Page 105 of Gentleman Jim

Maggie understood why he might be reluctant to share the results of their investigation. She, however, felt no such inhibitions. “I believe there’s a chance that Lord St. Clare’s parents may have been married.”

“What?” Blood surged in Allendale’s face. He turned on St. Clare.

The innkeeper chose that inauspicious moment to enter with a tray. “Beg pardon, my lords. I’ve brought tea and some seed cake for you.” He set the tray on the table. “The wife can make you breakfast if you’d rather. Some eggs and sausage, or porridge if—”

“That will be all,” St. Clare said.

“Yes, your lordship.” The innkeeper bowed. “Apologies for interrupting.” He bowed again, backing himself out of the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

There was a second of silence as the man’s footsteps receded down the hall. And then, once again assured of their privacy, Allendale asked, “What do you mean my son may have been married?”

“It’s nothing,” St. Clare said. “Just something Miss Honeywell has surmised from a remark made by my late mother.”

“A deathbed remark,” Maggie said, on her dignity. “And that isn’t all. There’s more.”

With that, she proceeded to tell the earl everything Jenny had said when she was in the final hours of her illness, and everything they’d since discovered about Father Tuck, including the latest bits of information gleaned from Mr. Mullens.

After she’d finished, Allendale was quiet for a long moment. When at last he spoke, it was to utter a single word: “Devonshire.”

Maggie nodded. “That’s what Mr. Mullens said. He could be no more specific.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” St. Clare said. “Nothing but the ramblings of a dying woman and an aged former tavern keeper. It’s a false hope, at best.”

“You disagree, Miss Honeywell?” Allendale looked at her steadily, as if her opinion mattered as much to him as that of his grandson. “You think there might be something in this business about this Devonshire clergyman?”

Maggie cast a troubled glance at St. Clare. He’d lived an entirely different life since they’d parted. Had become a man of elegance and sophistication—a well-read and well-traveled gentleman, far outside the realm of her own experience.

But this reluctance of his to entertain the idea that his parents might have been married was no mystery. It was pure Nicholas. The anxiety of a boy who had been disappointed too many times in regards to his family. A boy who wouldn’t permit himself to hope.

“Yes,” she said carefully. “I think there might be something to it.”

Allendale’s brows lowered.

Maggie took a breath. “What if Father Tuck married Jenny and Gentleman Jim—that is, Jenny and your son. And what if, after they were wed—after your son left England, Jenny went into the Crossed Daggers and saw Father Tuck there, falling down drunk? The men in the tavern laughed at her for thinking he was a clergyman, which might have led her to believe it had all been a prank. That she wasn’t married to your son at all. He was known for playing pranks on people, wasn’t he?”

Allendale said nothing. Neither did St. Clare. Both men were somber and still, not moving a muscle. The tea tray sat between them, untouched. A ribbon of steam drifted from the spout of the teapot, swirling up toward the beamed ceiling.

Maggie went on. “Mr. Mullens said that Jenny left after that, and that they all assumed she’d returned to her parents’ farm. But by the time she arrived at Beasley Park, she was in a dreadful condition. Not only with child, but half starving, my father said. As if she’d been wandering a good long while. By that time, she believed her baby was illegitimate.”

“And you suggest that my son would have married a gel like that? A tavern wench?” Allendale scowled. “Impossible. He must have known he would come home one day. That I would forgive him. To have attached himself to such an unsuitable female…” He shook his head. “No. Not James.”

“Might he have done it out of spite?” St. Clare asked. “To punish you for casting him off?”

The question hung in the air for a moment. It had a strange effect, changing the very atmosphere around them. As if the suggestion opened a Pandora’s box of painful possibilities.

“Spite?” Allendale echoed at last. Something in his face seemed to crumple. A light in his gray eyes dimming slightly, as if he had absorbed a blow. He grew smaller before Maggie’s eyes, and for the briefest moment, looked every bit of his age. “He might have done.”

Maggie averted her gaze. She felt as though she were witnessing a private moment. One she wasn’t meant to observe. The moment when the Earl of Allendale fully accepted that his late son had been a rogue and a villain, not merely a lad who had gone a bit wild.

“I was too hard on him,” Allendale said. “After he killed Penworthy’s boy. It was the final straw, I told him. I was washing my hands of him. But the breach wasn’t meant to be permanent. He was still my heir. Still my son.”

“You didn’t drive him away,” St. Clare said quietly. “And even if you did, he was a man grown. A man with a child of his own on the way. He could have come back. He should have done, if not for you, then for me.”

Allendale cleared his throat. “No point being maudlin. We are where we are. And you, Miss Honeywell—” He fixed her with a look, no longer soft with memory but hard with disapproval. “You have no business being abroad at this hour. I’ve ordered my carriage to see you home.”

“Thank you, my lord.” She affected a meek expression. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

“My grandson and I will call upon you tomorrow. I trust you mean to proceed with this dinner party of yours?”