Royal Brit Bastard: a badboy stepbrother romance (7 page)

She looked at me. “Not her.” And she looked back at him and said, “She’s too thin.”

“No, Millie, it would be lovely but, maybe next time. I’m here to see Clarissa. Is the old girl about at all?”

The creaking from above reminded me of Mother’s afternoons when she would leave a note on the dining room table, saying, simply “Headache.”

“Oh, she’s about.” Millie squinted at a big old black station clock on the wall. “She’s about another half an hour I should say.” Roger frowned. Millie nudged him and grinned, “And she’ll be about a hundred and fifty quid,” her eyes sparkled, “For the three of them.”

“Well, Millie,” Roger beamed his irresistible smile, the old crone almost swooned, “We’ll wait for her in the Old Pig & Scratchett. Would you tell her when she’s…”

She nodded, “When she’s unentangled. Disencumbered. Yes, of course I shall. But you must come back,” she stood on tiptoe with an angelic smile. “Without her.” She jabbed her finger at me.

Roger took my arm as we left. He turned and waved as we went down the steps. I turned to wave, too, although mainly in the hope that it would please Roger. I saw Millie’s radiant, snaggle-toothed smile twist into a skewer-like stare and she flicked her fingers at me.

The Old Pig & Scratchett was a traditional English pub. Low, wooden beams, an uneven wood floor, stepped on several levels and tiny leaded windows that let in very little light.
 

I asked Roger, “Do you you think they serve food?”

“Yes, but you’d be better taking your chances with some of Millie’s.” We both laughed as the huge, round back of the landlord turned and he lowered his ruddy face to growl, “What’ll it be?”

“Do you have herbal teas?” I asked him.

“No.” He grunted.

“I’ll have a scotch,” said Roger, “A large one.”

“Me too.” I said.

We drank our whisky’s at a wood table in a dark corner. When we finished them, Roger went back to the bar. The landlord was leaned on the bar and looked faintly annoyed when Roger asked for two more whiskys.

The door creaked open and a small, round, rosy-cheeked woman bustled in. She hurried straight up to Roger and practically jumped up into his arms. The landlord looked at her, then at Roger and said, “Might have known it.”

Roger brought her and three large whiskys to the table.

“Clarissa, I want you to meet Honey.” She raised an eyebrow and looked me up and down. “Honey, this is Clarissa, my mother.”

“Delighted, I’m sure.” She said, but she didn’t take my outstretched hand.

Roger and Clarissa caught up some and we had more whisky. She talked about the weather while we had more whisky. Then, over another round of whisky, she got around to the painful and acrimonious business of the handyman, her separation and divorce and Roger’s parentage.

“Could it be that I am Lord Chatterton’s son?” As he said it, I couldn’t tell which answer he was after.

“The old bastard used to take whatever he wanted anyway,” she said, “So it was pretty hard to tell. Yes, though. It’s true.”

“That Hardforth, the handyman, is my father?”

“Well,” she reached over to stroke his face. He allowed her, but I could see that he wasn’t comfortable. “I can’t say for sure if
that’s
true, but he and I did have a, you know, a thing.”

“And so, I may or may not be a by-product of your ‘thing.’”

“Oh, no, darling.” She looked genuinely shocked, “Oh, you think you weren’t wanted. No, you mustn’t think that. We
all
wanted you. You weren’t unwanted, not a bit of it.”

“
All?
” He looked startled.

“Yes, darling, poppet. Your father wanted you, obviously. He needed a son and he wasn’t getting any younger. Hardforth wanted you because,” she hesitated, “Well, he was quite smitten with me, and he wasn’t averse to what he called ‘sticking it to the ruling class.’”

“Was that his sole reason for heroically impregnating the whole of the downstairs female staff.”

“Oh. Chatterton told you that did he? Well, yes. He said, ‘Can’t help if me natural drives assert me principles in the one go.’ Which was sort of poetic, in an earthy kind of a way, don’t you think, darling?”

Roger looked sideways at her. “Not especially, no.” After a moment he said, “So are there many other credible candidates for the honor of being my father?”

“Well, no. Not really.”

“Not
really?”
he stormed, “In my experience, ‘not really’ usually means ‘yes.’”

