It was the kindest way he could think of to describe the coldness and lack of interest which his father had shown in him during his childhood. Since the Earl made no immediate answer to him, he ploughed on, finding in himself a diplomacy which he had not known he possessed.
‘She also explained why, when I grew up, your manner to me softened a little, and when I look at the portrait of you painted when you were my age now and I look at myself, the strong resemblance between us convinces me, as it must have convinced you, that I am truly your son.’
The expression of pain on his father’s face was momentary, but it was there. Marcus felt it incumbent on him to continue. ‘My aunt also told me that the fault in your marriage did not lie with you, and that you had shown great patience with my mother’s behaviour until the day she passed out of our lives.’
He was silent—and so was his father.
Finally the Earl spoke. ‘If I find it difficult for me to answer you, it is because I feel, and have long since felt, shame that I treated an innocent child as harshly as I did. Even if your mother had spoken the truth about your fatherhood I should not have visited her sin upon the head of someone as defenceless as you were then. The constraint which still exists between us comes on my side from my stupidity in allowing a lie to dominate my—and your—life for so long.
‘I ask your pardon, and trust that from now on we might become friends. We cannot call back the past and change it, but we can refuse to allow it to poison our lives on the future. My own relief is that my behaviour to you did not harm you—you have turned into the kind of son a father can be proud of. I therefore ask you to forgive me, if you can.’
Marcus leaned forward and said in his straightforward way, ‘No forgiveness is needed, sir. Understanding rather, for what my aunt told me made me feel pity for you—and lessened the pity I felt for myself.’
His father rose and put out his hand, saying, ‘Let that serve as an epitaph for the dead past, Angmering, and we will shake on it, if you would. It is fitting that before your sister marries we should come together thus and be able to join in the celebrations as a true father and son at last.’
Marcus rose, too. They stood face to face, the stern father, and the son whose likeness to that father was written on his face, in his voice and in his manner.
‘Indeed, sir—and that will be the end of that, I trust.’
His father nodded and they remained silent for a moment, the loud ticking of the clock being the only sound in the room: a fit commentary on the passing of life and time.
Marcus did not have long to wait for his hiring of Jackson to bear fruit; after all—as the man had told him—it was a simple enough task compared with most he was given.
On the following Monday afternoon he arrived in Berkeley Square.
‘I think I’ve found what you want, m’lord. The lady lives over her workrooms in Bond Street during the week. After six o’clock on a Friday she hires a Hackney cab and is driven to a little house in Chelsea not far from the river, where she spends Saturday and Sunday. Sunday she goes to church all respectable like and speaks to no one—other than to shake hands with the Reverend at the end of the service.
‘Early on a Monday morning she returns to the shop. She has a couple of servants at her weekend place: a housekeeper and a maid of all work. It seems that she does not mix with her neighbours and during a careful watch she had no visitors other than a lad who delivers milk.’
He paused. ‘I have to say that I think she’s something of a fly lady, because I suspicioned that she knew that she was being watched. On my first day I perhaps wasn’t too careful, since after that every time that she went out she looked around her most busily. I made a few discreet enquiries about her, thinking that they might be useful to you. It seems that she has no gentleman callers, either in Bond Street or in Chelsea. The opinion is that she is ladylike and discreet.’
‘Excellent,’ said Marcus. ‘That is all I need to know. Would you prefer to be paid now?’
‘If it suits you, m’lord, yes.’
Feeling a bit of a cur for having Madame Félice watched, Marcus handed him his money on the spot, but he did not feel so much of a cur that he did not glumly regret that he would have to wait until the weekend before he paid her a call!
Saturday morning found him hiring a cab and setting off for Chelsea. Either being a modiste paid well, or Madame had a fund of money of her own, for the little house was a jewel of a place, newly appointed and painted. He thought that, apart from the paint, it resembled Madame herself. Whistling gently, he paid off the cabbie and knocked on her elegant front door…
Louise had just finished eating a late breakfast and was drinking a cup of excellent coffee—she always shopped at Jackson’s in Piccadilly—when she heard the door knocker and wondered who it could be at this hour.
She did not have long to wait. The little maid came in saying, ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, mam.’
‘A gentleman, Jessie? Did he give his name?’
‘No, mam. He said that he thought that you might know who it was? He said that he was in need of a shirt—but, mam, could he really mean that? He was wearing a very fine one.’
‘Did he, indeed?’ Louise jumped to her feet half-amused, half-scandalised. ‘Tell him to go away, at once.’
‘Yes, mam.’
Jessie disappeared, only to reappear again a few moments later. ‘Oh, mam, he says as how he won’t. He says that it’s most urgent that he see you, and that he’s prepared to wait outside until you’re ready to speak to him—and he gave me half a sovereign to tell you that—look!’
Louise, who had sat down, jumped up again. Bribery and corruption of her servant, was it now? What next would the man get up to? For she had no doubt that it was his lordship of Angmering who had somehow tracked her down.
‘Do you want me to give it back to him, mam?’ asked her maid anxiously.
‘Certainly not, by his behaviour he deserves to lose more than half a sovereign. Tell him that—’ Inspiration failed her. Oh, bother the man, what message could she send that would be sure to get rid of him?
‘Tell him that if he doesn’t go away I shall send for the local constable to remove him,’ she came out with at last.
‘He won’t like that, mam,’ said her maid, still anxious.
‘I’m sure that he won’t, but tell him so all the same.’
Out shot the maid again. Louise picked up her cup and began to drink coffee agitatedly.
This time, though, when the maid reappeared she was trailing in the wake of that haughty aristocrat Marcus Angmering, who was apparently so determined to see her that he would play any trick which his inventive mind could think up.
‘I wouldn’t wish you to go the trouble of setting the law on me,’ he said cheerfully, once the maid had left, ‘So I decided to speak to you in person, so that we could settle our difficulties without delay—and pray do not reprimand your maid for letting me in. She found it difficult to deny someone so much larger and stronger than she is.’
Louise stared at him, the coffee cup halfway to her mouth, and to her horror found herself saying, ‘What difficulties, sir?’ instead of telling him to remove himself from her dining room.
‘The difficulties relating to your inability to accept my kind offer of protection.’
She put down her coffee cup with a trembling hand. ‘Your impudence, sir, is beyond belief. You force your way into my home, terrorise my servant…’
Marcus interrupted her. ‘Oh, scarcely that,’ he murmured, his mouth twitching. ‘I wouldn’t describe giving her half a sovereign as terrorising her.’