A Strange Likeness (28 page)

‘I shall stand with you at the ceremony, for you need a stout fellow in your corner, your father and family being absent.'

So on his wedding day the poor felon's son was attended to the altar in a style neither he nor his family could have expected. Although there were some who commented on the likeness, there were others who said that it was not so strong after all—a trick of size and colour which later diminished when the differing lives of the two men took its inevitable effects.

Sir Hart had told Ned of the disposition of the estate, and, as is common, Ned, who had always claimed that he never wanted the responsibility or the care of Temple Hatton, suddenly found, when granted his wish, that the reality was a different thing from his imaginings.

He was rapidly reconciled, however, by the thought that he would receive his income without needing to do anything to earn it!

‘That troubles me, too,' Sir Hart had said ruefully to Alan. ‘It's one more opportunity for him to be careless—but were everything to have been left to him then everything would have been lost, I fear.'

The days would not pass quickly enough for Eleanor. First the wedding, and then the long journey to the ends of the earth beckoned her: something which in her wildest dreams she could never have imagined. The only worry was whether Sir Hart would live to see them return, but he had told them that he possessed more determination to cling to life than he had known for many long years.

‘Do you mind all this pomp?' Eleanor whispered to Alan when they sat together at the wedding breakfast after the ceremony, surrounded by ‘the beautiful ones', as Alan called them. Frank Gresham, smiling his pleasure, was seated near them.

‘No.' He smiled. ‘I don't usually like circumstance, but I am prepared to pay the price for it today.'

‘Sir Hart said that had we been married in Sir Beauchamp's time they would have escorted us to bed, too,' said Eleanor, mischief written on her face. She was not quite sure how she would feel when bed became a reality, but she was confident that Alan would be kind to her.

‘I am a married woman, now,' she told him, laughing a little. ‘I can say things like that to you now and in future, should I so wish.'

Alan looked across the room to where Gurney, still the Golden Boy's watch dog, but dressed in a footman's livery today, glowered at the party.

‘What worries me,' Alan whispered confidentially in Eleanor's ear, ‘is that when we finally do get to bed, if Gurney thinks that you are going to do me a mischief, we shall find him waiting there for us, pistols at the ready in order to protect me. What will you do then? Think on!'

Eleanor collapsed into happy laughter at the picture this presented.

Alan took her hand and pressed it, looking into her beautiful eyes. ‘I am willing to endure all this, Eleanor, because we shall be together for the rest of our lives. But I warn you, ceremony will not be a major part of them. I am a working man and always will be, even if the Queen's cousin stood by me at the altar.'

‘Your world will always be mine,' she promised him.

Later, in the joyful transports of the night, when love and passion became a reality, she silently vowed again that whatever happened in the future they would, for good or ill, always be friends as well as lovers, facing life together whatever it might bring them.

Villa Dilhorne, Sydney, Australia, 1842

I
t was obvious, from the moment that she met him, that Eleanor was fascinated by Alan's father. Good manners precluded her from saying anything straight away, but in the evening, at dinner, he told them an amusing story of one of his business deals and Eleanor, laughing, put down her knife and fork, saying, ‘You were right, Alan. It's quite extraordinary. Your father is the exact double of my grandfather, Sir Hart, as he was before he became ill.

‘It's not only that you look like him, sir,' she went on, ‘but you have the same droll way of telling a story as he does. I mean this as a compliment,' she added in her direct fashion, which always amused Alan because it was a feminine version of her unacknowledged father's manner.

‘Ned, my brother,' she explained further, ‘says that I fell in love with Alan because he is so like what Sir Hart must have been in youth. The three of you could all charm birds off trees just by looking at them. Ned's very like Alan, too, but not so serious.'

It
was
a compliment, but the effect of what she had just said was profound, if unspoken. Tom offered the company an enigmatic smile, but said nothing until he pulled Alan on one side before they retired to the drawing room after dinner.

‘I think that some explanation is in order, don't you?' His expression was what his wife thought of as typical Tom, quizzical and demanding.

‘Indeed, Father. In fact, Eleanor has saved me from raising the matter with you myself. She wishes to retire early tonight, being weary from the long journey here, so I propose that you, and the rest of the grown-up family, meet me later, when I will tell you the strange tale of my English adventures.'

Old Tom nodded. ‘Tonight, then.' He was always short when serious.

Later, they all sat round the big table in Villa Dilhorne's great barbaric hall, as beautiful as but quite unlike that at Temple Hatton. Old Tom, Hester, his wife, and the twins, Tom and Alan, were present.

‘Now,' said Tom, still short. ‘An explanation. Why this strange set of resemblances? Unless, of course, your wife was exaggerating.'

‘No exaggeration,' Alan told them. ‘And once you have heard me out you will understand that what I have to say to you could not have been put in writing. The tale is a long one, so you must be patient.'

He began with his chance meeting with Ned Hatton and took them, in detail, through his stay in England, his arrival at Temple Hatton and his meeting with Sir Hartley.

‘He was you, Father, exactly as Eleanor said. You grown very old. I was a shock to him as well, and to many others, being so like Sir Hart's father, Sir Beau
champ. Sir Hart was particularly stricken when he heard that you came from Yorkshire and that your mother's name was Dilhorne. Later he told me why.'