“It’s all spilt milk now, dear,” she looked at me. Heaven knows why. An appeal for sisterly solidarity, perhaps. “But there was a DNA test.”

“So,” Roger was fighting back his anger now, “What was the result.”

She took a nip of her whisky, “Don’t know, dearie. Your father wouldn’t tell me.”

“My father or not, as the case may be.”

“Now, dear, he’s always treated you like his own son, whatever the rights and wrongs.”

“Yes, just as any poor, mistreated wretch that his son would have been, had one been so unfortunate as to have actually been his.”

“Well, you should be grateful. If he had another son, he’d almost definitely have left everything to him, you know that, I’m sure.”

“That’s right. In fact he does have this wonderful daughter,” he lifted a hand in my direction, “And he now wants to leave everything to her.”
 

“I know dearie,” She turned her face to me, “But, honestly,” she put her hand on top of mine, “There isn’t too much of him shows in you. In fact, you do seem quite nice, really.” She crinkled her eyes as she smiled and patted my hand, “For an American.”

Roger asked her, “So, Ma-ma, where is Hardforth now, do you know what happened to him?”

“Oh, yes.” She looked down and blinked two or three times. When she looked back up she said, “No, he died in what was said to have been a shooting accident.”

I said, “I didn’t know you had those here.”

“On the country estates they do, dearie. Have ’em all the time. This one involved the Earl of Ruttington. Discharged a shotgun and the unfortunate Hardforth got in the way.”

“How awful.”

“Yes, dearie. It was awful for Lady Ruttington, too, as she got in the way of the other barrel. Neither of the deceased parties nether garments were recovered it seems.”

“So,” Roger asked her, “I don’t suppose you have any idea what happened to the results of the DNA tests?”

“Why, yes, darling. I know exactly where they are. Lord Chatterton made a big show of putting them into the Louis the fourteenth armoire. Most valuable single piece of furniture in the country, he told me it was. One of the family’s most sacred heirlooms.

“There’s a secret panel behind the second drawer that you can only find if you twist the right front leg anti-clockwise. He was delighted to tell me the secret, just as he was having me evicted from Wimbush Park. Since the armoire is deep inside the house, he knew that I would never be able to put the knowledge to any use whatever.” She held up her empty glass, “Shall we have another?”

The helicopter hung and banked under the whirling, chopping blades. We rose over endless green hills, glistening silver lakes and rivers and thick mottes of dark green trees.
 

We flew out of London and over the English countryside for nearly three hours until at last we crested a high ridge and, spread out before us was a huge formal park with orchards, tennis courts, lawns, hedges and flowerbeds, all groomed and manicured to perfection.

All of it rose up a gentle, elegant slope to the ornate castellated roofs, the hundreds of gleaming windows, and the magnificent pale gothic arches of a sandstone mansion.

We landed on the lawn. As one apparently does not. A white-haired butler burst out of the massive paneled doors and down the wide stone staircase, waving a white-gloved hand in the air.

“Wait, wait, you can’t land here. Not on the lawns, you don’t have permission, wait.” He came rushing at us with the vigor of a much younger man. “Wait, oh, wait,” then he stopped and he looked at Roger. “Wait, it’s not true, is it?” He seized roger by the shoulders, “Is it really you, young master?”

Whithers, the old family butler showed us courteously up the long staircase, in through doors that would have looked oversized on many a cathedral and into a wooden, vaulted hall.

Then we were guided into a plush study, thickly carpeted and furnished with heavy, leather padded mahogany chairs, polished desks and bookcases, from the floor to the paneled and painted roof.

Withers sat us at a table by a stone fireplace and brought cut crystal glasses, a sparkling decanter of port and another of cognac. “I’d offer you a meal but there’s nobody expected, young master. I was going into the village later to have some fish and chips.”

Roger asked after Whithers and the other servants. The old man shook his head. “All laid off. All except for me, Tariq, the gardner and blacksmith and little Polly Saunders, the kitchen maid. Not even a cook or a housekeeper now. If someone’s coming, we get agency staff.”

Roger asked Whithers to sit, but he said, “Pshaw” and would have none of it. They talked about the house, the village, the local news and then Roger brought the subject around to the armoire.

