Lord Somerton's Heir (7 page)

The landlord nodded. ‘Saw the saddle myself. It had come off of course, when he fell. Brand new it was.’

Sebastian leaned forward. ‘And Lord Somerton? What were his injuries?’

Wilkins pulled a face. ‘Neck was broke, you could see that as soon as look at him. Not a pretty sight, but you’re a soldier, my lord. I don’t need to tell you…’

‘Quite,’ agreed Sebastian. ‘Were there any other injuries?’

‘Broken leg and…no…I think that was it.’

‘What are you gossiping about now?’ Martha Wilkins swooped down on the table. ‘I tell you, m’lord, he’s worse than an old woman.’

‘His Lordship was asking about the late Lord’s death.’

Mrs Wilkins shook her head. ‘That was a terrible shock. God’s punishment for his wicked ways, I say.’

‘Now then, Mrs Wilkins…’ the landlord protested, but Sebastian ignored him.

‘What do you mean?’

Mrs Wilkins bridled, smoothing an imaginary crease from her spotless apron. ‘I’m not one to gossip but they do say he was over visiting that Lady Kendall. A frequent visitor, from what I hear, and he’s not the only one. Like bees to honey…’ She shook her head in approbation. ‘Three husbands she’s had and not content that she’s got to have someone else’s husband.’

‘That’s enough now, Mrs Wilkins.’ The landlord pushed his chair back and stood up, signalling the end of the conversation.

Sebastian, too, rose to his feet, narrowly avoiding bumping his head on one of the low beams.

‘Thank you, Mrs Wilkins. That was the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time. You may see me on an early morning stroll more often.’

Mrs Wilkins picked up the clean platter and smiled with satisfaction. ‘My lord, you are more’n welcome and I won’t think of taking payment for it,’ she added huffily as he set some coins down on the table.

‘Well save it for someone who needs it,’ Sebastian said. ‘Thank you both for your hospitality. Ouch!’ he exclaimed as he failed to miss the door lintel. ‘I fear your inn was built for shorter people.’

‘You are uncommon tall for these parts, m’lord,’ Wilkins observed. ‘Just like your father. He was a good six fingers taller than his brother.’

A familiar sense of regret at the mention of a father he had never known tugged at Sebastian. As he strolled past the pond, he wondered if there had been any likenesses of James Kingsley preserved up at the hall, among the gallery of ancestors that seemed to line every wall. He made a note to ask Lady Somerton.

A pretty church built of the local grey stone with a single, squat Norman tower stood on the far side of the village green. Despite the early hour, the door to the church stood partly ajar. He pushed it open and stepped inside, allowing his eyes a moment or two to become accustomed to the gloom.

A woman knelt on the steps of the sanctuary, scrubbing the well-worn stone. She started at the sound of his boots and rose to her feet, turning to see whom the intruder could be.

‘My apologies, madam, I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Sebastian said.

The light from the window fell on her face and he took a step back. For a moment, just a fleeting moment, he thought he had come face to face with the ghost of his mother. The instant passed and he saw just a small, middle-aged woman whose grey hair had escaped her sensible cap with the exertion of her work.

The woman stared at him and then, as if recovering herself, dropped into a curtsey.

‘You’re not disturbing me, my lord.’ She set the cloths down and approached him, her eyes not leaving his face.’ You are the new Lord Somerton, aren’t you?’ Seeing him in the light, her hands flew to her face and she gasped. ‘You’re so like your father.’

She reached out as if she intended to touch his face and then dropped as she remembered her place. Sebastian held his breath. Another person who not only knew his father, but probably his mother as well.

She smiled and, for a moment, he caught again that flash of something very familiar in her face as she read his thoughts.

‘I knew them both, my lord. In fact your mother and I shared a bed from the time we were small girls. I’m your aunt, Cecily, but the family call me Cissy,’ the woman replied to his unspoken question.

So he had not been mistaken about the family resemblance. Something lost within him had told him that this woman was related to him. Isabel had told him that his mother had left behind a large family.

How did one greet long lost aunts? Kiss them, hug them, shake their hands? He settled for a foolish grin.

‘I’ve been expecting you!’ his aunt chided. ‘Ever since we heard they’d found you, we’ve been waiting for this day. After all ‘twas mother and I who told Mr Bragge about you and set them off on the search.’ She held out her hand to him. ‘Come and meet your gran. Marjory was always her favourite.’

