawn. She made both Harkness and the replacement butler, Vorpohl, watch, so Roderick could not claim she had removed anything belonging to the earldom.
“The diamonds my father gave me on the occasion of my marriage.” Mina had never worn them after the trip to London. “My mother’s diamonds.” They were in a heavier, old-fashioned setting, not good enough for Malachy’s daughter, the countess. “Her rubies.” She showed the servants the miniature of her mother wearing the parure. Again, Mina had worn them only once, in London. She had taken them with her on her flight to Scotland, though, thinking to sell them so that she and Ninian Rourke could make a new life for themselves. Now Mina placed the rubies with the sapphire set and the diamonds. She did not have time to dwell on those memories and might-have-beens.
“The tiara my mother wore for her presentation.” She held it up next to the smaller, duller Sparrowdale tiara, with stones missing where the earl had pried them out to sell.
There were brooches, earbobs, three priceless snuff-boxes that Malachy Caldwell had started to collect, thinking they made him appear more like a gentleman, his costly fob watch, and a black pearl the size of Mina’s thumb that he was used to wearing in his neckcloth. Mina’s pile grew until the velvet pouches and lined boxes filled a small trunk of their own. And that was in addition to the trinkets and baubles she had in her jewelry case upstairs.
The S
parrowdale stack was pitifully small, Roderick having already claimed his uncle’s signet ring and pocket watch. Mina pulled the emerald engagement ring that the earl had given her off her finger and tossed it onto the desk with the rest. The ostentatious piece had been bought new with her father’s money, Mina knew, but she did not want to own the thing. The gold wedding band had been her mother’s. She would not part with it, despite its unfortunate history. Embarrassed, Vorpohl insisted he did not need to see the inscription inside the ring.
“That is that, then,” Mina told the servants, as she started to put the Sparrowdale pieces back into the wall safe. Her hand brushed against the far wall of the vault, dislodging a folded paper.
“Per’aps it’s the map to some hidden treasure,” the new butler offered. “Lost for centuries, like in them novels Cook reads.” Harkness kicked him.
“No, it is merely a list,” Mina said, studying the page. “And not very old, judging from the dates. It is in the late earl’s handwriting, don’t you think, Harkness?”
“Yes, I believe so, my lady. It—”
“Must be nothing, or the solicitor would have taken it when he gathered the deeds and such to place in the London vault. We do not have time to decipher the thing now, at any rate.” Mina quickly refolded the paper and put it in her pocket. “I’ll bring it to Mr. Sizemore when I get to Town.”
Once upstairs, Mina told her maid to finish the packing later, for she needed to lie down a moment or two before dinner.
She bolted the door behind the girl, and sat at her dressing table with the list spread in front of her. There were two columns of twelve entries each, one row of initials, one row of dates. Four sets of initials had been crossed through. Approximately halfway down the first column were the initials P.R. The corresponding date was some thirteen years ago.
Peregrine Radway, thirteen years old.
Here was the list of the children her husband had sired, not counting his rightful heir. Mina could not be sure, but she thought the increases in the withdrawals that had so troubled her corresponded closely to the dates written here. Twelve. Lud, Sparrowdale had not lost his virility through age and illness, he had worn it out.
If she had been troubled before, she was horrified now.
Then one date in particular caught her eye. One familiar date, that she’d just seen on her son’s gravestone. Robin’s birthday, the date of his death. There it was, second from the bottom, R.S. Robert Sparr. The initials had no line drawn through them.
Had there been an increase in the withdrawals after the baby’s birth? Mina thought so, within a month, possibly. Certainly that year, and another increase the following one. She itched to go check the old account books, but they were all at the estate agent’s now, where he could study them. Let him make of them what he would—Mina needed the time to think.
Was it possible? The very idea seemed so far-fetched that Roderick would certainly have her locked in Bedlam if he suspected. The thought of Roderick reminded Mina of a phrase he’d used, one that kept nagging at her like a persistent toothache: he’d said it was a blessing that her son had been taken. She’d been bothered by the “blessing,” but it was the “taken” that jangled now. Taken, not lost, dead, departed, demised, passed on. Taken. She understood taken aloft, taken with the angels—but what if Roderick simply meant taken . . . from her.
No. No one could be so heinous as to steal her baby! Not even a Sparr. And yet what had Roderick said, that her love child could never be permitted to inherit the title? And he had been there at her husband’s house party the night of the infant’s birth. She shivered, as if someone walked over her grave. No, she had to put such evil thoughts away from her. No one could be that cruel, that ambitious. Could he? Perhaps.
Mina remembered Roderick’s words, and she remembered that one cry from her newborn infant, a sound forever in her memory: a loud, healthy wail. Her Robin was not born too early. He was not sickly.
He had not died.
Unless they killed him later. But then his entry on this vile list would have been scratched through, would it not?
Roderick had to know—and that was why he was so adamant about her not prying into Sparrowdale’s past. The earl had claimed her son. Robin would be earl.
The notion was so staggering that Mina felt sick and light-headed, and like spinning in circles. Her son might be alive! She would not permit herself to celebrate, though—not yet, not yet.
