Of Moths and Butterflies (67 page)

“Yes, sir,” and he bowed and left.

“What is wrong with Hendricks? He’s a far better physician than Davis.”

“I need to speak with him anyway. And Hendricks, for all I know, may refuse to attend me.”

“Why? You are not truly ill, are you? It’s just the smoke.”

“Yes, yes,” and he waved the question away. “Hendricks though. He blames me. Or will.”

“For?”

Sir Edmund looked at him pointedly and coughed. Harder this time.

“Bess’s death? But why should that be?”

“She was ill, you know?”

“Yes.”

“I paid the doctor to see her.”

“I’m glad of it, but I still don’t understand.”

“I paid him to give her the laudanum. As much as she wanted.”

Archer sat down, hard, onto the nearest chair. It was wet, but he only took a passing notice.

“Are you saying you killed Bess Mason?”

“No. It was an accident. I kept her medicated, comfortable and quiet. That is all.”

“On an opiate? An addictive and dangerous opiate? Davis did this for you?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You
are
a monster, aren’t you?”

“I’m many things, Archer.” He looked, for once, as though he actually regretted it. Sad, stupid old man!

“Wyndham,” Sir Edmund said now. “We were speaking of Wyndham. He would have found the letters and bills. He already blames me, but this is more. And he would have found the letter, the one I answered to the lawyer. Telling him I mean to formally recognise you as my legitimate son.”

The blood was suddenly pounding in Archer’s ears. “Legally, you mean. Not…”

“You should be glad of it, you know. I thought you’d be happy.” His cough this time nearly felled him from his chair.

“That you denied me my name, the right to be respected…? Why would I be happy? You may have married my mother, that doesn’t make me your son. Not really.”

“I had hoped you were Magnus’ child. I told myself it was so. You weren’t. Aren’t. I’ve always known it. I married her, yes. I married her because it was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to deny a child his birthplace? You married out of obligation, then? You did not wish to do it.”

“Yes, I wanted to! Of course I wanted to or I never would have done it! But I wanted her, you see, and she…” He shook his head again, and coughed.

“Perhaps we should go outside, where the air is—”

“No!” It took a moment for him to recover from his coughing this time. At last he did and went on. “I had met her, had tried to make her mine by whatever designs I could, but she was reluctant. And then she met Magnus. It was over for me then. Oh, she was a tease! And Magnus bought it. He bought it utterly. But then, you see, he would, for he wanted her too. He offered to marry her. She accepted him. But she was destined for better things, her family protested, than the son, heir or not, of an embarrassed baronet. They had nothing for themselves, but they would not budge. She was equally determined, and so, defying her family, she came to live here. Then Magnus died and she was left alone. Only not quite alone.”

Sir Edmund fell silent. Archer waited, an ominous air pulsing through the atmosphere around him. “Go on,” he said at last.

“I thought I’d been given a second chance, you see? Only it was too soon. She was not ready. But I’ve never been a patient man.”

“What do you mean to say?”

“I thought there was only one way to secure her to me. I did offer to her. She would not have me. That left only one choice.”

“To wait! To wait and see if you might earn her regard in time, when she was fit once more to bestow her own.”

“As I said. I have never been a patient man.”

“Don’t say it. You cannot mean to say you—”

“I presumed. It was not the best decision I have ever made.”

Archer was too livid, too disgusted to answer.

“She avoided me, sought refuge in my father’s company. He was dying you see, and she remained to nurse him. And because she had nowhere else to go.”

“A consideration you took advantage of!”

“I said I was not proud of my decision!”

“You did not say you regret.”

“I do, for what it’s worth! Of course I do. Why else would I have–”

“What?”

He shook his head in answer to Archer’s question and went on with his narrative. “She avoided me, as I said. Until she realised her condition was a dire one. She told me. In tears and bitter regret, she told me. I offered to her once more, and she agreed.”

“That did not make up for the wrong you did her.”

“Don’t you think I know it! I learned it at any rate! We married, but she would not have me again. Not anywhere near her. I thought to force her once more, to establish my right over her, but…I couldn’t.”

“So you have some scruples after all!”

They were silent for a moment. At least they did not speak, but Sir Edmund continued to cough, fighting still for air.

“So you rejected me because she rejected you, is that it?” Archer asked eventually, when Sir Edmund had somewhat recovered.

“I could not bear the guilt. I could not bear to look at you. You were so much like her. You are…so very much like her.” His voice was ragged and weak as he finished. His confession had cost him dearly, it seemed.

“Why, then? Why was it so important that I force myself upon Gina? And you were right to say I wanted her, do want her, have always wanted her. But I want her heart with it. I cannot give her further reason than I have done already to despise me.”

“No. I see that. Only–

“Only what?”

“There were complications.”

“Yes.”

