CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Anne asked Miss Bonteen if she would mind having her dinner in her room. “I hate to do this to you, Bonny, but I need to ask Mr. Dereham some personal questions and I think he might be more forthcoming if it was just me he was speaking to.
Miss Bonteen understood, as she always did, and Anne went down to dinner in her afternoon dress, still trying to think of tactful ways to get the information she wanted. She and Daniel always dined in the breakfast room as the dining room was closed off until the ceiling could be replaced. Since it was only Daniel and Anne and Miss Bonteen who ate there, all of the leaves had been taken out of the table making it much easier to converse. There was a buffet in the room with some crystal adorning the polished mahogany top (the family silver had been sold long ago), and one of the few decent Persian rugs in the house was on the floor. Anne had found a nice picture of the countryside in the attic, and that hung on the wall.
Anne thought the room was pleasantly simple, but when Mr. Dereham joined her, he looked uncomfortable. He said, “I don’t need to take my supper in such grand surroundings, Lady Anne. A cup of soup and some bread in my room would be grand.”
Anne smiled. “Nonsense. I expect Daniel’s father to eat with the family, and we are family now, aren’t we?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “That’s not the way Daniel sees it, I’m afraid.” He seated himself next to her, where a place had been laid, and took a long drink of water.
“I will be frank with you, Mr. Dereham,” Anne said. “Daniel has been silent about his life before he went to India. I am hoping you might help to explain him to me.”
“A mystery, is he?”
“Yes. And not just to me. He came home from India with this huge fortune, and no one knows how he got it. And no one knows where he came from, or who his people are.”
“And he hasn’t told you, lass?” Mr. Dereham’s sun-creased face looked surprised.
“He hasn’t told me anything. And anytime I’ve tried to ask, he puts a No Trespassing sign up so fast that I can only back away. I didn’t even know he had a mother and father still living.”
Silence fell as Thornton brought the soup in. He placed it in front of them then left the room as was his custom. Daniel didn’t like servants hanging about when he was dining with Anne.
Mr. Dereham took a spoonful of the soup. “This is very good,” he said.
“Thank you. Mrs. Marsh does a nice oxtail soup.”
Anne took a spoonful of soup as well.
Silence fell again and Anne made no attempt to break it. When the soup was finished, she rang the bell and Jeremy came in to remove the soup bowls, and Thornton carried in the roast, potatoes and a large platter of vegetables.
“Thank you, Thornton,” Anne said. “We’ll serve ourselves.”
Mr. Dereham looked at the large roast and smiled. “Daniel has done well for himself if he can afford food like this for only two people.”
Anne made no reply, but smiled back and spooned some vegetables onto her plate.
Mr. Dereham said, “I suppose I had better tell you what you want to know. It’s not right that Daniel should keep his wife in the dark.”
“It would be a great kindness. I care a great deal for Daniel, Mr. Dereham, and I know he carries pain inside him.”
He sighed. “Yes, lass, I’m sorry to say he has pain, and even sorrier to admit his mother and I are the cause of it.” He put his spoon down and regarded her gravely. “We made a bad mistake. We let Daniel grow up thinking he was my son, and when he found out the truth he was angry. Very angry - with me, but more so with his mother. They were always very close – he was her only child - and when he found out she had been lying to him, he was hurt. Bitterly hurt. He demanded to know the name of his real father, and she wouldn’t tell him. He said some ugly things to her, which had her in tears. Then I jumped in and told him if he couldn’t speak decently to his mother then he wasn’t welcome in my house.”
He gave Anne a weary look. “If only I’d have kept my big mouth shut, perhaps everything would have settled down. But I said what I said, and Daniel flung himself out of the house, slamming the door behind him. I fully expected him to come back once he had calmed down, but the next we heard he had signed on to a ship that was sailing to India. We haven’t heard a word from him since.”
Anne’s heart was wrung. For Daniel because of how he had found out the truth about his parentage. But also, for his mother and this good man, both of whom had lost their only son. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I am so sorry, Mr. Dereham. But Daniel isn’t that sixteen-year-old boy any more. Surely, if you give him time, he’ll come around.”