‘It’s too early… I’m not dressed.’ Sebastian groped for excuses. Accidental encounters with long lost aunts was one thing, grandmothers quite another.

Cissy took his hand. ‘She’d not care if you came in rags,’ she said. ‘She’s been waiting more than thirty years for this day.’

Sebastian followed his aunt out of the church. She led him to a small cottage only yards away from the church.

‘My father — your grandfather, that is — died ten years ago, and the old lord granted us a grace and favour cottage. It’s not much, I know, but it does us well enough.’ She opened a squeaky wicket gate, which gave on to a neat garden and a gravel path leading to the front door.

Cissy opened the door and turned back to him.

‘You wait here,’ she said, and then, as if remembering who she addressed, she added with an embarrassed smile, ‘if you don’t mind, my lord. I need a moment or two to make sure Ma is ready.’

While Sebastian waited, he could hear Cissy’s low voice in the parlour. He went over in his mind what he should say to this long lost grandparent and it seemed an age before his aunt appeared, standing back to admit him to the little room. Once again, Sebastian ducked his head to avoid the low beams and wondered if the entire village had been constructed by midgets.

An elderly woman sat in a chair beside the fire, looking just as he had imagined a grandmother should look. Fluffs of white hair escaped from her neat lace cap and milky blue eyes looked up at him from a face that looked as fragile as tissue.

‘Lord Somerton, Ma,’ Cissy announced, unnecessarily.

‘You’ll have to come closer, boy,’ the old woman said. ‘My eyes aren’t that good.’

‘She’s all but blind and quite a bit deaf, so you’ll need to talk clear,’ Cissy whispered in his ear.

Sebastian went down on one knee at the woman’s feet and took her hand. He kissed it, feeling the delicate skin beneath his lips. When he looked up, she had tears in her eyes. Her hand went to his hair, caressing him as if he were a small child.

‘I never thought I’d see the day when Marjory’s boy would come to me,’ she said as her gnarled fingers moved to his face, lightly touching his eyes, his nose and his mouth as if the touch would in some way produce a picture in her mind. ‘You’ve a good strong face,’ she said and smiled, cuffing him lightly on the cheek. ‘And you have come out without shaving. That will never do!’

‘He’s as like his father as he could be,’ Cissy said.

‘Oh, he was a good boy, James,’ his grandmother said, ‘but headstrong like our girl.’

As he straightened, Sebastian found himself completely bereft of the well-rehearsed words. He coughed to disguise the unfamiliar prickling sensation at the back of his throat.

‘I… I…have a brother and a sister. Your grandchildren too.’

The old lady looked in the general direction of her daughter. ‘Oh, Cissy. All these years and we never knew.’ She turned back to Sebastian, her fingers found his and she squeezed them tightly as if afraid to let go. ‘Your grandfather, the Reverend, was undone by her eloping with the lord’s son. He forbade letters from Marjory. If she ever sent them, he threw them unopened into the fire.’ Her voice shook with emotion as she said, ‘We only heard she was dead by sheer chance. That good man, her husband, passed a message by word of mouth to a friend and he whispered it to me when he came to visit.’ She shook her head as if trying to vanquish the memory.

Sebastian lowered his head. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of the Reverend Alder, both he and his mother would have ended up in the workhouse — or dead. Such unspeakable cruelty by her own father beggared belief.

As if answering his unspoken words, his grandmother continued. ‘You mustn’t judge your grandfather, lad. Marjory was promised to marry a young clergyman from over Grantham way. He’s a bishop now. Her running off like that, jilting her intended, and with the lord’s son doing the same to his young lady, and him with not a penny to his name after his father cut him out.’ She shook her head and lowered her eyes. ‘It brought terrible shame to this house.’

So that had been how it had happened. His parents had both been betrothed to other people, facing two loveless marriages or the fleeting chance of happiness together, even with the approbation of family and society. Whatever happiness they had enjoyed had been short-lived. He wondered if his mother had appealed to her father after James had died. If she had, it sounded like her cry for help fell on stony ground. So much for Christian charity.

He glanced out of the window at the solid respectability of the church building and shook his head. These were matters that belonged in the past. His mother’s second marriage to the Reverend Alder had been a happy one and she had died greatly loved and greatly mourned.

