Lord Cavendish Returns (25 page)

“
We heard from your brother that someone attacked you. He has
informed us that someone has stolen the register you are after,”
Dominic Cavendish declared firmly.

“
Your brother, Robert, let us in and said we were to make
ourselves at home. He told us you were ill from a head injury
because someone had hit you over the head at the church and that
you were staying in the vicarage tonight,” Sebastian mumbled around
a mouthful of apple.

“
My brother has a big mouth on him,” Harper grumbled and
wondered whether Robert had told his uninvited guests that he was
due to marry Arrabella too. That thought made him frown. When had
he ever started to think about marrying Arrabella? It was foolish
to consider the future when so much of his past was up in the air
yet now that the idea was firmly planted in his brain, he felt
strangely reluctant to dislodge it.

Sebastian pushed a chair out beside him and leaned back in
his seat to get another goblet. He dropped it onto the table before
he filled it with what appeared to be finest French brandy. Harper
took a sniff and lifted his brows. This valuable cargo was
extremely expensive stuff. He took a sip. The warm amber brew slid
down his throat like golden nectar and, for the first time all
evening, he began to relax as warmth began to ease his gnawing
tension.

“
So, I take it the man responsible for this -” he tapped his
temple and nodded to Harper, “- is the man who has stolen the
register?”

“
When did you get in?”

“
About an hour and a half ago,” Dominic drawled and watched as
Harper began to relax. The man looked tired, battered, bruised and
yet was still glowering fiercely. He immediately felt a kinship
with his half-brother that he had only ever felt with Edward and
Sebastian before and knew, deep in his gut, that Harper was a
Cavendish. Even if he ignored the same broad shoulders Sebastian
and Edward had, and the identical height; the way he carried
himself was Cavendish through and through.

“
We are here to help you find the register,” Edward
drawled.

“
I know where it is now. I had an altercation earlier with the
man who stole it. He is staying at the inn at the far side of
Moldton.”

“
He is unlikely to be going anywhere in this weather. We will
pay him a courtesy visit in the morning and make sure that we don’t
leave without the book,” Sebastian declared confidently.

Harper
snorted and gave Sebastian a look that warned him that trouble was
afoot. “I am not going to wait until morning. I haven’t done the
job I have for the last several years to hide away indoors just
because of a drop of rain. That man has the information I need. I
know where he is now, so I am going to damned well get what I want
while I know where to find it. One thing is for certain, I am not
coming back until I have found what I am looking for.”

He
watched the men look at each other. The silent interplay was
something he had only ever witnessed once before, and that had been
with the couple who had raised him. He had never seen it between
grown men though, especially without the hand signals to go with
it.

Sebastian leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table.
“We are coming with you.”

Harper
frowned at him. “What if I say no?” He wasn’t quite sure what to
make of their somewhat dubious ‘offer’. Somehow, he knew that if he
ignored them they would just tag along anyway. The weapons they
were busy polishing were already polished to a high shine and
extremely expensive. He absolutely refused to admit it, but he was
impressed both with their choice of weapon and their determination
to help.

“
We are coming with you anyway,” Dominic
challenged.

“
Then let’s go.”

As they
passed, Harper glanced at the vicarage and frowned at the sight of
the soft glow of candlelight that filtered through the
shutters.

“
What time is it?” Dominic, who was beside him, glanced down
at his fob watch. “It is twelve thirty. Why? Do you know
them?”

Harper
nodded. “The vicar and his family live there. The vicar is away at
the moment but his daughter is still in residence. It is highly
unlike her to be up so late at night.” Especially given the evening
she had just had.

“
Have you known her long?” Sebastian queried from the other
side of him.

Harper
shook his head. “I met her when I am came back to the village. She
agreed to help me look for the register. We found the damned thing
too; that’s the galling part, but the bastard in Moldton stole it
before I could take a look inside.” He briefly explained what had
happened to him and Arrabella since he had started his
investigation into his background.

“
Sounds to me like he has the information and is trying to
stop you going after it,” Dominic growled with a frown. He hated
people who took the law into their own hands. The family had
experienced more than their fair share of people like that and he
had no intention of letting one of them stop Harper getting the
information he needed.

“
What did he look like? Did you get a good look at
him?”

Harper
looked at Edward and quickly described his attacker.

“
Jesus, I think I know who it is,” Edward sighed from behind
them. “The last time I saw him he didn’t have jowls, but that must
have been at least four years ago. From all accounts, he has aged a
lot over the last several years.”

“
Who?” Harper snapped and turned in his saddle so that he
could see Edward more clearly.

Edward
glanced at each man in turn. “Johnson has a son.”

Sebastian looked at Dominic. “Think about it.” The men reined
to a stop. “The son is sole heir to Johnson’s fortune which, from
our point of view isn’t large, but from his is a veritable fortune.
I don’t know what other provision Johnson senior has made for
Harper, but it is in the son’s best interests if Harper doesn’t
find any proof that substantiates his claim of being a blood
relation.”

Harper
frowned at him. “But I thought he was a solicitor?”

“
He is,” Dominic and Sebastian replied together. “But that
doesn’t mean he is beyond breaking the law.”

“
There is a thriving business and a small fortune at stake
here, not to mention a scandal of mammoth proportions that could
damage both Harrys if the gossips got wind of old Mr Johnson having
a child with Alice Cavendish, deceased,” Sebastian
reasoned.

