Rules of Marriage, page 11
Forrester.
Just what perverse fate had landed a Forrester—this Forrester—in the same corner of the world as one Edwin Brady?
He thought back to the events of his youth that made this current situation so very uncomfortable.
The first had occurred during his seventeenth summer—nearly twelve years ago in Devon. He and Victor Kenwick, the squire’s son, had been home from school. It had not occurred to Edwin in those days to wonder why the Marquis of Lounsbury would trouble to send a tenant farmer’s son away to be educated. True, it was not a first-rate education such as the marquis had accorded his own sons, but it was such as to allow a boy from a tenant farm to aspire to a better station in life—perhaps as a steward, even. Obviously, the marquis had observed that the boy Edwin was a cut above local farm yokels.
The summer before, Edwin had happily lost his virginity with one of the dairy maids on the home farm of Raleigh Manor, one of several Lounsbury holdings throughout England. Anna. He still recalled fondly her saucy, flirtatious manner and her smooth white flesh. A year later, he desperately hungered for another taste of what he had so enjoyed as a mere boy of sixteen. He and Kenwick had talked of little else but “finding a girl” for several days.
The two had been out fishing that day and were returning home through a corner of the Lounsbury woods, when there she was on the lane ahead of them. Anna. Anna, who had been oh-so-willing last year.
“Hey, there. Anna,” Edwin called.
She turned. “Oh, Edwin. I heard you was back.”
He hurried to catch up with her, and Kenwick was right beside him.
“That I am. And hungering mightily after what only you can give.” Edwin gave her one of his practiced smiles that had been moderately successful on taproom maids in town.
She sidled away from him. “Well, as to that, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere.”
“Ah, now. You don’t really mean that. We had such a good time last summer. And I was looking to having it again.” He reached to caress her arm and she tried to move away from him. “Kenwick here would like a taste, too.”
Kenwick had moved to block her flight. She suddenly appeared very apprehensive, but not yet truly frightened.
“I—I’m to be married,” she announced, just as though that should mean something to Edwin. “Me and Jim Jenks are promised.”
“Ah, that’s nice,” Edwin said smoothly as he slipped his arm around her shoulder and held her tightly. “But ol’ Jim won’t miss what he don’t know about.” He bent to kiss her, but she twisted her face away.
“Please. Let me go. I don’t want—”
“You wanted it enough before. Victor and I promise you’ll like it now, too—don’t we, Kenwick?”
“We surely do!” Victor agreed eagerly.
“No!”
It was real fear in her voice now, and for some reason that gave Edwin a sense of power that heightened his desire. She pushed at him, but he held her arms.
“Now don’t be fighting us, or we might have to hurt you.”
“Over there—under that tree is a good spot.” Victor pointed as he put an arm around her from the other side. The two males thus propelled her balking female form in that direction. “Quick. I can hardly wait,” the squire’s pudgy son urged.
Edwin grinned at the other’s bulging crotch. “I see. Well, me first, my friend. Me first.”
“No!” Anna screamed again. “No! No! Please. Don’t do this. You’re hurting me.”
They threw her onto the ground. She struggled futilely to get away and screamed again.
“Hold her down for me,” Edwin said, “and see if you can shut her up.” He tossed up her skirts and attempted to wedge his knee between her legs, even as he fumbled with the flap on his breeches.
He suddenly became aware of the sound of a horse coming through the brush just an instant before he felt a stinging lash across his upper back.
“Let her go,” a voice ordered.
Despite his shirt and jacket, the sting of that lash managed to take his attention from Anna’s luscious body.
“I said let her go,” the rider repeated and raised his riding crop again. “The girl quite obviously does not welcome your advances.”
“She’s just playing hard to get,” Edwin said. “Besides, this is of no concern to you.”
Victor had straightened and released Anna’s shoulders. “Give it up, man. That’s Forrester. The marquis’s younger son.”
