The girl darted frightened looks at both gentlemen and fled from the room.
“Now, what is this about, Tate?” the earl asked.
“May I introduce myself?” Nicholas said. “You seem to be under some misapprehension about my name. Nicholas Seyton at your service.”
The earl stared at him, the color draining from his face. “I shall have you arrested for this, Seyton,” he said at last. “Trespassing. Impersonating someone else. Imposing your company on respectable people. You will be sorry that you did not take yourself off before I discovered your identity.”
“I think not,” Nicholas said, strolling farther into the room. “Not unless you wish to have the whole sordid story dragged out into the open.”
“What story?” the earl asked scornfully.
“How you persuaded my mother to give me up and promise never to see me again. How you brought me back to England with the story that my mother had lied about being married to my father. Do I need to go on?”
“You still have not given up those wild notions?” the earl asked. He was regaining some of his color and composure. “Charges like that have to be proved, Seyton.”
“It is strange, is it not,” Nicholas said conversationally, “that neither you nor I ever thought of Josh Pickering when we were searching for those papers? Yet when one thinks of it, it seems rather obvious, does it not? Josh is surely quite unsurpassable when it comes to loyalty to those he loves. And we both knew that he loved my father.”
The earl’s hands were opening and closing at his sides. “Those papers are safely in my keeping now,” Nicholas said with a smile. “They are marriage papers, by the way. It is also strange perhaps that neither of us gave any thought to my father’s traveling companion. I did not know of his existence, of course, but you must have. That was a loose end, Clive. Careless of you not to look to it. And fortunate for me that I kidnapped Mrs. Mannering instead of your daughter when they came into Dorset. She has been tireless in unraveling the mystery.”
The earl sat down suddenly in the closest chair. “The funny thing is,” he said, “that it is almost a relief to have it all over with. What next?”
“There is a young man outside in the taproom,” Nicholas said, “who you will see resembles me closely. He is my half-brother. My mother is in London, assuming I must be dead because I am not Earl of Barton. My first concern must be to become acquainted with my family, from whom you have kept me all these years. My next concern, of equal importance, is a private matter. When I have time to look beyond these concerns, I shall consult a lawyer. I really have no idea how I am to go about recovering what is my birthright.”
The earl drew in a deep breath. “I see,” he said. “I shall be brought to trial. Might I beg your mercy for my son and daughter? They are quite innocent. They know nothing of these matters.”
“I will not countenance any scandal,” Nicholas said quietly. “I would rather stay as I am now than see my grandfather’s family become the sensation of the country. I suppose that is inevitable in one way, but not in any negative way. The whole thing has been a mistake. Those marriage papers were lost and it has always been thought that my birth was illegitimate. Only now have the papers come to light. We will have to think of something to cover the only weak point in that argument, which is why my mother would have said nothing about being married to my father. We will have time to think of something.
“You will win the admiration of the ton. You will receive the news with graciousness. You will be delighted on my behalf even though the discovery takes from you your title and much of your fortune and property. You will be thankful that the man whom your uncle always treated with great affection and whom you have been entertaining at Barton Abbey under an assumed name in deference to the sensibilities of your other guests is finally able to take his proper place in the family and in society.”
He stopped speaking and looked steadily at the bowed head of Clive Seyton.
“Why are you doing this?” the earl asked finally. “Why the generosity? I have not shown you any such mercy during your life.”
“Perhaps for my father’s sake,” Nicholas said. “He was fond of you, was he not? The servants at the Abbey often regaled me with stories of the scrapes you two used to get into. You must tell me more. I find myself hungry for stories about my father now that I know he behaved honorably by my mother after all.”
The earl gave a humorless laugh. “Jonathan,” he said. “I used to worship him, you know. Since your birth I have tried not to think of him. You are not like him at all.”
“When you meet my brother in a few minutes’ time,” Nicholas said, “you will see that I must favor my mother’s family to a marked degree.”
And so finally they were all ready to leave the inn. And scarcely more than an hour had passed since he entered it, Nicholas thought incredulously. Despite his eagerness to go to London, he had decided that it would be wiser for them all to return to Barton Abbey. He would take Moreton up with him, and his cousin could travel with Thelma and Katherine. Anatole could follow in his hired carriage.
It seemed a sensible plan. Unfortunately it all had to be rearranged when it was discovered that Dalrymple’s curricle had disappeared, and along with it Katherine Mannering. Two frightened ostlers, who realized too late that the gentleman with the curricle had not given the lady permission to take it as she had claimed, assured the same very angry young man that she had driven in the direction of the coast. She had certainly not been headed toward London.
He would definitely wring her neck, Nicholas decided as he and Sidney Moreton clambered into the hired carriage with Anatole.
Kate had stood watching the door of the inn for several minutes after Nicholas disappeared inside. Her shoulders were still drooped with dejection. She had not even been able to keep her fury alive. How very weak she was. And she knew what would happen next. He would meet his brother, and they would both be over the moon with happiness, and they would come out of that door again in the best of charity with the world. Then, if he remembered her existence—if!—Nicholas would come over to her again and ask her to come and meet his brother properly, and he would expect her to be as happy as he was.
And the trouble was, Kate thought, her anger beginning to boil to the surface again, she probably would be happy for him too. Who would not be, at seeing two brothers meeting for the first time in their lives? And she would forgive him on the spot. And she would probably marry him and despise both him and herself for the rest of their lives. And she would forget all about the necessity of killing him.
Oh, she would just not do it, Kate decided. She had been ill-used in the extreme. And she deserved vengeance. She deserved the pleasure of killing Nicholas Seyton. She would not stand here and meekly wait for him to come out and smile that bright, tender smile that he knew she would rage against and finally surrender to. She would not!
Kate’s hands formed into fists at her sides again as she noticed Lord Barton leave Mr. Moreton at the far side of the stableyard and stride in her direction. He would be very unwise to approach her now, she thought grimly. He would not find the meek employee resigned to her fate this time. He was likely to get a punch in the teeth for his pains. But the earl unknowingly saved himself from a fat lip by totally ignoring Kate and storming through the inn door instead.
That left Mr. Moreton, Kate thought, eyeing that gentleman across the yard. Was that wheel mended yet? Could she persuade him to take her to London without waiting for anyone else to emerge from the inn? After all, it seemed reasonable to suppose that Lord Barton was unwilling to allow the elopement to proceed according to plan. But no. That young man appeared to her to have no backbone whatsoever. He was thoroughly devoted to Thelma. He would insist on staying to ensure that her father did not beat her into insensibility.
And there were no carriages or horses for hire at the inn, even if she had had the money to take them. She would have to go on foot. How many days would it take her to walk to London? she wondered. Or to her father’s house? The trouble with that idea was that she would not know which direction to take. She might still be wandering the countryside when winter came on.
Bother! thought Kate, looking down at her very inadequate slippers. And the only other conveyances in sight were the curricle Nicholas and Lord Barton had arrived in and the hired carriage of Anatole Duplessis. She could not possibly take the latter. The coachman looked to be a burly man and quite beyond her strength to force into compliance.
