Madame Marcelin and Annette made his task somewhat easier. Knowing that her husband was now dead, Annette had little wish to be taken to England. And she had a healthy fear of her father-in-law, instilled no doubt by stories the viscount had told her. Her mother did not want to see her go. She even rallied her spirits sufficiently to confide to Clive when her daughter was absent that another marriage might now be made quite easily. Annette’s status as the widow of an English nobleman would make her very eligible. It was easy enough for Clive to inform both ladies that the Earl of Barton was prepared to make a sizable settlement on his daughter-in-law.
The other parts of his plan were a little more delicate. Annette was quite eager to stay in France, but she naturally assumed that her son would remain with her. Persuading her to give up the boy, who still had not been weaned, was no easy matter. It was natural that his grandfather would want the boy, Clive had explained. The child was now the heir to a vast inheritance and must be brought up to the life he would be expected to lead. He must be brought up as an Englishman. The Earl of Barton would be able to lavish on him the things that Annette, even with her large settlement, would not be able to give him.
Annette agreed, but it was more difficult to persuade her that it would be better for the boy to be separated from her. It would be undesirable to confuse him with a double identity. Now that she was widowed, his mother’s interests would be focused in France. He must be an Englishman with no conflict of interest.
Finally she agreed. Her mother helped, knowing that it would be easier to marry Annette well if she were unencumbered by a child. But Clive’s victory was still not complete. The most difficult part of all was still to come. There would be no safety for him in the situation if at any time Annette might write to Barton Abbey or decide to pay her son a surprise visit. She must be persuaded to sever all ties with her child.
Somehow he did it. Money helped. She and her mother had accepted as a settlement a lesser sum than the earl had been willing to pay to buy her off. Now Clive offered the remainder if she would sign a paper, which he represented as a legal document, that she would never again communicate with her son or any of his English relatives.
Gentle reasoning completed the argument. The parting would be painful for her, Clive said. Would it not add to her pain to see her son in the years to come, an English boy who would neither know her nor speak her language? And the earl might be angered if she made a claim on the boy when he had been generous enough to take upon himself all the expense and trouble of the child’s upbringing and education. He might decide to wash his hands of the boy. Would it not be better for her to make a clean break now?
Annette signed the paper with her mother’s approval. Neither of them had deemed it necessary to seek outside advice. Clive had a confident yet sympathetic manner that invited trust. Five days after his arrival in Belleville, Clive left again with the two-and-a-half-month-old Nicholas Seyton and a wet nurse, hired for the journey until an Englishwoman could be engaged at Barton Abbey. He turned away when the time came for Annette to hand over her son. He was afraid he might weaken if he witnessed that scene.
Clive had considered not taking the child. If he was willing to deceive the earl about the main issue, he could just as easily have pretended that the child was not Jonathan’s. But he was afraid that the disappointment might drive the earl to go to France himself to investigate. It seemed to him wiser to take the safer, though less satisfactory course of admitting the child’s paternity and taking him to his grandfather. And he knew he had done the right thing as soon as they returned. Clive had never seen the earl so affected by emotion as he was when he took the sleeping child from the arms of the nurse. He had not shed a tear on the death of his son or during the weeks that followed. Yet he wept when he saw the beautiful dark-haired baby of his son, though the child looked nothing like his father.
Barton Abbey remained Clive’s nominal home for the next four and a half years, though he was away much of the time, first at university, then on his own Grand Tour, and finally in London or at one of the spas. He was Viscount Stoughton and heir to Barton. Though he was never a handsome man, with his short, rather stout figure, and his thin sandy hair, he was a very eligible bachelor and was able to choose his bride at some leisure. He eventually married the daughter of an untitled but prominent gentleman from the north of England and took her to live on a modest estate bestowed on them by his bride’s proud father. Although he frequently traveled south with her over the next eighteen years until her death, he never visited Barton Abbey.
He could not bear to see Nicholas. At four years old, when he last saw him, the boy was already big for his age, very active, mischievous, and intelligent. And he was a beautiful child with the very dark hair he had inherited from his mother and the large blue eyes that were his father’s legacy. Yet the eyes were the only part of his father that he seemed to have inherited, except perhaps for his love of mischief. Already he showed signs of being a headstrong character, and he showed little fear of his grandfather. Of course, the earl treated him differently from the way he had treated his son. He doted on little Nicholas as he had never doted on anyone else in his life. Perhaps he was trying in some way to make up to the child for his illegitimacy. Perhaps he saw less reason for being strict with a bastard who would hold no important position in life.