He led them through Sir Hart's explanation of his long-gone love affair and secret marriage, its tragic end and his own adventures in England, and finally his marriage to Eleanor.

‘And she knows nothing?' asked Tom.

‘Nothing. None of them know. The matter remains a secret between Sir Hart and myself. He has given me a letter for you, setting this all out. It is for you to do with it as you please.'

‘This beggars belief,' said Thomas. ‘That you married your long-lost illegitimate cousin without her knowing the truth.'

‘You might say so,' said Alan, who had not told them that Eleanor was Knaresborough's daughter and not a Hatton at all—he saw no useful purpose in so doing, and did not wish Eleanor to be hurt. Sir Hart had accepted her, and that was that.

‘She knows nothing of this. That was my agreement with her grandfather. I had told her that my father was very like Sir Hart, but, as you all saw, it was still quite a shock for her to meet him. Now, Father. Sir Hartley said that once you had read his letter the choice was for you to make, and he would abide by it even if you wished to claim what, after all, is rightfully yours.'

He handed his father the letter Sir Hart had given him on the day he had proposed to Eleanor.

They were all agreed that Tom was the one to decide. It was he who had been the most wronged. Hester put out a hand to take his.

‘Do?' he said, without opening the letter. ‘Why, nothing! Put it this way. Leaving it as it is there is only one
bastard, myself, and I've lived with that all my life. But if I make my claim there's two generations of a whole family ruined and nameless—and for what? I ceased to care long ago.'

He looked at Thomas. ‘Do you wish to be Sir Thomas badly enough to ruin the lives of all the Hattons in England?'

Thomas shook his head. ‘No,' he said decisively. ‘I don't want to be Sir Thomas at all. I don't care about England, either. My life is here. Leave them in peace.'

‘And you?' said his father, turning to Alan. ‘Do you want to destroy your wife's family? You wouldn't have married her if you did.'

He surveyed his two sons with pride. ‘Besides, even if I were mad enough to try to claim my due, I know them. They'd fight like the devil. Win or not, we should be the losers. No, let it go. I've made a better life here. I might have turned into an idle wastrel if things had gone differently and I'd been Tom Hatton. Let it go.'

He picked up the letter, weighed it in his hands a moment, said, in his most dismissive manner, ‘Baggage I do not want,' and tossed it, unopened, into the fire.

Alan stood up. ‘I knew you'd say that, Father. There is one thing more, though. Thomas wants to stay here, and that's fine by me. But I like England. If you are all agreed, I intend to go back, take over the business there, and my mother's interests, too. Thomas can have what is here. Agreed?'

They all nodded. The possibility of future friction between them both about their share of the business had always worried the twins. This seemed a good, if sad solution. Alan would be lost to them, but there would be gains.

After the twins had retired to bed—Thomas and his
wife, Bethia, were staying overnight—Hester took her candle upstairs to wait for Tom, as she had done for nearly thirty years. This night he was long in coming, and after a time she went down to find him staring at nothing, looking older than his usual self.

‘Well, Sir Thomas?' she said simply.

He smiled at her. The smile which could still wrench her heart with love for him.

‘Very well,' he said. ‘The best part of the tale was that my mother told me the truth. She
was
married, and the boy whom she married did not willingly desert her. The rest is nothing.'

‘So Alan did the right thing?'

‘To say nothing until he saw me? Yes. His judgement is as sound as ever.'

He put his arms around her and pulled her to him. They sat there like that for some time.

‘No regrets, Hester?'

‘None. I only hope that Alan and his wife will be as happy as we are.'

He laughed. ‘She's a lively piece. But he'll keep her in order.' He laughed again. ‘As I did you—which means not at all! Let's go to bed, my dear. Tomorrow is another day.'

 

Alan slipped gently into bed so as not to disturb Eleanor, tired as she was from her long journey. She was not asleep, however.

‘Alan?' Her voice was urgent.

‘My dear? I hoped that you were asleep.'

‘I was, but I awoke a little while ago. I am stupid. We were all stupid back home. You are beginning to teach me to think, and I have thought. The likeness: it is not an accident, is it? It cannot be. It is not possible that your
father should be so like Sir Hart as I remember him before he grew so very old. Nor that you should be so like Ned and Sir Beauchamp, so that even Knaresborough could see it. I am not wrong, am I?'

Indirection would not do here, nor could he lie to her. Neither could he tell her the absolute truth.

‘No, Eleanor, you are not wrong. There is, was, a connection between us all. A distant one. But it is over. It cannot affect our lives. It belongs to the past, and a dead past at that. I cannot tell you the whole truth, for it is not mine to tell, and because you are my wife, the past does not matter.'

She sat up suddenly. ‘You know that I shall always trust you, so you need tell me no more. I have to confess that I like your family enormously, Alan. And I can see why you are as you are. Thomas's wife and your mother were so kind to me that I shall be sorry to go back to England—but it is our duty, is it not? We promised Sir Hart.'

‘Bethia is always kind. She is very like my mother,' said Alan, taking her into his arms and laying her head on his chest. ‘Do I take it, then, that you are pleased with your Australian family?'

‘Yes,' she said, turning in his arms to kiss him. ‘Most particularly with the one I married.'