Lord Cavendish Returns
Read Lord Cavendish Returns Online
Authors: Rebecca King
Tags: #romance, #romantic suspense, #suspense, #mystery, #historical fiction, #historical romance, #romantic mystery, #romantic adventure
LORD CAVENDISH RETURNS
The Cavendish Mysteries
Book Five
By
Rebecca King
Lord
Cavendish Returns
By
Rebecca
King
© Rebecca
King 2015
SMASHWORDS EDITION
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Mildred
glanced up at Sebastian beseechingly and drew him toward her with
surprisingly strong hands. She gasped and coughed with the effort
the simple action took, but refused to give in to death’s icy
grasp. The fierce glint of determination in her watery grey eyes
immediately began to dull, but she kept her gaze locked steadily on
his and tried desperately to find the best way to tell him. This
was her final chance to put things right and she simply would not
relinquish her hold on life until the secrets of the past were
revealed. It was far too late for her to make sure that the
Cavendish brothers actually did something useful with the
information she was about to impart. However, she knew that they
were a determined group of men who would not stop until they had
unearthed the truth and welcomed the past into the present. She
just had to find a way to break the news to them.
“
Come closer boy, I do not have the energy to shout,” she
grumbled, and frowned at Sebastian in disapproval when he rolled
his eyes and leaned toward her. If she had been fit and agile she
would have reached up and clipped him behind the ears. Even as tall
and grown up as he was he wasn’t too big for clout at the back of
the neck. Now that she lay on her death bed though, she had to
settle for a dark look that did little to appease the growing
concern of everyone present that she was running out of
time.
Sebastian patted the back of her bony hand absently as he
smiled gently down at her. His eyes held a hint of challenge, as
though he dared her to step away from the grasping hands of death
and scold him, but she couldn’t.
“
What is it, aunt? What do you want to tell me?” He flicked a
look at his brothers who stood on the opposite end of the
bed.
Half an
hour ago, they had all been summoned by the butler to gather around
their aunt’s deathbed because she had some grave news she wanted to
tell them. Now that they were there, nobody knew what to say. Aunt
Mildred was clearly struggling to stay alive long enough to tell
them what she felt she needed to, and they could do nothing but
stand patiently, wait and hope that she didn’t succumb to death
before she had eased her burden.
She
glanced at each man in turn. Her eyes turned faintly challenging,
as though she knew they wouldn’t like what she was going to say but
she was going to say it anyway. She released Sebastian’s hand and
waved him to stand beside his brothers so she could see them all
together without too much effort.
“
Your mother was immensely proud of all of you, you know
that.” Grief heightened the emotional atmosphere within the room at
the mention of their mother, and Mildred’s sister, Alice, who had
died several years earlier in a carriage accident with her husband.
The grief was still strong in all of them, but Mildred had no
hesitation in speaking ill of the dead now. In fact, she had the
strangest feeling that her dearest sister was up in heaven, urging
her to tell Dominic, Sebastian and Edward everything. At least she
hoped so, because the shock she was about to lay upon them was
going to change all of their lives.
“
Your mother was a wonderful woman. So kind, strong, gentle,
with such a deep adoration of all three of you. You were her pride
and joy, you should know that. However, she spent her life plagued
with regrets. You have mentioned the sadness she seemed to carry
with her on occasions, and wondered many times where it came from.”
Mildred swallowed and wet her lips. “She had a secret, you see? A
secret that was very close to her heart which caused her a lot of
pain.”
“
What secret?” Dominic demanded with a frown when Mildred
lapsed into silence and stared off into the distance.
They all
knew what Mildred was referring to. Although their mother had
outwardly appeared happy and content with her life and the love of
her husband, there had been many occasions when she had been so
indescribably sad that it was almost as though she was miles away.
She carried the pain around with her like a cloak around her
shoulders and although she laughed and sounded gay, her smiles
never really reached her eyes. She never spoke about what brought
tears to her eyes so frequently. Whenever someone had the temerity
to ask, she had merely smiled a watery smile, wiped her tears away,
and denied that anything was amiss.
The men
looked at each other. They knew they were on the cusp of finding
out what their mother’s distress had all been about. Had it been an
old paramour perhaps or a mistake in the past that she bitterly
regretted? The silence within the room was broken only by the
ticking of the clock on the mantle as they watched Mildred struggle
to fight for life. They all fervently hoped that she would hang on
long enough to tell them, but none of them were prepared for her
next words.
“
You have a half-brother,” she gasped.
She
fervently hoped that she hadn’t left it too late to ask them to
gather around her. It was suddenly so very difficult to breathe. If
only she hadn’t caught that blasted cough last spring, she would
have had at least a couple of years in her. Now that she was at
death’s door, the ghosts of the past seemed to have resurrected, as
though they were determined to be released out into the open while
there was still a chance. She fought the heavy weight on her chest
and stubbornly refused to acknowledge the uneven beating of her
heart as she studied each man in turn.