While
they rode toward the tavern, the men discussed how they were going
to get into, and out of, the tavern without waking up the entire
village if they got into a confrontation. By the time they pulled
into the churchyard at Moldton, everyone had an allocated role to
play.

Before
he knew it, Harper found himself standing inside the upper hallway
of the tavern. They had crept in so silently that not even the cat
curled up on the bar downstairs had twitched a whisker when they
had passed.

“
Now what?”

Harper
studied the doors that led to the bedrooms. “I don’t know about you
three, but I am not going to start banging on doors at this time of
night,” he whispered.

Sebastian shrugged and pushed open the door to the room next
to him. It opened silently and revealed an empty room beyond. The
next two bedrooms had occupants who were already in bed and
asleep.

Edward
opened the fourth door on the right and glanced at Harper with his
brows lifted. Immediately they all knew that this room was
different. Personal possessions were strewn haphazardly around the
room but, more importantly, in spite of the lateness of the hour,
there was nobody in the bed. Sebastian remained by the door while
Dominic, Edward and Harper began to paw through the
chaos.

Half an
hour later Harper pulled out the drawers to the dresser. Having
dealt with many situations just the same as this, he knew not to
leave any stone unturned. When he got to the bottom drawer, he
pulled it all the way out and sat back to study what lay before
him.

A wild
thrill of success swept threw him as he studied the leather bound
volume that lay hidden beneath the bottom drawer.

“
Is that it?”

Harper
nodded and lifted it out of its hiding place. It wasn’t a very
thick book, but it was long. He decided not to waste a second
longer than was absolutely necessary and began to flick through the
pages.

While he
did so, he was aware that Sebastian moved to kneel to the left of
him while Edward settled down on the right. Dominic squatted down
before him and together they looked at the book that would change
all of their lives.

Eventually he found the page he needed to see.

Harper
Marcus Cavendish. Mother’s name: Alice Cavendish. Father’s name:
Harry Johnson. Born: Hambley Wood, Yorkshire.

He read
the words over and over until they were indelibly printed on his
mind. Each time he closed his eyes he saw the long, elegantly
flowing scrawl that changed his entire world.

Sebastian placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. While he
was thrilled that he had a half-brother, the men remained solemn
and watchful. Harper was stunned that his childhood was not what he
thought it had been and all they could do was commiserate and wait
to see what he wanted to do.

“
God, I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

“
You are a Cavendish, Harper,” Dominic murmured. “That makes
you one of us.”

“
I don’t know what to say.”

“
I do,” Sebastian growled. “Let’s get the hell out of here.
Take this,” he lifted the register out of Harper’s numb fingers,
closed it and shoved it at his half-brother. “Stuff it under your
cloak. That register is coming home with us.”

Harper
couldn’t find the voice for any objection and found himself doing
as instructed. He was glad now that the brothers were there because
he couldn’t remember leaving the inn or the ride down the country
lanes back to Hambley Wood. Everything was a blur because he was
miles away, in the memories of his youth.

At first
he couldn’t get his mind off those fateful words written down so
boldly one and thirty years ago. He wished now that he hadn’t seen
them, or even known about the bloody register, but it was too late
to go back now.

A small
part of him grieved for the lost family of his youth. The people
who had raised him had never given him any hint that he may not be
theirs. He had never once stopped to consider the physical
differences between them; after all siblings did tend to look
different, even twins sometimes. Neither Agatha nor his father had
ever mentioned that he had different parents.

Why? Why
not tell him, especially before he went into the army? Had they
been afraid that he would throw them out once he realised that the
house was his, or were they afraid that he would go in search of
his real family, most of who didn’t know about his existence? It
irked him a little that they were not able to tell him the truth
now.

It went
against everything he was to have to leave something unsolved, but
his brother’s wouldn’t be able to give him the answers. It was too
late now to do anything but surmise what had happened all those
years ago, and hope that one day he could find some peace with the
situation.

“
I don’t understand something,” Sebastian growled with a
frown. He flicked a glance at Dominic. “Uncle Malcolm’s house is on
the other side of Skipton. He was the only relation we had in
Yorkshire at the time. How did Mama come to have the baby
here?”

Dominic
thought about that for a moment but, before he could speak, Edward
broke the silence. “She must have visited with Uncle Malcolm and
Aunt Nora.”

“
But how did she come to have the baby here?” Sebastian
persisted. “In Hambley Wood?”

“
We know that Harry went to find her in her confinement and
agreed to make arrangements to look after the baby. Maybe he found
her at Uncle Malcolm’s and purchased the house here so she could
move to Hambley Wood, where nobody knew her. She could have Harper
without anyone even being aware that she was with
child.”

“
Makes sense,” Harper added. Agnes and Bartholomew were the
nicest, kindest people he had ever known. They would have had no
qualms about moving in and helping look after Alice during her
confinement.

“
Wait a minute,” he whispered. He reined his horse to a stop
and frowned at the light that still shone from the vicarage window.
He glanced at Dominic. “What time is it now?”

“
It’s two o’clock,” Dominic replied.

“
What’s wrong?” Sebastian demanded with a scowl.

“
There is something wrong.” Harper’s gut instinct hardly ever
failed him and it was warning him now that there was something
amiss at the vicarage.

“
Looks alright to me,” Sebastian replied after several minutes
of studying the shadows around them.

“
There is only Arrabella at home,” Harper whispered. “When I
left her earlier she was soaking wet, freezing cold and exhausted.
It is highly unlike her to be up at this hour.”