The Seduction of Lady X (7 page)

Harrison gave the young maid a pointed look. She had a soft heart, and as the sounds of Miss Hastings’s tears could be heard in the foyer, the girl wanted him to mend things. That’s what they all wanted from him—mend this, repair that.

“No, Rue, not to the sitting room. To the study,” he said evenly. “And you may tell Miss Hastings that she will feel better in her room with a cold cloth across her forehead.” He arched his brow at the girl. He did not exactly rule with an iron fist at the dowager house, and at times such as this, he rather regretted it.

The arch of his brow had the desired effect; Rue quickly looked down. “Yes, my lord,” she said softly and hurried off.

“Sir,” he corrected her. “And have Mrs. Lampley bring tea!” he called after her. To Mr. Fish, he said, “This way,” and gestured in the opposite direction.

Mr. Fish draped his cloak across the back of a chair and put his hat beside it, and glanced in the direction of the sound of Miss Hastings’s sobbing.

Harrison showed Mr. Fish into the study, his private retreat and favorite room. The dark wood trim made the green walls look vibrant to his eye. The shelves were lined with the books he’d been collecting since he was a child; works of fiction, poetry, studies of places he’d never been and people he’d never met.

Among his earliest memories, vague as they were, he could remember one of his mother’s so-called friends, a smiling gentleman in a wig and with long lacy cuffs giving him sweetmeats before ascending up the stairs to his mother’s boudoir. That same gentleman had taken a liking to him and had seen to it that Harrison had a tutor. Harrison’s tutor, Mr. Ridley, had been a lover of books, and had passed that love to Harrison. Harrison considered his books his companions while his mother was otherwise engaged and he was left to rear himself.

He directed Mr. Fish to a leather winged-back chair at the hearth, where a fire glowed. Water from Mr. Fish’s muddied boots and trousers pooled on the fine Aubusson rug Harrison had inherited from his mother’s house.

Mr. Fish noticed it, too. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “It is quite a deluge, and Everdon Court is rather far removed from the main roads.”

It was indeed. A grand estate sitting on a thousand acres of deep woods and tilled fields took a bit of effort to reach. “Think nothing of it,” Harrison said, and sat across from Mr. Fish, crossing one leg casually over the other. Rue bustled in with a towel, which she handed to Mr. Fish with a curtsy.

“Pardon, what else was I to do, sir?” she asked Harrison.

“Fetch Mrs. Lampley.”

“Ah,” she said, as if the sun had just shone through the window, and hurried out again.

“Much obliged,” Mr. Fish said, and proceeded to wipe the rain from his face and shoulders and hands. “Can’t recall a rain quite like this.”

“What’s this about Ashwood?” Harrison asked impatiently.

Mr. Fish folded the towel neatly in his lap. “It is rather extraordinary,” he said. “My advice is that you should brace yourself, Mr. Tolly, for there is reason to believe that the late Earl of Ashwood may have been some relation to you.”

Harrison couldn’t help but smile at the careful description. “If that is your way of stating that I may have been his by-blow, I shall spare you any theatrics and confirm that it is true, Mr. Fish.”

Mr. Fish’s eyes nearly leapt out of his head with surprise.

Harrison never spoke of it, and he did not like to be reminded of it. “If you have come all this way to tell me something that is quite well known to me, you have wasted your time. I was not personally acquainted with the man who sired me, but I am well aware of who he was.”

“Splendid,” Mr. Fish said, undeterred. “We discovered your lineage in the parish records in a London church. However, that is not the reason for my call, Mr. Tolly.”

“There cannot possibly be more.” Harrison knew all there was to know of his father, of his long-standing relationship with his mother. Much to his chagrin, there had been few secrets between him and his mother.

“It would seem,” Mr. Fish said, as he stretched his hands toward the fire, “that you may be his only true heir.”

Still, Harrison shrugged. “I am still his bastard son. I fail to see the significance of your call.”

“In this highly unusual case, being his one true heir would make you the heir to Ashwood.”

Harrison laughed at that.

Mr. Fish glanced up at him. “I would not have come all this way if I did not believe it were true, Mr. Tolly.”

Harrison would have told him he’d come all this way for nothing, but Mrs. Lampley’s young son appeared with the tea service. Harrison met him at the door and took it from him, then returned to the hearth and placed the fine silver service—also his mother’s—on a small table. “Did you come from London, Mr. Fish?” he asked congenially as he poured them tea.

“I have come directly from Ashwood at the behest of the countess. Except that she is not the countess any longer. The late earl and his wife adopted Miss Lily Boudine, and until very recently, it was believed that she was the sole surviving and rightful heir. However, now that we have discovered your existence, she can no longer assume the title.”

“Neither can I,” Harrison said calmly. “The laws of primogeniture are quite restrictive and very explicit in the requirement for legitimacy. Honey?”

Mr. Fish shook his head to the honey. “They are restrictive, indeed . . . unless one has been given a title and an estate by a royal edict, as well as the terms for inheritance.”

Harrison snorted. “I rather doubt even a royal edict would make an illegitimate offspring worthy of an estate as grand as Ashwood. So let us avoid a lot of discourse, Mr. Fish. Is there some paper I must sign for this countess to have her place? Give it over, and I will sign it.” He sipped his tea and glanced at the mantel clock.

Mr. Fish did not move.

“Shocked?” Harrison asked.

