“Assuredly so, if such is what you require,” his friend said in that tone all of Duncan’s sons used when they were called upon for secrecy. They were, after all, family.
Alexander paused to gather his thoughts and to sit again. “Now that the moment has arrived, I find myself searching for the words to ease the impact my story will have on your person.” Neither of his table mates responded, so he began. “Very well. When I was nearing seven years of age, my father executed the unthinkable: He sold my mother to another man. In a public marketplace.”
Miss Moreau frowned. “An earl would never sell his wife.” She looked at Beaufort. “Am I speaking the truth, sir?”
“You are, but Marksman’s father was not always an earl,” Beaufort explained. Alexander’s friend had leaned across the table in anticipation. “You are confident in what you are doing, Marksman?”
“I am,” he told his friend. “Duncan has declared it so,” Alexander assured.
Beaufort reached a hand to Miss Moreau, and Alexander’s sister permitted him to palm her hand. “I should leave, my dear. What Marksman has to say is very important, and you should have time to listen and to understand. You know how to signal for me if you wish for my return.” He looked to Alexander with eyes full of understanding. “I can warrant that Lord Marksman will protect every hair on your head. You will know no harm at his hands.”
Miss Moreau nodded her head in agreement, and Beaufort rose to leave. “All your brothers will be quite envious, Alexander. Cherish this moment.”
“I will,” Alexander said softly. “I will come to you when this matter is finished here.” With that, Beaufort left them to speak honestly to each other. Alexander cleared his throat before saying, “What Beaufort shared regarding my father is true. Generally, if an English peer desired a divorce, he could bring a very public charge against his wife before Parliament or he could reside in Scotland for six months and earn a divorce there. Yet, my father was the fourth son of an earl—the fourth son of a man who had turned my father out without a pence in his pocket to thrust him into a world Robert Dutton was ill equipped to traverse. He was abandoned to a life for which he possessed no skills to survive nor how to provide for his family. What coins he earned often went to drink rather than to feed and house his wife and children.”
“Then how did you inherit?” she asked with a frown of confusion.
“In our previous conversations, I have hinted to the matter. It is not as if I will not share the whole tale, but for tonight, however, just know my becoming Marksman was a very complicated twist of fate of which I will happily make an explanation, but I do not wish, at this time, to waver from the tale of my mother’s fate.”
“Continue, my lord,” she said dutifully, though he knew she was still very curious regarding the Marksman earldom.
“Accompanying my mother on that fateful day was my younger sister. Her tears tore my heart to shreds, and I made a promise to someday discover the whereabouts of both my mother and my sister and bring them home.”
“I am grieved for your loss, my lord, but what has all this to do with me?” Miss Moreau demanded.
“My father was ‘Robert Dutton,’ and my mother’s name was ‘Madelyn.’” Alexander emphasized each name. He watched as Miss Moreau’s frown deepened. Before she could respond, he supplied, “My sister was called ‘Annalise.’” He hesitated before saying, “I have come to learn her name has been changed to ‘Audrey.’”
She was on her feet immediately. “It cannot be. You are speaking lies!”
“What do I have to earn by telling you a lie?” he demanded.
“You wish me to tell you something regarding my uncle,” she accused. “If so, you have failed, my lord. My uncle does not confide in me, for he thinks he cannot trust me.”
Alexander found her admittance astounding. In his opinion, she was still too innocent and unaffected to be deceptive. “When the British government and Lord Duncan dragged my father and me from the rookeries, Robert Dutton was near death, but he executed all he could to stay alive long enough to inherit the earldom and pass it on to me. I promised both myself and him on his deathbed that I would bring my mother and sister home to Marksman Abbey. Several days ago, I sent men and a ship to the West Indies to retrieve my mother’s remains so she might rightly be buried in the Marksman cemetery as Lady Madelyn Dutton, the Countess of Marksman.”
Though she still shook her head in the negative, she instructed, “Tell me what you recall of your mother.”
He had yet to rise from the table, while she remained standing near the kitchen door, as if she thought it a means to escape. He did not look at her when he spoke. “My mother was tall and majestic. Her eyes were the color of burnt embers, sometimes dark, nearly black, and sometimes a shade of cinnamon, and her hair was a shade of red one might find on a Scottish lass.”
“It is as if you describe me,” she accused.
Alexander shrugged his acceptance of what she said. “Your hair is red with auburn tones, but perhaps instead of describing her, I should speak of her habits.” He paused to close his eyes in remembrance. “My mother possessed an angelic voice. Father always said he fell in love with her when she sang a song requested by her betrothed.”
“She was pledged to another?” Miss Moreau asked.
“Yes, a long-standing friend of our father.” Alexander recognized how she had come not to argue whenever he used a plural possessive pronoun. “Robert Dutton ignored all who warned him against his obsession with Miss Madelyn Smithfield. Eventually, they made a dash to Gretna Green, both thinking once the deed was done, all would be forgiven.”
“Yet, it was not,” his sister whispered into the silence which had fallen between them. She shook her head in denial of what he asserted. Instead, she declared, “My father was a sea captain. His name was Darwood Lisey.”
Alexander flinched internally at her assertion that Lisey was her father. Cautiously, he said, “Captain Lisey was the man who purchased my mother at the marketplace. I have papers to prove his doing so, if and when you have a desire to view them.”
“You are mistaken,” she argued, but she had stopped her pacing, and tears had filled her eyes. “My mother was always afraid of him,” she whispered.
She had yet to be fully convinced, but a crack in her armor had appeared. Instead of arguing, Alexander continued his side of the story.
“As to my parents, they were both disowned by my grandfather.” He counted to ten before he added, “In the beginning, they managed with a small inheritance from my paternal grandmother, but neither of them adapted well to their severely reduced circumstances. Father knew nothing of farming, and Mother was equally ignorant of household chores.That being said, our mother managed to claim the life they had chosen faster than did Robert Dutton. By the time of my birth, she knew something of tending a house and cooking for her family. Eventually, they lost their land to the debts Father had accumulated, and they ended up in a set of rooms, and by the time my sister joined us, we all resided in a single room.”
“Why did your father not do more to tend to his wife’s needs?” Miss Moreau asked as she abandoned her position on the opposite side of the room to come closer to where he sat.