As Edwin also loosed his hold on her, Anna struggled to her feet and straightened her clothes. Tears stained her cheeks, and Edwin now had the grace to feel somewhat ashamed of himself. “Ah, well, no harm done—eh, Anna?”
She glared at him, then addressed the young man on the horse. “Thank you, my lord.”
He nodded. “You go along home now. I doubt these two will bother you any more.”
She hastened to do his bidding, practically running in her effort to put distance between herself and her assailants. Forrester looked down at them with unconcealed contempt.
“There is little honor or manhood involved in forcing a female.” He looked from Edwin to Victor. “What kind of scum would hold a woman down while another raped her?”
Edwin saw Victor’s face turn beet red, but the squire’s son merely looked at the ground and said nothing. Edwin shifted his gaze to the man on the horse.
“I repeat, it was none of your business. The girl was asking for it. I would have had her moaning in ecstasy in another few minutes.”
Forrester nudged the horse forward, forcing Edwin to step back. He poked Edwin’s chest with the riding crop.
“Her screams clearly suggested otherwise.” Again he stared at each of them in turn. “If either of you two noble gentlemen ever so much as touches an unwilling woman in this parish again, I promise you will pay very dearly for your action. Now you get your worthless, cowardly hides out of my sight before I decide to horsewhip the both of you.”
Edwin had seethed for days, dreaming of vengeance against his interfering lordship. In the end, his rage was fueled by an even more serious grievance against the Marquis of Lounsbury and his sons.
Six months later, he had been called home to the bedside of his extremely ill mother. He somehow knew as soon as he looked into her dark, sunken eyes that she was dying. Her husband, the farmer Mullens, told him she had the wasting sickness. She was surrounded by her family, which included Edwin’s seven siblings, ranging in age from sixteen-year-old Mary to a toddler of almost two, baby Charlie.
“I ... I need to speak with Edwin alone,” his mother said with a pleading look at her husband.
“You sure about this, Bess?” the farmer asked.
“Yes, dear. It’s time.”
Her husband herded the others out, and Edwin was alone with his mother. He drew up a chair to sit close to her, hating the lump in his throat and the tears that threatened.
“What is it, Ma?”
She gazed at him, her eyes bright with tears of her own. “Edwin, I love you. I have always tried to do right by you.”
“I know, Ma.”
“I loved your father, too.”
Something about this comment struck him as strange, but the woman was extremely ill. He patted her hand. “He knows, too, Ma.”
She grasped his hand in a surprisingly tight grip. “No. You don’t understand. Not Thaddeus Mullens. Your real father. Though I grew to love Mr. Mullens, too.”
He was stunned. “My—my real father? Are you telling me—?”
“Mr. Mullens took me in and married me a few months before you were born. Lounsbury arranged it all.”
Suddenly a number of incidents and casual comments of his youth made sense to him. He also understood now why he had always felt so much closer to his mother than to his father—that is, to Mullens. Nor was the bond with any of his three brothers and four sisters particularly strong.
“So who—”
“Lounsbury. The marquis is your father. I was one of the upstairs maids. He had just lost his wife, and he was so handsome. And charming. I was young and foolish. So very foolish . . .”
Edwin sat in stunned silence for several minutes, trying to absorb all this. Then he spoke slowly.
“That’s why he sent me away to school.”
“Yes. He said he would never acknowledge you, and he never has, but he did see that you—and I—had a decent home. He sent Thaddeus and me to this estate, and we’ve had a good life. He saw to it you had a proper education.”
“Proper, but not the best—that was reserved for his real sons.” Just good enough for a bastard, Edwin thought bitterly.
“I—I’m sorry,” his mother whispered. “I thought you should know.”
He relinquished her hand and sat back in his chair, his thoughts muddled—and bitter. He recalled the incident with Forrester and the girl this past summer. That arrogant son-of-a-bitch was his brother! And he—Edwin—had been merely following his inherited instincts—tumbling a Lounsbury servant.