“Wyndham’s conniving, and the fact that I have never confessed the truth of your history.” He glanced up, the slightest hint of regret on his face, only it was not enough to placate Archer in the least. Sir Edmund went on. “And I knew if your marriage was not consummated, then it might be contested by your menacing grasper of a brother. Or dissolved by her, should she find us not to her liking. The difference in a name was never meant to be fraud. If she sued for separation, or worse ... an annulment... What would I do then? I could not risk the scandal. I could not risk the loss of the money. Nor can you for all your high ideals.”

“Yes, fine! But still. An heir. Always pressing for an heir.”

“It would make an annulment impossible and a separation at least improbable. However she may feel about you, or me for that matter, she would never leave her child.”

“You are truly unbelievable! So that’s why you have treated her with such resentment. You would have her despise me as my mother despised you.”

This seemed to hit harder than Archer had expected.

“I suppose I thought that if you asserted your rights, and she wanted you all the same, then it would prove that Ethne’s failure to love me was her fault as much as mine.”

“Her fault? Hers?”

Sir Edmund offered no answer.

In the silence, Archer rested his head in his hand and rubbed at his aching forehead.

“There was Drake Everard to consider as well, you know,” Sir Edmund said at last.

“What has Drake Everard to do with any of this?”

“All that money gone, wasted, the debts, the interest always accruing and compounding. It was mine, the money. He’d gotten rich off me and a hundred others like me. And I saw a chance to get it back.”

“It always comes back to money, doesn’t it?” Archer said. “That blasted money! I almost wish she’d been the pauper we always believed her. But then I suppose you knew from the beginning.”

“I had my suspicions.”

“And they proved true, to your good fortune.”

“And yours, my son, don’t forget. That you wanted her was no small consolation.”

“Your son.” Archer scoffed at the phrase “So you are my father. By blood and by law. And you are now prepared to confess it. As the house of cards comes falling down and you have no other choice? This is what you are trying to tell me?”

“You must have had some idea. It cannot come as a complete surprise.”

“You raised me as your illegitimate nephew!”

“I am not proud of what I’ve done. Do you think this gives me pleasure? I might have, through you, done more to amend for my wrongs, but you remind me so much of her. I’ve always told myself that had she lived I would have been able to prove myself. But it’s a lie. Magnus’ death destroyed her, and I finished her off.” He choked and coughed and leaned heavily into one corner of his chair, a shell of the man he was an hour ago.

Archer stood and paced the room. “And Imogen?” he asked at last.

“What of her?”

“Last night. What were your intentions? Had you not been interrupted, what villainy would you have committed?”

Silence for a moment. Then: “I was drunk.”

“That does not answer the question!”

“I don’t know. I was not thinking.”

 “Did you mean to strike her? To harm her? You cannot have meant to force yourself upon her! My wife!”

“Of course not!”

“All the leering looks and impertinent remarks that I have ignored, turned a blind eye to, in the name of keeping peace! I should have left you to rot alone long ago. I should never have subjected her to this. Had something happened to her! And now I understand that besides your cruelty, she’s had the threat of Wyndham’s insolence to contend with! Heaven above! Am I not as guilty as you?”

“You have not lost her yet.”

“No,” he said more calmly. “No. Not yet. But I’m a long way from winning her. And I’m not sure, knowing what I now know, that I ever can. Who would want this?” he finished with a gesture that took in all the ruin around him.

Sir Edmund, once recovered enough to stand, arose from his chair and crossed to his safe. From it he withdrew a stack of papers, a leather folio and a box. He opened the box and placed it on the desk before Archer.

“Take it,” he said. “It is yours, after all.”

Money. And a great deal of it. “I don’t want it.”

“What do you propose to do without it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. She never wanted it, went to great pains to escape it. And now I see why, and what it can do. No.”

Sir Edmund shrugged and replaced the money, then closed and locked the safe. He returned to his desk, took up a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper. He handed it to Archer. It was a series of numbers. A combination.

“In case you change your mind,” he said. He then opened the folio and withdrew a piece of paper. This, too, he handed to Archer.

“What is this?”

“The missing pages. All the documents necessary to prove that you were born to Ethne and myself, that your name is Barry. And that you were married. To Imogen Everard with honest intent. You signed your name as you have always known it. In case it helps.”

Then, and lastly, Sir Edmund took up a packet tied with a ribbon and handed it to Archer.

“Letters?”

“Yes.”

“Not to you.”

“To Magnus.”

Archer examined Sir Edmund suspiciously.

“Even after he died she wrote to him. She refused to believe he was really gone. And then, in the last days of her illness, she continued her writing. I never read them. You wish to know her. It is the best way I can think of.”

Archer nodded his gratitude and took these up.

“I wish I were a loving man, my son. I wish I could tell you how much I regret, that I could change what has been, that I might give you what you really wanted from me.”

So that was it? That was all he was to get by way of apology? By way of any admission of affection or respect?

“All I want, sir,” Archer dared to say, and only barely choked out, “is a proper sense of who I am. And the freedom to pursue my own happiness.”