“He may not be sixteen, but all of those boyish feelings of hurt and betrayal are still smoldering inside him. I saw that today.”
Anne and seen it too, and while her heart ached for her husband, she could not help but feel compassion for his mother. “Why was he so angry at his mother?” she asked. “Shouldn’t he have been more angry with you?”
“As I said before, he and Maria were very close. He looks very like her, except for the eyes. Hers are brown – like yours.”
“Did other people who knew you suspect the truth?”
He shook his head. “Maria and I had known each other when we were youngsters. Then she went into service with some English earl. It was supposed to be a great opportunity for her. She came back home a year later, unmarried and carrying a child.”
Anne, who had been prepared to hear this, murmured, “Poor girl.”
He gave her a grateful smile. “That’s not the way our neighborhood would have seen it. Maria would have been excluded from village life, and her child would have been bullied and excluded by the local children. Her mother knew that and she came to my mother and told her how her daughter had been attacked by one of the big lords after a drunken party and ended up pregnant. She begged my mother to ask me to marry Maria.
“And that is how it happened. My mam asked me if I would, and I consented. I was of age to be married, but none of the local girls interested me. I think my mother agreed because she was afraid I was never going to marry at all.”
“Still,” Anne said, “under the circumstances it was very kind of you to do such a thing.”
He shrugged. “Maria was a good girl. She didn’t deserve such a terrible thing to happen to her. So we married and we told everyone Daniel was born early. It was a hard birth, though, and the doctor told Maria she could have no more children.”
He paused, and Anne said softly, “That must have been hard on you. You would never have a son of your own.”
He shook his head. “I never thought that way. Daniel was such a joy. So loving, so smart, so talented. He fell in love with horses when he was seven years old. Did he tell you that, lass?”
“He hasn’t told me anything, Mr. Dereham,” Anne said.
“He used to ride my plow horses. He looked so comical, this skinny little boy perched on top of the huge horse, but those horses would do anything for him. It was amazing, really. Then, when he was twelve, the squire asked if he would exercise his two race horses. Daniel was in heaven. He rode the horses while the squire had them at home, and then, when the squire took them to the racetrack, Daniel went along. One time, at the last minute the squire’s jockey got sick, and Daniel ended up riding in the race. He won. He was thirteen.”
Mr. Dereham’s face was bright with pride. “That lad could do anything with horses. The squire had two horses and one of them – the one Daniel rode – was turning out to be quite good. So the squire hired Daniel to be his groom and his jockey.”
“Did he go to school at all?” Anne asked.
“Aye, he went to the village school until he was ten. He was so smart. The teacher told us he was way ahead of the other children.
“Did the other children resent him?
“Na. Everyone wanted to be friends with Daniel.”
Anne said slowly, “I expect he felt as if his life had been pulled out from under him when he heard he wasn’t who he thought he was.”
“Aye, I fear that was it. And I think he would have come around if he hadn’t done such a damn fool thing as getting on a ship to India! We didn’t hear a word from him for two years. His poor mam was beside herself. Then we started to get money. It was drawn on an English bank, but I managed to find out that it was coming from India. Well, it had to be Daniel, didn’t it? We didn’t want the money, but we were relieved to hear he was alive.”
Neither of them had taken a bite of their food. Mr Dereham glanced at his plate and said, “Here now, I don’t want to insult your cook by sending this back uneaten.”
“I’m so sorry – I’ve kept you from your dinner. Please take your time, Mr. Dereham. There’s no rush.”
He began to eat and Anne put her fork through a slice of beef, then let it rest on her plate. She couldn’t eat a thing. She was too upset by what she had heard.
Poor Daniel, she thought. His father was right. If he had only remained in England he would most probably have got over the shock. But he went to a strange country and let it fester inside him.
Of course, if he had remained in England, Anne would never have met or married him, and she couldn’t wish for that. She needed to think of some way she could help him overcome this anger. She pictured her husband’s face in her mind and wondered how on earth she was going to manage that.