Lord Harkom sent him a long look, though he blinked rapidly throughout, as if trying to keep Crispin in focus.
“Never wondered why you look nothing like your father?”
“I take after my maternal line.”
“So that’s what you’ve been told? By your fond pater? Or your anxious aunts?” The older man laughed. “Of course, it’s what you’d want to believe, but what about if your mother was barren? Or believed she was barren after ten years being married to your father yielded no heir for poor desperate Lord Maxwell?”
“This is an outrageous claim. No one will believe it! On what basis can you even suggest such a thing.”
Lord Harkom’s lips stretched wide, and his nostrils flared. “Only from the woman who delivered you, asking me for money in return for a letter she’d kept between your father and the poor unmarried woman whom he paid to relieve her of her baby.” He examined the half-moons of his right hand.
“Anyone could have made such a spurious claim, but where would it get them? It’s a forgery, of course! What possible reason would she have to contact you?”
“Because she also found the love letters your mother and I exchanged before your mother was forced to marry your father, a much older man she could not bear, by the way.”
“You lie! My mother would never”
“How would you know? You were only an infant when she died. You don’t even remember your mother.”
It was true, but it did not bear up Harkom’s claims. Crispin shook his head as if to clear it. Lies! And yet, an uncomfortable kernel of possibility had taken root. Not only did Crispin look nothing like his father, or indeed, the portrait of his mother that hung in the dining room, Crispin’s temperament was as different from his father’s as it was possible to be.
Harkom shrugged. “Your father married the woman I loved and blamed her for being barren when clearly the problem lay with him. But he needed a son, didn’t he?” He chuckled. “You only have to read the letter to find out how he managed it. Why, your father bought you, believing you were his, when in fact the girl was already pregnant when she allowed Lord Maxwell to lie with her. Pregnant by a farm labourer!” He burst out laughing. “I can’t imagine where you got your delicate hands from and your fine, painterly sensitivities. Anomalies arise where one least expects them to, don’t they? But yet, it’s all in the letter.”
Crispin shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it. Show me the letter. Or don’t you have it? Perhaps Faith succeeded in retrieving it, after all. It’s the reason she came here after she learned from her friend, Charity, whom you visited at Madame Chambon’s, that you had information that was damaging to me?”
Lord Harkom jerked as if he’d been stung, and his eyes glanced to a location somewhere near the base of the bed. Regaining some composure, he said, “Your Faith proved most faithless when she aligned her star with mine. I promise you; she was not thinking of you, or retrieving letters, when we made love this afternoon. I’ve never been with a woman so eager!”
“How dare you!” Crispin clenched his fists and strode over to Lord Harkom, gripping the man’s collar and forcing his head up. “You lie! Faith has a pure heart and pure motives. She would never have come to you and put herself in danger unless it was to help…me.”
It was a sobering thought. Whether or not it would prove true, was another matter. But yet, it’s what he wanted to believe.
To his surprise, Lord Harkom’s head lolled, and he slumped even further down the wall. Crispin was not met with the aggression he’d expected.
As for the story he’d just told Crispin, it was so far-fetched Crispin couldn’t begin to assimilate how there could be a grain of truth in it.
And yet, he’d never felt he belonged in the home he’d grown up in. His father had always seemed distant and alien, though wasn’t that normal?
“Show me the letter,” he demanded once more in a low voice. It couldn’t be true. A father who was a country peasant, and a mother who was an innkeeper’s daughter? Common yeoman stock?
Perhaps Lord Harkom acceded because he was concerned at Faith’s reasons for coming to his room. He certainly would not have done it on Crispin’s account. He took a couple of staggering steps towards the bed and dropped to his knees, pulling out a small wooden chest.
Two narrow furrows between his eyes grew deeper as he shuffled the papers and his breathing increased. He appeared not to see Crispin when he turned his head in his direction, his eyes glassy as he muttered, “By God, the wench has taken it.” He thumped his hand on the lid. “The wench has stolen the letter. Why did I not think that might be a possibility?”
“One might not have thought it necessary to lock a cupboard or a chest containing incriminating documents if peddling lies is such a commonplace event.” Crispin moved towards the door, then, on second thoughts, changed direction and took a few steps towards Lord Harkom. “I was going to leave like a gentleman, but in view of the fact that apparently I am a man of no breeding, let me give you this for your treatment of Faith and all those other poor women you treat like playthings.”
Striking out with a sharp uppercut, he watched with satisfaction as Lord Harkom crumpled to the floor.
With the letters burning a hole in her bodice, Faith made her way to Madame Chambon’s as quickly as she could, entering through the back door and arriving in Charity’s bedchamber to find it mercifully empty but for Charity.
“Oh, my dear friend, I was so worried for you,” Charity wept as she threw her arms about Faith. “Did Lord Harkom hurt you? Did Mr Westaway find you?”
“Mr Westaway?” A thrill of longing travelled through Faith at the sound of his name, but disappointment followed for the fact she’d not seen him. “He really went after me? I mean, he took the trouble…not through vengeance?”
“Lord, Faith, must you be so suspicious? I’m not and look at the life I lead.” Charity indicated her room with a sweep of her arm. “So, you found what you wanted from Lord Harkom and he didn’t hurt you?” The fact she was so anxious about Faith’s well-being made Faith want to weep on the spot.
Also, what she’d learned upon reading them.
“He didn’t hurt me, no. And I have the letters.