However it was, Clive grew to hate the child. He was still honest enough at heart to know the reason. He could not look at the boy without being consumed with guilt over what he had done. He could still rationalize his behavior, but in his heart he knew that he had done a dastardly thing. And the fear of discovery ate at him, especially when he was at Barton Abbey. He found himself constantly looking for those elusive marriage papers, even after he had searched and researched every likely and unlikely hiding place.
In the end it was easier to stay away. His decision to marry when he was only five-and-twenty years old was made largely because marriage would give him the excuse and means to stay away from his uncle’s home. Even the choice of a bride from the North was in a semiconscious way deliberate. He could not be expected to travel into Dorset from such a distance.
He hoped never to see Nicholas Seyton again.
Chapter 3
Early Summer, 1811
The highwayman continued to grin as he gazed at the indignant and somewhat disheveled figure of his captive.
“I take it that you mean to disclaim your identity, Thelma,” he said. “That is as may be, my dear, but I am who I say I am nonetheless. I thought perhaps you would be somewhat reassured to know that your captor is a member of your own family.”
“No part of my family, sir,” Kate said, her chin rising, “I thank the good Lord. And no part of my employer’s family either, if my guess is correct. Merely a common highwayman, doubtless. And if your idea is to ransom me to the Earl of Barton for a large sum, then you are doomed to great disappointment. He will, I believe, offer a small sum for me, for he is a kind man to his servants. But you can forget about making your fortune from this night’s work, I am delighted to inform you.”
The highwayman crossed his arms and leaned back against the door. He looked quite relaxed and amused, Kate noticed indignantly. “I can scarce believe you to be the daughter of my scoundrel cousin, Mr. Clive Seyton,” he said. “But I suppose that like you he must have a measure of courage if he has carried through his imposture for so many years. And of course you share his ability to pretend to be what you are not. You are a servant, are you, my dear? My cousin must be a generous employer if you can afford to dress so richly. I suppose the poor drab little gray creature who was so busy having the vapors outside your carriage was Lady Thelma?” His face was amused, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Precisely!” Kate said, smiling arctically. “Our ruse worked even better than I had expected it to.”
“Ah,” he said. “So some uncanny sixth sense told you that I would be lying in wait for you during your journey, did it? And you very cleverly exchanged clothes with my cousin?”
“Lady Thelma Seyton has an unnatural fear of rogues like you,” Kate said. “We are in the habit of exchanging clothes during every journey. I have always done it merely to humor her and set her mind more at ease. Now I am very pleased that I have done so. I should hate to see you benefit from so cowardly an attack.”
“Cowardly?” he said. “You do not know what you say, my dear. You have no idea how much courage it takes to face the unknown peril of a strange carriage at night.”
“Coward!” Kate repeated. “You knew that Lord Barton was already at the Abbey and that only his children would be in that carriage.”
“So the gentleman was the son, was he?” the highwayman asked. “He was not a groom or a valet disguised as a gentleman? That was not Lord Stoughton sitting on the box holding the ribbons? I am amazed your ruse did not stretch so far.”
Kate glared at him.
“You know,” he said, his eyes lazily roaming over her person, “if you are not Lady Thelma, you should be in great fear and trembling. If I am not to expect a great fortune from your ransom, is it not consistent with my character and calling that I will compensate myself for the loss with the enjoyment of your person? I believe you might prove to be compensation worth taking.”
Kate had been almost blind with the terror of such a possibility since rashly admitting to the rogue that she was not Lady Thelma Seyton. “You will not lay one lascivious finger on me, sir,” she said slowly and very distinctly. “Or you will be sorry.”
His eyes looked amused. “I begin to shake with fear,” he said. “And what will be my ghastly fate if I do, my dear?”
“You would not find me a docile victim,” she replied, tossing her head in the air and then wishing she had not done so. The gesture felt falsely theatrical. “I am stronger than I look, and I have had some experience at fighting.”