“The Louis XIV armoire, young master? Wonderful piece. Almost inestimable value, they did say. Marvelous, intricate marquetry. Stood in the Trellis Hall since it came from the Chateau de Versailles, in sixteen and seventy six, young master A wonder to behold.”

“So, thank you Whithers. I’m very glad to hear all of that. And where is it?”

“The Trellis Hall, sir?”

“Well, yes, where is the Trellis Hall.”

Whithers looked at him, astonished, “Why, it burned down sir. There was an incident when Lord Wimbush last visited, seven years hence. ‘An entirely carbonized conflagration,’ I believe the fire marshall said was.”

We both stared at him with our mouths open. Eventually Roger said, “So, the armoire burned in the hall.”

Whithers cocked his head to one side and said, “Ah, no, young master. The armoire was out being French polished at the time, so it wasn’t in the Trellis Hall.”

“So it survived!”

“It did survive that fire, yes, young master.”

“So where is it now?”

“The armoire, young master?”

“Yes, Whithers, the armoire. Where is it now.”

“Well, it was out in the old stables workshop, young master. For the French polishing so I suppose that it’s still there.”

“You suppose?”

“Technically, yes. That is where I would suppose that it was.”

“Well, has no-one looked?”

“Well, not really, young master, no, sir. Because the old stables workshop burned down also.”

“With the armoire still inside.”

“Alas, young master, that has been the supposition.”

“You don’t know for certain?”

“No, young master. The entire building and its contents were …”

Roger jumped in, impatient, “Carbonized, Whithers?”

“In their entirety, sir, yes.”

“Damn. What awful luck.”

“That was what Lord Wimbush said himself. Only the odd thing was, he said it when he learned that the armoire had survived the fire in the Trellis Hall.”

“Was that before or after the fire in the old stables workshop?”

“Ah, now you put your finger on another peculiarity, young master. The fire in the old stables was the very night after Lord Wimbush learned the good news of the armoire having survived the fire in the Trellis Hall.”

We shook our heads together as Whithers left us to enjoy the library, the port and the cognac. I said, “But it’s very mysterious, don’t you think?”

Roger’s head shook, “Almost as though the fires were chasing the old armoire.”

“And all the papers, lost.”

“‘Entirely carbonized’ I believe.”

“Quite. ‘In the conflagration.’”

Whithers was approaching with two cookies on a silver tray. “I do hope you will pardon my intrusion, young master, but I chanced to overhear what it was that you just said. Now, it’s none of my business, I know, and Lord Wimbush if he were here, he
 
would tell me in short order to mind my place and manners, and to keep my nose out of it, so maybe I would be speaking out of turn, young master.”

“About, what, Whithers?”

“Papers, young master. Did I hear you correctly or
 
did I misconstrue, but were you not referring to some papers?”

“Ah, yes, Whithers.” Roger poured some more port, and added a generous measure of cognac. “The papers that were lost in the old armoire.”

“Well, no, I don’t believe that there were any papers lost in the old armoire, young master.”

“Alas, Lord Wimbush had put some family documents there for safe keeping. A set of papers that were concealed inside.”

“I don’t believe that they were in the armoire.”

I said, “They were hidden, Whithers, fatefully as it turns out, in a secret compartment.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Miss. But they weren’t there in the fire.”

I said, “How do you know?”

“Well, I took them out. Wouldn’t have been any good with French polish all over them. Have you seen a piece of paper that’s had French polish spilled on it?”

Roger said, slowly, “No.”

“Unreadable. Absolutely useless.”

I said, “So where are they?”

“They’re on the mantlepiece.” We all looked up at the mantlepiece. “Behind the clock.” said Whithers.

“Wait,” Roger said, “Did Lord Wimbush know about that?”

“About the papers, sir?”

“Yes, Whithers.”

“Well, I don’t believe that he ever asked, young master.”

Whithers reached up behind the clock and pulled out a very old fat folder full of papers. I said to Roger, “But, why on earth would Father have wanted to destroy the papers.”

He said, glumly, “I can think of only one reason.”

He took a pull on his port and cognac. “He’s desperate to prove that I’m a bastard. He would surely only want to get rid of the papers if they proved that I wasn’t.”

I said, “And then you would be able to inherit, come what may.”

He put his hand over mine, “But there’s no way on God’s green earth that you and I could ever be together.”