Lord Lightning (34 page)

“Little fool. I imagine you think he did so because he loves you.”

“I think no such thing. He is a man of honor and he acted honorably.”

“The word
honor
comes strangely from the mouth of a creature like you.” Lady Hartwood sniffed. “If my son told you he rescued you out of love, you would be a simpleton to believe him. He has merely become enraptured with the idea of himself as a selfless lover. It is a novel sensation. It will pass.”

Despite herself, Eliza shivered. Lady Hartwood still had the knack of putting words around her own, darkest fears.

Then Lady Hartwood leaned forward and let her voice drop. “Did my son tell you how much I extracted from him in return for your freedom?”

“He said nothing about it.” But even as Eliza spoke she wondered what Lady Hartwood could be alluding to.

“How very nobly he is acting,” Her Ladyship
sneered. “It must be yet another new sensation for him. But I should have thought he would have told you how much he paid, if for no other reason than to ensure you remained with him until he was ready to send you away. He hinted you were losing your enthusiasm for his attentions and there is nothing he would hate more than to be rejected before he had the opportunity to reject.”

The import of what Lady Hartwood had just told her only now struck home. “Lord Hartwood paid you to have me freed?”

“A great deal. It was very careless of him to brag about his wealth to me.”

Lady Hartwood picked up her embroidery and took a stitch before continuing, “There was no other inducement he could have given to make me relent. As much as I would have liked to see you hang, I prefer to live out the rest of my life in comfort. The arrangement I forced him to make will make that possible. That was the price of your freedom, missy. When he abandons you, you may console yourself that no doxy of his has ever before cost him what you have.”

Eliza turned away from her tormentor. To think that Edward had made a sacrifice like that for her and had said not a word about it, even after the way she had reproached him with his selfishness in the gaol. She felt her heart open. That was not the act of a resentful soul.

She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. Then she wheeled around to confront Lady Hartwood. “You have placed me forever in your son’s
debt, for there is no way I can ever repay him. But I shall cherish the memory of his selfless act for the rest of my life—for it was selfless indeed. You are wrong in thinking he would use his generosity to force me to stay with him against my will. He said nothing of it, nor did he attempt to use it to compel me to do anything I knew would not be prudent. We shall separate as planned on our return to London.”

A look of satisfaction swept over Lady Hartwood’s features. “Then have you learned, at last, what it means to love a man like Edward?” she asked. “He told me he offered for you and you refused him. Is this true?”

“It is.”

“Did you finally come to understand, before it was too late, that my son is a man who cannot love?”

Eliza said nothing.

“Come, girl. I wish to know your answer. You defied me once and mouthed a bunch of twaddle about him. But clearly you thought better of it, if you turned down his offer of marriage. Admit it. You learned at last that he is a cold, cruel man who cannot love.”

“No. I did not. Your son is passionate and warm, and he would love me if I would let him. It is my own character I’ve learned to understand better, not his. Though I love him with all my heart, I am a coward. I urged him to believe he could love, but when he tried to live up to my urgings, I had not the courage to trust he would succeed.”

Lady Hartwood sneered. “Why should you trust him when all he has done is seduce you with his charm as he has so many others? His father was just like him, you know. So handsome. So deft with words. He recited poetry to me and it came alive, and I wished nothing but to be in his arms. Nothing else mattered to me then. But it did matter later, oh how it mattered!”

Anger surged within Eliza. “He’s not like his father at all, though you did everything you could to make him believe he must grow up to be just such a libertine. It’s a wonder there’s any goodness left in him. But there is. He
is
a kind and loving man, despite what he believes he must be because of his father.”

A look of scorn twisted Lady Hartwood’s face. “He knows nothing about his father,” she said with contempt.

A tall spare form loomed in the doorway. “You’re wrong, Mother.” Edward pressed forward. “I know all about my father. My real father.”

“Mrs. Atwater told you?” She looked horrified.

“She didn’t mean to, but she let something slip and from there it was not hard to winkle out the rest.”