Mr. Fish put his teacup down. “After the year I have spent, sir, I am rarely shocked by anything. Nevertheless, I fear you do not understand me. King Henry VIII bestowed the title and estate on the first earl of Ashwood, and specifically entailed it to the blood offspring of that earl, and the earl’s issue, et cetera and so forth, without regard to legitimacy. The
blood
offspring. That means, as the only surviving blood male offspring of the last earl, you have inherited the estate. Furthermore, our solicitor in London believes you have legal claim to the title, as well.”

The meeting suddenly gained Harrison’s full attention. He stared at the man, trying to guess his game. “Forgive me, Mr. Fish, but do you expect me to believe that you have come here to hand me an estate and a title?” He laughed. “I will not believe I have any claim that cannot quickly and easily be dismantled by some enterprising solicitor. I am the bastard son of the late earl, a man I remember meeting once or twice in my life. My blood relation, as you put it, is illegitimate.”

Mr. Fish nodded. “Lady Ashwood—Lady
Eberlin,
” he corrected himself, “rather thought you might view things that way.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a letter and handed it to Harrison.

The damp vellum had a wax seal that was the crest of the Duke of Darlington—a revered named in England. The brief letter introduced Mr. Fish as a bona fide and true agent of Ashwood, and declared that the Duke of Darlington vouched for what he was telling Harrison today. The duke ended his endorsement with the word
Congratulations
scrawled presumably in his own hand across the bottom.

Harrison supposed he should have been happy to hear this startling news, but he was not. He tossed the vellum back to Mr. Fish as myriad thoughts clouded his brain. There was the problem of Alexa, first and foremost. And there was the personal and private problem of Lady X. “I do not want it,” he said flatly.

Mr. Fish almost sputtered his tea. “Pardon?”

“I do not want this,” Harrison said again, directing his gaze at Mr. Fish. “Tell your countess to send me whatever papers are necessary to deliver the estate to her, and I will sign them.”

Mr. Fish looked stunned. He came to his feet. “Do you realize what you are saying?”

“Yes, I do,” Harrison said firmly. He pushed his fingers through his hair, trying to absorb this impossible, ill-timed news. His father had never acknowledged him in any way, and now he would have his estate? Harrison was entirely suspicious, certain there was a catch. And Harrison wanted nothing to do with Ashwood and whatever catch that might be for so many reasons that his head began to spin with them.

“You can’t possibly!” Mr. Fish argued. “No man in his right mind would dismiss this so easily—”

“Do you think this is easy?” Harrison snapped.

Mr. Fish caught himself. “I would not presume to know. But I do know that it is a royal edict. And much like any child born to inherit, you may not want the riches that have just fallen into your lap, but they are yours regardless.”

“Mr. Tolly?”

Both Harrison and Mr. Fish started at the sound of Miss Hastings’s voice. She was standing at the threshold, her face pale, her eyes swollen, and her hands clasped tightly before her. She looked at Mr. Fish, then at Harrison. “What has happened?” she asked. “Has something happened?”

“Nothing has happened,” he assured her, walking briskly to the door. “Please go back to your room.”

But her gaze was fixed on Mr. Fish. “You have inherited,” she said, and turned brown eyes to Harrison. “What have you inherited? What does it mean? Does it mean that—”

“It means nothing,” he said quickly, and took her by the elbow, turning her around and ushering her out the door. “Please do return to your room, Miss Hastings. I will be with you shortly.”

She glanced reluctantly over her shoulder at Mr. Fish before turning away.

Harrison shut the door of the study and chafed at Mr. Fish’s sympathetic smile.

“I see at least one reason you may be reluctant to welcome this news,” he said slyly.

Harrison frowned. There was nothing he could say about Miss Hastings until he deciphered what had possessed him to take such a drastic step in offering to marry her. And what the bloody hell was he to do about it now?
“Bollocks,”
he muttered, and stalked to the windows, wondering how in the blazes he would extract himself from a quagmire that seemed to get deeper and thicker as the day wore on.

E
dward made good on his promise to attempt to force Olivia to his will, but as was his trouble of late, he could not force himself. “You do this to me,” he’d said bitterly. “You remove all desire from a man.”

On Sunday morning, Edward was subdued. He lingered over breakfast, reading aloud to Olivia from the Bible, having decided, what with the rain, that while the servants would make the quarter mile trek to church, the weather was too foul for him and his wife to venture out.

Olivia sat quietly, pretending to listen to his lesson as he droned on. She was anxious for Alexa. She had not come back to the house last night, and Olivia wondered where Mr. Tolly had taken her. At least she could rest knowing that Alexa was in good hands.

Olivia thought of Mr. Tolly, too, standing so proud and capable in Edward’s study, prepared to shoulder Alexa’s problem as his own to save her from the fate Edward would have handed her. Olivia tried to imagine how it would feel to have someone make a heroic gesture for her, to have someone gallop into Everdon Court and take her from the hellish marriage she’d suffered for six long years . . .

She shook her head and absently folded her napkin. No one was going to save her. Save her from what? She was a marchioness, living in the lap of luxury, with all the trappings of wealth and privilege that entailed. She was not the first woman to have suffered a grim marriage.

Unfortunately, Olivia had sealed her own fate when she’d agreed with her mother that Edward would make a fine husband.

It was the night her family had dined at Everdon Court for the first time. What a young, inexperienced, silly fool she’d been! Olivia had been so taken by the great house, the furnishings, the artwork, and certainly Edward himself. He’d been charming, touching his finger to her cheek, remarking on her beauty. She’d thought him unremarkable in looks, but pleasant. He’d seemed so confident and assured, and Olivia had been enthralled by the idea of marriage and children.