It was true, but it did no good to think about it. ‘I swore,’ he repeated. ‘And it would be better if my word had any value. But it does not. No matter what I swore, I cannot follow through on it.’
‘If you jilt her, she will be ruined as well.’ Amy’s voice was bleak as she realised the truth.
‘It would be even worse should I cast her off to marry you,’ he agreed. ‘But there is a way out.’
For some of us, at least.
‘Let us take it, whatever it is,’ she said hurriedly.
‘First, I must tell you a story.’ And he had best do it quickly. The room was getting lighter by the minute. ‘Once upon a time, there was a foolish young man...’
‘Do I know him?’ she asked playfully.
She still had hope that the ending was a happy one. He swallowed the shame that welled in his throat and went on. ‘He was the son of a cabinet maker. His father died leaving him without money or prospects and a widowed mother to care for.’
She made no answer in response. It made him wonder if a horror of such an ordinary birth had stunned her to silence.
‘Then, one day, a beautiful and powerful woman caught sight of this young man...who was little more than a boy, really...’ Seventeen had been old enough for some things. Wisdom was not one of them. ‘And they entered into an arrangement.’
‘Who was the lady?’ It was barely a whisper.
‘You will know the truth soon enough.’ He tightened his hold on her hip, waiting to see if she shrank from his touch.
She did not pull away.
‘And you and she...’
‘I came to help with the apple harvest,’ he said, ‘hoping to be paid in windfalls.’ His mind wandered back to the distant autumn day he’d first seen Cassandra. ‘She was taking an afternoon ride, when she saw me.’ And he had seen her, golden in the slanting sunlight. The memory of it still made his body quicken after fifteen years.
‘You must have been very handsome,’ Amy murmured, as if she could picture the scene herself.
‘And she was very beautiful. I loved her,’ he said. It had been true, at first. ‘I could not help it. She was magnificent. Charming and witty and not too many years older than I. And there were advantages to the arrangement.’ Other than one that his loins had noticed from the first.
‘You were not educated abroad,’ she said, her voice flat.
He laughed in surprise. ‘If that is what you take from my confession, you are very innocent indeed. No, I was not formally educated, in this country or another. But it is amazing what can be accomplished when one wishes to impress a woman and has access to a library.’ He could still remember those early days, alone with all those books and the feeling, almost like hunger, for all the things he did not know.
‘I read,’ he said, simply. ‘And I questioned. And then I read some more. But there are still so many questions left unanswered. Why are some men dukes, and others common? Why do some men make the laws when others can only be punished by them? The system is not ordered by their innate wisdom or lack of it. I have seen that it takes little more than a decent tailor and a set of proper manners to pass amongst the upper classes unnoticed.’
‘But people think you are Cottsmoor’s son,’ she said, obviously still stunned.
For a moment, he wondered if she meant to cry out the truth and see him cast down into the depths that had been his future, to work with his hands and keep his eyes and mouth tightly shut so that he might not upset a divinely ordained system. ‘It began as a joke between the Duke and his wife,’ he said. ‘He said I was there so much, I might as well be family. To spite him, she told someone I was his son. To spite her in return, he agreed and encouraged me in my studies.’
‘He knew about you and...’
‘...his wife,’ Ben finished for her. ‘He did not care. They loathed each other. Cottsmoor and I became quite good friends. But the better he liked me, the more she hated us both. And yet, she did not want to let me go.’ And then it had been too late for him to get away. ‘My love for her died, long before she did.’ He had stared down into the grave and felt nothing but relief.
‘By then the world was convinced that you were a duke’s son. You acted like one, at least.’
He shrugged the shoulder that supported her head. ‘I am sorry to disappoint. But it is better to be thought a bastard than known as a paid satyr to a lady of importance.’
‘And the resemblance between you and the Duke?’
‘Purely coincidental,’ he replied. ‘But my family has lived on the Cottsmoor lands for generations. It is possible that a previous duke hid a natural son close by and there is some distant blood connection.’
‘And he encouraged you to exploit it,’ she said and then fell into silence.
‘If he’d thought I could carry it so far, he’d have been just as likely to see me swing at Tyburn. But he is not here and I am.’
‘And planning to stand for office,’ she finished.