“What are you talking about?” Eliza demanded.

Edward took off his hat and let his pale curls spill out to frame his face. “You were so right, Eliza, when you insisted that Lady Hartwood was indeed my mother. Your charts told you the truth. And you were right, too, when you told me there was some mystery surrounding my birth
which could explain my mother’s implacable hatred for me.”

Lady Hartwood sprang up from her seat. “Edward. Not in front of a stranger!”

“Eliza is hardly a stranger. She suffered greatly because I didn’t know the truth about my birth. I owe her an explanation, and so do you. And besides, without her prodding I should never have discovered that truth.”

He turned back to Eliza. His deep brown eyes met hers and she saw within their depths a joy she had never seen in them before. Had he overheard her protest her love for him? The thought terrified her even as she felt her heart swell with the hope that he had learned, at last, the truth of those feelings she had not had the courage to reveal to him.

Trying to keep her voice from trembling, she asked, “What did you learn, Edward, that fills you with such joy?”

He took a step toward her and took her hand. At his touch she felt a burst of warmth flow into her heart. He squeezed her palm gently, just once, then again met her eyes. “I hardly know how to tell you, Eliza,” he said. “But I think you of all people will understand what it means to me. You see, you were right about what you told me you read in my nativity. I am indeed my mother’s son, but to my great amazement and relief, I find, after all, I’m not the son of the man I thought to be my father. I’m not Black Neville’s son.”

It took a moment for the full meaning of his
words to sink in. Then her mouth dropped open. But she had no time to reply, for Lady Hartwood had risen out of her chair and was leaning heavily on her cane, her eyes wild. “Edward, consider what you do! Would you put us both in her power? You may delight in destroying
my
reputation, but consider what such a revelation means for your own.” She sank back into her chair, her breast heaving. Edward made no reply but merely waited patiently as his mother regained control of herself.

When she could speak again, Lady Hartwood clenched her teeth. “How you must enjoy having me at your mercy,” she said. But even as she spoke these last words her voice faltered, and a look of confusion filled her hardened features. “And yet,” she said, “you
must
have known the truth when you came to beg for Eliza’s freedom. You had already been to see that Atwater creature when you came to see me—after she wrote me that disturbing note.”

“I did.”

“But if you’d discovered my shame, why didn’t you use it against me? When you came to beg me to secure Eliza’s freedom, you gave me no hint of what you’d learned from that terrible woman. I thought you had nothing left to bargain with. Yet if you knew, you could have threatened me with exposure. You could have set your own terms instead of letting me impose mine. How could you have known about my shame and not used it against me?”

Edward dropped Eliza’s hand and took a step toward his mother. “I didn’t wish to, Mother. You’ve suffered enough for the one mistake you made in your youth. And as I am
not
Black Neville’s son, I have not inherited his heartlessness. So I can forgive you as he could not. You sacrificed so much to keep your place in society, and as it is all he left you with, I would not take it from you.”

“Truly? You won’t expose me?” Lady Hartwood’s eyes were blinking rapidly.

“I won’t. There’s no way of changing the past, and I have no more desire than you do to see the Hartwood name shamed.”

“Well, I must be grateful for that.” His mother fought to recover her composure. “I suppose you are delighted now to think that your real father was a better man than Black Neville.”

“No, that would be foolish, Mother. I am, as you have often pointed out, a cynical man of the world. Though I cannot know what kind of man my real father was, I can well understand what led him to seduce you. You were a young and passionate woman who had been slighted by her husband. That’s an opportunity few men could ignore.”

Lady Hartwood remained motionless except for her left hand which she was clenching convulsively. “He didn’t seduce me,” she said quietly. “I went to him willingly. He had such a beautiful voice. Your voice is so like his, just as you look like him. You always have, ever since you stared up at me from your cradle with those deep brown eyes
of his and that pale, pale hair. I couldn’t bear it.”

And to the amazement of them both, a single glistening tear coursed down Lady Hartwood’s granite cheek.

