Page 15 of A Baron's Scandalous Quill
“Very well.” He sat forward just as Becca lifted her notebook and pencil again, urging him on with a wave of her hand. “Do you know anything about my father, Miss Thornton?”
“I heard but a scrap of gossip the other night. I chose not to believe it.”
“In my father’s case, you would have been right to take it to heart.” William took the teacup Henry offered him with thanks and chose to stare at the tea rather than look at Becca as he went on. “My father was no saint.”
***
My father was no saint.
The sentence was powerful, so strong that Becca found herself writing it at the very top of the page in her notebook before waiting for Lord Lancaster to go on. He fidgeted, as he had done constantly since they had arrived in the room, crossing and uncrossing his long legs.
The image of him constantly moving was stirring more memories of her dreams of him, so she focused on the page in front of her instead, trying to control the mad beating of her heart.
“My father was a man by the name of George Dorset. He was born the son of a merchant, and part of a large family. He had six brothers in total and was the youngest by far. From an early age, I believe it was impressed upon him that it would be up to him to find his own way in the world.”
Lord Lancaster reeled these facts off quite plainly, as if they stirred no emotion in him at all. “He said as much and said the words to me, too, about making your own way in the world. Strange teaching for him to impart, considering what happened.”
He paused momentarily, took a sip of tea, and then went on.
“He was well aware that advantage in life does not come free. I believe now he took this lesson with him throughout life. The lesson carved a man who took advantage of everyone aroundhim. I heard a tale once of my father when he worked as a stable boy, stealing horses and selling them for the highest price, then buying cheaper versions that looked the same but weren’t as good to ride, so that the owners would not know the difference.”
“A trickster?” Becca whispered.
“A hustler, through and through,” Lord Lancaster said harshly. He looked away into the fireplace. “He didn’t keep the job as a stable boy. In fact, I now believe he moved readily between jobs in his early adult years. He ended up as a clerk for a merchant in the town of Winchester, where one day, Baron Lancaster came to see the merchant with his daughter, Lady Anne.
I do not know how it happened, but my father managed to convince the baron and Anne that he was born a gentleman. Perhaps he persuaded them he was spying on the merchant or learning merchant ways for future business investment, I do not know. He pretended to be the cousin of a viscount. He worked wonders with the illusion.”
“All for what?” Becca asked. Even as she asked the question, she realized what was coming. Lady Anne had to be this Lord Lancaster’s mother.
“He married Anne, my mother,” the baron went on. “I believe he obtained my grandfather’s blessing for the match, but all under false pretenses. I only once ever heard my mother talking of this time when I was young.”
He at last returned his gaze to her. There was a darkness in those chestnut eyes, something brought by the sadness that made them almost appear black. Becca longed to be by his side, to be kneeling beside his chair and reaching for his hand, to comfort the sadness in that expression.
“My mother described a moment when she feared she’d married a man quite different to who she’d thought him to be. She described it as having the rug pulled out from under her feet. Yet my mother was a happy person, and she always put a good spin on the world. I think that was her attitude toward her marriage as well, to urge herself into being happy.”
“Yet not all was happy, was it?” Becca murmured, sensing worse things were to come.
“No, it was not.” He looked down into his teacup. “My grandfather died. Though titles cannot pass to sons-in-law, money and land certainly can.” He gestured to the house around him.
“My mother had no siblings, no cousins, nothing. Everything that was my grandfather’s passed to her, and because of her marriage, it passed into my father’s grasp. He had money and power, everything that he’d always longed for, and he decided to use it to get more. There are many tales I could tell you.”
He looked up, a sharpness in his tone now. “Tales of debauchery, of gambling, of deception, and even theft. He amassed his own fortune by persuading other gentlemen to invest in schemes that did not exist.”
“Fraud?”
“Absolutely.” Lord Lancaster nodded. “My mother, fortunately, taught better lessons than my father. She had more of a hand in my upbringing, and it’s to her I owe myself not being tainted with his view of life. After she died, though, things changed. My father chose to confine me in these walls.”
“Confine?” she repeated, quite ignoring her tea and scribbling down notes as fast as she could. “Like a prisoner?”
“I was a prisoner,” he confirmed. “He even refused to let me into the garden some days if I refused to help him with his own dodgy business affairs. I think it was all control in the end that made him do it. He kept me under his wing in the hope that someday I would be just like him. He was quite wrong.”
He shook his head. “What my father never fully realized was that, perhaps despite the fact I am his blood, I am nothing like him. I get everything from my mother. I even think I have inherited her better heart. It wasn’t something he could teach out of me, no matter how hard he badgered and bullied.”
He shifted uncomfortably once more, hastily taking a sip of tea and grimacing at the burn, for he’d plainly drank it too fast. “When he died, his past came out on his deathbed. Maybe he thought atoning for the lies he’d told my mother in order to marry her would mean he’d end up in heaven someday. I’m not sure. Either way, he told me all. And in those tales, he made me hate him even more.”
He put down his teacup where it chinked loudly, ominously in the sudden silence as he breathed deeply. Becca’s hand hovered in the air, the pencil just above the page as she waited to write more.
“Now I have taken my first steps into society, free of imprisonment at my age,” he scoffed at the idea, “and still, people presume I am him born again. That I am as malicious; I am the same devil. Now, I ask you, Miss Thornton. What would you do in my position? What would you write in order to make sure that when thetonlook at me, they do not just see the devil?”