“
She was a lovely young woman, your mother. Very pretty and
much sought after. She had already married your father and had you,
Dominic but at first their marriage was not a happy one. He spent
most of his time in London, and had a mistress. Your mother
preferred the country and stopped here to look after you. At some
point, while they were living their separate lives, she met and
took a lover of her own, and I am afraid that a child came from
that union.”
“
Did father know?” Dominic slumped down onto the bed, stunned
to say the very least. He studied Mildred’s eyes and wondered if
she was off with the fairies again, but the calm certainty in her
gaze told him that she was completely lucid and determined to
impart the truth.
The
wheezing in her chest suddenly increased and she coughed so hard
that she was left limp and gasping on the bed. Her face paled and
he knew with absolute certainty that she didn’t have long to
discuss matters before the ability to breathe failed her
completely.
“
Yes, he found out,” she gasped. “At first he was livid and I
understand that there were many arguments, but he had been bedding
a mistress in London, and was hardly in a position to judge Alice
too harshly for doing exactly the same as him. She went away to
stay at a cousin’s in Yorkshire for her confinement. Nobody knew
about the baby, except for the baby’s father.” She sighed and
glanced ruefully at him. “I don’t know the specific details, but I
do know that the child’s father found her in her confinement and
took the child when it had been born. She came back here a
heartbroken woman, and never spoke of the man or boy ever again.”
She dabbed at the tears in her own eyes with a trembling hand.
Those years seemed such a long time ago, yet the memories were as
vivid as though they had only happened yesterday.
“
Your mother’s tears will haunt me forever. They never dried
and I don’t think that a day went past when she didn’t think about
him at least a hundred times. Your father seemed to realise that he
was going to lose his wife if he didn’t do something to save his
marriage, so he gave up his mistress and moved here to run the
estates. Of course, then you and Edward came along, Sebastian, and
your parents seemed to sort themselves out and settle into
marriage, but your mother was never the same after that. She never
forgot.”
“
Did she try to find him?”
Mildred
nodded. “She knew where he was, she just couldn’t go to him because
your father wouldn’t permit it. She had you three and her life here
to lose if she did go to Yorkshire, and she had handed the baby’s
care over to his father. There was little she could do. She
couldn’t go back.”
“
Who was the father?” Edward gasped. He was stunned, awed,
horrified, and glanced at Dominic who looked equally as shocked by
the revelation.
“
There are rumours, but she refused to say.”
“
Do you have any details? I mean names or
anything?”
Determination glinted in Dominic’s beautiful green eyes as he
studied his aunt. She smiled faintly; inwardly relieved that he
would pick up the mantle, and would not stop searching for the lost
half-brother until he knew what had happened to him. “I know that
if your half-brother has grown up to be anything like you three
then he will be a very fine man indeed.”
A
further coughing fit wracked her from head to toe, and the room
began to dim around the edges. She felt the pressure of time, and
gasped several times in an attempt to draw in enough air to tell
them the last bit.
“
His name is Harper. Harper Lawton.” She began to wince in
discomfort, but desperately clawed at Sebastian, who stood at the
side of the bed closest to her. They had to know. They just had to
know, before death claimed her. “When you find him, you must tell
him that he is Lord Cavendish, the Earl of Hopswich.”
With
that, Mildred knew that she had done her best to release the family
ghosts from the chains of the past. What the men chose to do about
the news was purely down to them. She could do no more.
They all
watched as Mildred gasped several times and then stopped breathing
altogether. Her eye lids drifted slowly closed and silence settled
over the room.
“
Good Lord,” Edward whispered, stunned beyond words. He had
seen people die before, many times, and was sad to have lost an
elderly aunt, but nothing had ever shocked him more than her
deathbed revelations. “Do you think she is right?”
“
She seemed determined to fight to stay alive long enough to
tell us,” Dominic replied with a sigh.
Edward
covered Mildred’s body over with a sheet and stood back to pay his
respects for a moment. Eventually, when their prayers were
completed, they solemnly made their way out of the room.
“
At least we have a name,” Sebastian sighed when they were in
the hallway. He wondered how on earth anyone went about trying to
find a person just by name alone.
“
We know the baby was born in Yorkshire,” Edward added
hopefully and shook his head when Dominic gave him a hard
stare.
“
Yes, he was born in Yorkshire; along with hundreds of babies
in hundreds of parishes. It should be so easy to find one,” he
retorted sarcastically.
“
We could live to be a hundred years old and never get to the
end of searching all the registers in Yorkshire, even if we could
find the time,” Sebastian frowned. “Did mother have any personal
letters or diaries, at all? Something we can look at to see if she
made reference to where she gave birth?”
“
We know she had the child in Yorkshire. The only relative we
had in Yorkshire at the time was Uncle Malcolm. He passed away
several years back but the estate was passed to his son, Terrence.
I have a few letters of mama’s tucked away in the safe, but I have
already read them. There is no mention of any baby, or a lover for
that matter,” Dominic replied thoughtfully.