“Edwin? Please . . . don’t hate me, darling.”
“I don’t hate you, Ma. But Lounsbury has a lot to answer for.”
“What he did is not unusual,” she said. “And he did better by us than many a peer might have done.”
“He could have married you—given me my proper name.”
Even in her weakened state, her voice showed the strength of her shock. “Married me? A housemaid? Oh, no, dear. Not Lounsbury.”
“ ’Tis not wholly unknown,” he argued.
“For him, it was. And truly, it would have been no life for me, either.”
“Well, what about me? I’m his son. I have as much of his blood as those two popinjays who occasionally show themselves here!”
“But you are my son, too,” she said gently. “And I have loved you dearly.”
“And that is supposed to make up for the life that might have been mine? I’m sorry, Ma. Love is not enough.”
Her tears flowed in earnest now.
Mullens came back into the room then. He stood looking helplessly from his wife to Edwin. He put a work-roughened hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“I know that came as a shock, son—”
Edwin jerked away and stood so abruptly the chair toppled over. “I’m not your son. I never was.” He ignored the pain in the other man’s eyes.
“You were—you are—our firstborn son,” Mullens insisted quietly.
Edwin was lost in helpless fury now. He was angry at a turn of fate that had him born on the wrong side of the blanket. And he was angry at these two for hiding the truth from him all these years.
He lashed out in a sneering tone. “I suppose this farm was your reward for taking in his noble lordship’s whore and passing off his by-blow as your own?”
Mullens was a big man, and at not yet eighteen, Edwin had not reached his full growth. The farmer straightened now and slapped Edwin across the face.
“No!” His mother reached a supplicating hand toward the two men. “Please. Thaddeus—Edwin, don’t—please.”
“You will apologize to your mother this instant! ” Mullens ordered.
Edwin knew he had gone too far. “I’m sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know, dear.” She sighed heavily and exchanged a meaningful look with her husband.
The next day, his mother died. Edwin stayed at the farm only long enough to see her properly buried.
He had always hated the farm. While this one provided the family a decent, if not lavish, existence, it required never-ending, back-breaking labor. Even as a small boy he had chafed at the thought of such a life for himself. And now to discover he should have been born to something infinitely better . . . !
So he had packed a bag with a few meager belongings and the only presentable clothing he owned and simply left. He had never looked back.
He had departed the farm with no clear plan in mind. He knew only that he was not returning to school. He possessed something over three guineas. That would see him through for a time at least. He drifted for several days before he managed to work up enough courage to face the Marquis of Lounsbury.
He arrived at Lounsbury’s principal seat in Gloucestershire only to have a sour-faced butler tell him the marquis was not at home.
“When do you expect him to return?” Edwin asked with as much civility as he could muster.
“Not for a few weeks.”
“Can you tell me where I might find his lordship? I—I have some rather urgent business with him.”
“Parliament is in session. He has gone to London.” The man shut door abruptly.
As he reversed his trip down the long, long driveway, Edwin looked back at the huge, luxurious edifice that was but one of several homes owned by the Marquis of Lounsbury. I might have grown up here, he thought.
In London, he found an equally sour-faced butler at the Lounsbury town house.
“Wait here. I will see if his lordship is receiving. You said the name is Mullens?” The butler’s tone reminded Edwin that a proper gentleman—which he had a right to be—would have had a calling card to hand the servant.
Edwin fidgeted in the entranceway as the butler disappeared down a long hallway. The entrance was all white marble and highly polished mahogany. There were a number of paintings on the wall of a stairway rising to the floors above and several large, expensive-looking oriental urns within view. The place screamed quiet, confident wealth.
He heard a voice say, “Mullens?” There was a pause. “Well, show him in.”
