The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(69)

Voices from the front of the hall – a pair of footmen by the sound of it – brought him out of time past back to the present, sent him away, down the corridor to the study door.

The hinges were as well-oiled as they ever had been and he was inside and in front of the desk without the man sitting on the other side of it looking up. He had always found it a strange choice, that piece of frivolous French rococo furniture when something massive and oak would surely have suited his father better.

‘Wait,’ The Earl was writing something across the bottom of what looked like an invoice, something dull and agricultural from the absence of any fancy bill-head and the closely packed lines of writing.

Jared stood, as patient and silent as the best-trained footman. The bent head in front of him had the same golden brown hair as his own, but short and thickly laced with silver now. The shoulders in their mourning black were as broad as he remembered, the handwriting as determined.

His father put the pen on its stand and looked up. ‘Yes?’ He came to his feet as he spoke, the colour draining out of cheeks weather-beaten from the hunting field and riding the estates in Yorkshire weather. ‘Who the devil are you?’ Then, ‘Jack?’

‘I go by Jared these days.’

‘Jack.’ His father seemed not to have heard him. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Good to see you, too, Father dear. ‘I heard about William. I am sorry.’

For a moment his father’s face crumpled, the grief raw and brutal, then he had his formidable composure in place again. ‘You’ve come to see what you can lay your hands on now, have you?’

Well, it wasn’t as though he had expected any other reaction, certainly no-one rushing out to kill fatted calves and open the best champagne. ‘No. I have my own life, my own concerns and my own business. This – ’ He waved a hand to encompass study, house, estate, title, ‘– This would be a damned nuisance.’

His father sat down again with a thud. ‘My son is dead and you call it a damned nuisance.’ When Jared made a sharp gesture of denial, he added, ‘You’d turn your nose up at an earldom?’

‘I won’t have the choice when it comes to it, will I? Until then, I thought I had a duty to come back and see if I could help. Bella did not mention seeing me the other day, then?’

‘Bella? No, of course not. She knows no more about you and your whereabouts than I do.’ The colour was coming back into his face now and his breathing slowing. Jared told himself that he really did not want his father’s death by apoplexy on his conscience.

‘She has known where I am, who I am, for nearly a month. Yesterday I encountered her in Whitby.’ It did not seem that he was going to be offered a chair so Jared took one anyway. His father simply stared at him as though he was a ghost. He supposed he was. ‘It is probably a waste of breath to say this, but I did not force myself on her all those years ago and I am not the father of her child.’

‘I know.’

The shock kept him in the chair, knocked the breath out of his chest, the words from his mouth. He stared at his father, stared into the amber eyes just like his own and fought for some control. ‘You knew. When did you know?’

‘A month or so after you had gone, when William had stopped ranting and posturing and playing the little gentleman and Bella had stopped pretending to be a wronged woman and had dispensed with the crocodile tears and had got a wedding ring on her finger. Your brother never could tell a lie with any conviction, not and make it stick.’

‘You knew. You have known for eleven years. Did you bother to look for me?’ Pride kept his tone ironic, kept him from getting to his feet and hurling things about the room.

‘Yes, I knew. And I searched, believe me. But by that time they were married. My son and heir was married to the daughter of some jumped-up Whitby coal merchant, they had tricked me into agreeing to a marriage William knew damn well I would forbid, and you had vanished off the face of the earth. In the end I put it about that you’d run off to join the army, at least that preserved the family name from scandal.’

‘That’s a relief,’ Jared drawled. ‘I was worried that I might have caused some embarrassment. Heaven forbid.’

‘What would you have had me do?’ his father demanded, red in the face now.

‘Look harder? You accused me of having no honour whatsoever, you took Bella’s word against mine that I had seduced her with no intention of marrying her and you believed William when, for the first time in his life, he showed an inclination to do something involving self-sacrifice.’

He stood up, now that he had the urge to smash the furniture under control, and began to pace up and down the room. ‘How are you? Don’t pretend with me, this must have hit you hard.’

The Earl passed his hand over his eyes. ‘It is a nightmare. He was fit, healthy – and then he was gone.’ He shook his head, a wounded, confused bull. ‘I am Huntingford and I will not give way to this grief.’

The defiance affected Jared as tears would not have done. He turned towards the desk, his hand held out, and his father flinched. It stopped him dead in his tracks as no word could have done.

‘Are you frightened of me?’

‘You come in here with that damned sword at your side and every excuse in the world to use it.’ His father stood, suddenly every inch the Earl of Huntingford. ‘I would not blame you if you did. I thought you dead but, yes, I should have looked harder, I should not have given up and told myself that the family name and avoiding scandal was more important than my son.’ He turned, hands open, defenceless. ‘I would not blame you,’ he repeated, the words almost a whisper. ‘And I do not know you, the man you have become. My son.’