His grandmother echoed his thoughts. ‘Those are sad memories we must leave in the past. You are here now, where you rightly belong, and I know your mother and father would be proud of you. A hero of Waterloo, Cissy read to me.’

Sebastian laughed. ‘Hardly a hero, grandmother. Merely lucky to still be alive.’

‘But you were hurt?’ She frowned. ‘Are you recovered?’

‘I am,’ he replied. ‘Lady Somerton ensured I had the best of care.’

‘Ah, Lady Somerton! She’s a good lady.’ His grandmother nodded with approval. ‘Not like that good-for-nothing husband of hers.’

‘Mother!’ Cissy reproved.

‘I’m too old not to speak my mind, Cissy, and you know it. The late lord did more to undo this estate in a few short years than his ancestors had spent in building it up. And the way he behaved after the baby died… Disgraceful.’

‘Baby?’ Sebastian asked, but his grandmother didn’t hear.

‘Edie!’ The old woman called, and a young maid appeared at the door, bobbing a quick curtsey and colouring when she saw the two ladies had a visitor.

‘Edie, some tea, and bring some fresh baked bread and our strawberry jam. His lordship looks like he needs feeding up.’

Sebastian opened his mouth to protest that he had already had a large breakfast but the maid had vanished. He was desperate to ask about the baby but he had to curb his impatience until Edie reappeared with a tray of tea and bread and jam.

Only after his aunt had ensured that he had been served a doorstopper sized slice of bread and had a hot cup of tea did he feel he could return to the subject.

‘Grandmother,’ he said, noting that she coloured with pleasure at the new mode of address, ‘what were you saying about a baby?’

Cissy answered for her mother. ‘You don’t know? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t unless her ladyship has told you, which she obviously hasn’t.’ She took a sip of her tea and settled in to impart the gossip. ‘Her ladyship had a baby boy. William, they called him. A bonny little lad he was, wasn’t he, Ma?’

‘Oh, he was. All smiles and chuckles during his christening… His mother and father just doted on the boy. Never seen them really happy together but the baby seemed to heal the rift. You go on, Cissy.’

‘It was so sad,’ Cissy continued. ‘When the babe was only six months old, the nursemaid found him dead in his cradle. Not a mark on his little body, she told me, just cold and dead.’

Sebastian set his empty cup down, recalling Isabel’s words. ‘
As Anthony and I were not blessed with children, you are the heir to my husband’s estate…
’ She had been blessed, but for such a short time.

‘When was this?’

Cissy frowned. ‘It would be about a year ago now. They both took the death hard, in their own ways. Her ladyship became…well…as you see her now, and his lordship went back to his wild ways. Drinking and gambling, so they say…’ Cissy continued.

‘Now, Cissy, that is gossip,’ her mother said.

‘It’s fact, Ma. We all know who he was visiting the night he died. That Lady Kendall —’

‘Cissy!’

That Lady Kendall again
, thought Sebastian.

He would like to make the acquaintance of Harry’s scandalous sister. As he took a bite of the still warm bread and the tastiest strawberry jam he had ever eaten, he thought about Isabel and her dowdy clothes and severe hairstyle and realised that she did not wear mourning for her husband but for her child, barely a year in the grave.

Cissy sniffed and glared at her mother. ‘I’m sorry Lord Somerton had to die like that but if it meant a good man, our Sebastian, came home, then that is God’s will,’ she concluded.

Sebastian brushed the crumbs from his breeches.

‘Are the Somerton family graves in the church?’ he asked.

‘Only the old ones. Your great-great grandfather, he’d be, had a mausoleum built on the hill looking over the Somerton lands. ‘Tis that white building beyond the lake. ‘Twas he that built the hall, earned his money trading in slaves,’ Cissy added with pursed lips that indicated her disapproval.

Sebastian agreed with her. So his fortune, such of it as had been left to him by successive generations, had been built on the misfortune of others. The thought depressed him.

‘Enough dark talk,’ his grandmother said. ‘Tell me about your brother and sister while Cissy pours us another cup of tea.’

Sebastian told them about Matt and Connie and their life in the vicarage at Little Benning before his stepfather’s death. His aunt and grandmother sat in silence, hanging on his every word. Cissy in her turn told him about his aunts and the veritable tribes of cousins. It was only when the clock on the shelf chimed ten that Sebastian jumped to his feet.