Edwin was shown into an elegant library he thought must surely contain as many volumes as his school library had boasted. The marquis sat behind a huge desk—mahogany, Edwin noted—but the man did not rise as his guest was shown in. Lounsbury appeared to be fairly tall. He had deep blue eyes beneath heavy black brows that contrasted sharply with the shock of white hair he sported. He raised one brow.
“Ah, I expected your father when Jeffers announced a Mr. Mullens. That will be all, Jeffers.”
The door clicked shut on the departing butler.
“My father?” Edwin asked with what he thought to be sophisticated irony.
The marquis did not even blink. “I see she told you.”
“Yes.”
They studied each other silently for a moment. Edwin had not been invited to sit, and the longer he stood, the more nervous he became.
Finally, the marquis spoke. “You’ve grown. I last saw you about five or six years ago. Just before you went away to school. I must say, there is not much of a Forrester look about you, though you do have your mother’s fine coloring. Pretty girl, she was. I was sorry to hear of her death.”
“Perhaps the Forrester heritage runs more than skin deep, sir.”
“Perhaps . . .” The older man picked up a paperweight and turned it over and over in his hands. “Well. Why are you here? What do you want?”
“Is it not enough to want to be known to one’s father?”
“Your father is Thaddeus Mullens, as far as I am concerned. If you think to extort further consideration than I have heretofore provided, I would strongly advise you otherwise.”
“Extortion is rather a dirty word, your lordship.” Edwin could not help the tinge of irony to the title of address. “However, I believe I am entitled to have certain expectations of the man whose seed spawned me.”
“You are a nervy bastard—I will say that for you—coming here like this.” The marquis stood—he was a tall man—and, placing his palms flat on the desk, leaned toward the man in front of him. “But know, sirrah, I provided for your mother and I saw to your education. I rather think that is more than sufficient payment for an occasional bit of fun between the sheets.”
“An occasional bit of—” Edwin felt the blood rushing to his face as his fury intensified. “Why, you—”
The marquis uttered a derisive, mirthless laugh. “Surely you did not fancy it was anything else? She was a maid, for God’s sake.”
As that ugly laugh ground its way into Edwin’s very soul, he silently vowed that someday Lounsbury—a Forrester, at any rate—would pay dearly for this humiliation. Someday—if it took forever.
Not trusting himself to respond, he simply gave the man an ironic bow and turned toward the door.
“Here!” the marquis called.
When Edwin turned back, the older man had taken a bag of coins from a desk drawer. He tossed it toward Edwin, who instinctively caught it.
“Buy yourself some decent clothes, boy. Then report to Simpson, my steward on the estate in Yorkshire. He has been expecting you these two years or so. And do not—ever—accost me again. If you do, I shall have you arrested and transported.”
With that, Edwin’s humiliation was doubled—along with his desire for vengeance.
Edwin Brady Mullens had henceforth become merely Edwin Brady, Brady being his mother’s maiden name. His pride forbade he follow the marquis’s orders. He had drifted aimlessly for several months before finally drifting into taking the king’s shilling with His Majesty’s Army. His first posting had luckily been in a training facility near a village called Bothwick-on-the-Bay in East Anglia. When the captain in charge of the company to which he was assigned discovered Brady had rather a fine education, he arranged for the young man to be assigned to a clerical position.
During his two-year stay in Bothwick, Brady became acquainted—and generally well-liked—in the village. He found himself eagerly received by certain mamas and their enticing daughters. Nor was his ability to charm confined to females. He was also popular with other young men. Seeing his persuasive abilities at work, certain army officers saw him as a natural choice for a new recruiting team.
So he said his good-byes and for the next few years he went on the road as a recruiter. Bothwick, though, was home for him now, and he returned periodically with stories of an exciting life beyond the village and his own successes out there. As he progressed in rank, he regained some of his self-confidence and pride.
However, over a decade later, he had never forgotten that vow. The marquis was dead now, as was Thaddeus Mullens. But here was Jacob Forrester, unexpectedly close at hand. Surely he could make use of such an opportunity.