But why had Sparrowdale kept paying for his wife’s bastard? There was no indignant grandmother, no faked marriage lines as evidence of his perfidy. No one was extorting support for this particular illegitimate son. Children were left at foundling homes all the time, dropped at church gates or poorhouses. No one would have been the wiser if Sparrowdale had spirited her son away to one of those places, to survive or not, in anonymity.
The answer was on the list, in Sparrowdale’s pride at having so many children before the disease stole his manhood. He could have arranged the death or disappearance of any of them—and of their complaining mothers and grandmothers, too. Mina did not think Perry’s granny’s threats would have caused a stir in the ton, no, nor in legal circles either, not with the old woman conveniently and permanently silenced. Yet he had kept paying for their upkeep, even when his own funds were so below hatches. Perhaps he had a spark of human kindness in his diseased soul after all, or perhaps he simply drew the line at murder. Possibly they were a threat to hold over his heirs’ heads. Maybe he just liked children.
Then why had the earl made no provision for them for after his death? Mina wondered, her thoughts swooping around like swallows after gnats. His lordship was too ill at the end, his mind deteriorating as fast as his body, but his death came as no surprise to anyone, certainly not Sparrowdale. Half the dates on the list were older than Perry, so he might have felt those children were adults, on their own. But the younger ones? He must have told someone to continue the support. Of course. He had to have made arrangements with someone who could disguise the expense, someone who understood the nature of legacies, someone who had died unexpectedly. His old solicitor, Mr. Sizemore’s partner, came to mind. So did Malachy Caldwell, her father, who might have had an interest in keeping his only grandchild alive.
That could have been part of their marriage settlements, the cost of Sparrowdale’s acceptance of a possibly enceinte bride. Yes, it fit. The information she needed to find the children, including her son, had to be in the London vault, or with her father’s papers in Portsmouth, if she could not locate Perry.
Everything fit, and so did Roderick’s anger. The other baseborn children would be an embarrassment for him, but Robin was a threat. Her son would never be safe, not in England. She would take him to the Colonies or the tropics, anywhere Roderick could not reach. Let Sparrowdale’s nephew keep his tarnished title. Her boy did not need an earldom. He needed a mother.
Chapter Eight
“What is wrong, dear?” the Duchess of Mersford asked her son when she heard his sharp intake of breath. “Bad news, like another of your friends stepping into parson’s mousetrap?”
Lord Lowell managed to ignore his mother’s less than subtle gibes as he studied the letter he held. “No, I believe it is that curricle I had in mind to purchase.”
“What, in the post?” Her Grace squinted across the breakfast table where the two of them were opening their correspondence over the coffee cups. “Oh, it is a bank draft.”
“A very substantial one at that. As a retainer for my services, to ensure that I will be available when my client arrives in London shortly.”
“Lady Sparrow, is it?”
“Yes, but you will forget that instantly, if you please, Mother.”
“Hmpf. Of course I will forget that my sapskull of a single second son is corresponding with one of the wealthiest young widows in the kingdom—over a matter of business. You know you can trust me, no matter how I dislike this huggery-muggery occupation of yours.”
Lord Lowell reached ac
ross the table and patted his mother’s hand. “I know I can, Mother. You are invaluable to me in my investigations, without betraying my clients. Sometimes I even think you enjoy dabbling in my inquiries.”
Her Grace busied herself spreading jam on another slice of toast rather than confess any such thing. She could not, however, resist speculating. “I wonder what bumblebroth that poor chit has fallen into this time, that she sends you the price of a curricle as a retainer.”
“I am sure I do not know.”
“And I am sure you would not tell me if you did, Lolly. Still, you cannot keep me from hazarding a guess or two.”
“As long as that is all you do. Sometimes these affairs can grow dangerous.” Lord Lowell could have bitten his tongue for mentioning that his work had an element of peril. Dealing with fences and felons often did. His mother had still not forgiven him for stopping the knife meant for Lord Fortenham—with his shoulder. To distract her from starting a new lecture about his business interests and his intelligence in general, he said, “Who knows? Perhaps the countess wishes to hire me to investigate possible candidates for the position of her next husband.”
“Bosh, I would do that for free, if I could put my own son’s name at the top of her list.”
“Find another hobbyhorse, Your Grace. That one will not trot.”
“A mother can dream, can’t she?” She pushed aside the toast and jam, recalling that she had vowed to lose weight this month. Or was that last month? She decided to compromise by eating half the slice. “You will talk to the gel, Lolly, won’t you?”
“Of course.” He tapped one long finger against the countess’s check. “I am just as curious as you to know what could trouble a wealthy widow this much. I will call on your Lady Sparrow as soon as she arrives in Town.”
“You and every other eligible young buck in London,” the duchess muttered, reaching for the second half of her toast.
Mina arrived in the city a few days after her letter. She took a suite at the Clarendon. Harkness took control of organizing the trunks and boxes, and Cousin Dorcas took to her bed. The trip had been long and tedious, much too slow for Mina’s peace of mind, and not nearly slow enough for her older cousin’s fragile constitution.
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