“Was he a man who could not love?” Eliza demanded. “Did you learn that too late? Is that why you have been so vehement in your warnings to me?”

“I don’t know what he was,” Lady Hartwood replied. Her voice held a wistful tone. “Our connection was so brief. He was all sweet words, such sweet, sweet words. He spoke of love, but I didn’t know if I could believe him. He begged me to leave Hartwood and come along with him and join the troupe. He said he could teach me to be an actress, that I had a gift for it. But how could I do a thing like that? I was Lady Hartwood. I couldn’t give that up to become an actor’s mistress, not when he might abandon me at the next town.”

“So it was you who left him, not the other way around?” Eliza asked.

“Of course. What choice had I? For months after the troupe moved on he sent me letters. But I burned them unopened, every one—except the one that the stupid servant girl handed to your father. Black Neville gave it to his solicitor to hold hostage, knowing it was all he needed to divorce me. I never read that one, either, but I fear it must have been quite indiscreet.”

“So my real father might have loved you, Mother,” Edward said softly. “And he might have been a good and loving man.”

“Or he might have been an arrant rogue worse even than my husband. I shall never know. But I have to believe I made the correct choice and that I would not have been happy had I been foolish enough to forget myself and follow him who knows where.”

“Which is why you couldn’t bear any sign you saw in me, who was so like him, that suggested I, too, might be a good man,” her son said softly.

She shook her head. “Sin begets sin. How
could
you be a good man? Your birth had ruined my life.” Another tear dripped from her bleary eye.

He crossed the room and embraced her heaving form. “Mother,” he said, “I’m glad I was born, whatever it might have cost you. I am glad, too, that I am not the son of the cold, implacable man who punished you so cruelly for doing once what he had done with impunity all his life. How much fear you must have lived with, knowing that if you displeased him you could be dismissed like a servant.”

She nodded fervently. “It was worse than that. Had I shown any partiality to you, I think he might have harmed you. So I schooled myself to show none, and after a while, it became second nature to me.”

As his mother dabbed ineffectually at her eyes, Edward walked over to the mantelpiece. “Perhaps James wasn’t wandering in his wits when he was on his deathbed as Mr. Hoskins thought,” he said quietly. “By forcing me to come back to Brighton, James removed a great burden from my heart, and
I must be grateful to him for that. I must thank you, too, Mother, for your candor. I do not expect you to love me, not after so long. But I no longer need to hate you, and that is gift enough. I hope James found some comfort at the end in knowing that he might reach out from beyond the grave to undo some of the damage his father did.”

“James knew the truth, you know,” his mother said as if to herself. “He overheard your father reproaching me. It wasn’t something a young child should have heard. But he did, and I fear that learning what he did about his mother, so young, did not help him grow into the man I would have wished him to be.”

Lady Hartwood sat sunk in her thoughts for a moment longer. Then her expression hardened and she turned back to Eliza. “Young woman, what will I have to pay to buy your silence? Edward trusts you far too much if he believes you will hide my secret from the world. You can have no reason to forgive me, even if he has found one.”

Eliza could barely reply, her heart was so full. Though she shared Edward’s relief that he need no longer believe himself condemned by a toxic heritage, it was nothing compared to the happiness that had welled up within her at seeing him forgive his mother. That he could show such selfless love to the person who had hurt him so badly meant far more to her than the generous sacrifice he had made to free her. That could have been explained by his partiality for her. But his mother had done nothing to earn the loving sacrifice he
had made for her and likely never would. What a transformation he’d undergone!

But she forced herself away from her selfish rejoicing and addressed the concern she saw in his mother’s teary eyes. “You need have no fear, Lady Hartwood. I care too much for your son to spread a story that could only cause him pain.”

“You care too much for my son, period,” Lady Hartwood said tartly. “But he is a charming devil, and you may have no choice about it. I would have liked him to marry a girl of good birth, but perhaps it takes a woman of your kind to sort out a rake like him. The lord knows I could not sort out his father.”

Edward laughed. “Mother, Eliza is of gentle birth. Better birth than you or I.”