Chapter Twenty-Five

Even though Oliver looked haggard enough that young Arthur, who’d barely been higher than Graham’s knees, could have taken him down, the man was nearly vibrating with energy. Had he slept in the five weeks since he’d learned of Priscilla’s disappearance? Graham knew he’d traveled to anywhere and everywhere he could think of to look for her. It was a fine strategy, except that Oliver hadn’t a clue what to do when he got there, so all he did was run around making himself exhausted.

But not, apparently, exhausted enough to actually sleep.

Perhaps a visit to their sporting club would do that.

Fareweather’s was a club for all kinds, with sporting spaces on the lower level and coffee and cards on the upper. It wasn’t as sophisticated as the clubs on St. James’s Street, but Oliver and Graham weren’t about to spend their time in a place where Aaron wasn’t welcome as well. So they’d joined Fareweather’s.

Oliver and Graham donned their protective gear, grabbed their foils and face masks, and went off in search of an empty practice area.

Instead they found Aaron, jabbing a foil at a hanging sandbag in the back corner. Lunge, retreat, repeat. Graham’s legs were tired just watching him.

“When did you get back to London?” Graham asked.

“He left Sussex a week ago,” Oliver said, dropping his mask and foil on a nearby bench before dropping onto it to lay his head back against the wall.

“That’s right,” Aaron said, chest pumping from his exercise. “I stopped at a few race courses on my way back and got home yesterday. How’d you know?”

“Because when I got to Sussex they said I’d just missed you.”

Aaron’s mouth pressed into a grim line. “You’re still looking for Priscilla? What did you find in Marlborough?”

“I looked at chalk horses,” Oliver said, crossing his arms over his chest, “and Graham went for a ride in the rain.”

Graham chuckled, hoping it looked natural. It had been considerably more than a ride in the rain. It had been life-changing. He glanced at Aaron and reflected on how different his friend’s life was from the one the Haven Manor children were experiencing. Benedict, Blake, John, any of those could easily have been Aaron. Or Aaron could have easily been one of them.

Oliver looked like his exhaustion had finally caught up with him as his head lolled back against the wall and his eyes fell halfway closed. He gave a yawn, lifting his hand in a pitiful attempt to disguise his open mouth.

“I don’t think he’s much use for anything,” Aaron said, poking at Oliver with his foil.

With a stiff swing, Oliver used his foil to knock Aaron’s aside. “He made me come,” Oliver grumbled. “Fight with him.”

“Fancy a duel, Graham? Loser buys Oliver a drink to drown himself in,” Aaron said with a grin.

Graham slid his mask on and moved into place. “Oliver’s father admitted to sending Priscilla away.”

Their swords clashed as they started the battle. “That’s a good thing,” Aaron said. “At the very least it should ease Oliver’s mind a bit to know that someone knows where she is.”

A light snore drifted from the bench.

“I think it might have,” Graham agreed.

Neither spoke for a while as their feet danced across the floor to the tune of steel on steel. Would Benedict have been a good fencer? The boy was bright, showed a knack for seeing things from a different angle. He could have been quite the sportsman, if he’d been born at a different time.

Graham let his guard down as he considered the man in front of him.

Aaron’s sword connected with Graham’s shoulder, the blade arcing with the pressure.

“What’s it like for you?” Graham asked quietly.

Aaron froze with his foil still extended. Through the mask Graham saw dark eyebrows draw together over green-grey eyes. “Scoring against you? A pleasure.”

“Life. What’s it like being . . .” Despite the number of years he’d been friends with Aaron and despite the number of times he’d heard whispers and jibes about the other man’s parentage, Graham himself had never spoken anything about it. So it was hard to make the words come out now even though he wasn’t meaning anything bad by them. “Your situation. With your father.”

This conversation was awkward enough without him stuttering over his words, and Graham’s shoulders began to itch with the notion that this had been a poor idea. He used his own foil to knock Aaron’s away before returning to his starting stance.

The other man was a bit slower to follow. He slid his mask off his face, revealing a wide, teeth-baring grin. “You mean, what’s life like being a baseborn by-blow?”

How was he so comfortable saying it? Graham had heard that term and worse whispered not so quietly behind Aaron’s back since they’d met at Harrow.

“Yes. That.” When Aaron didn’t get back into a fighting stance, Graham stood up and slid his own mask off his face.

Oliver groaned from his corner, obviously having woken enough to hear the conversation. “Why on earth would you ask such a thing, Graham? You don’t just go around asking people about their legitimacy.”

“I don’t have to ask about his legitimacy,” Graham retorted. “I already know it.”

Aaron shook his head and laughed. “Everyone knows it. It’s hard not to when your father introduces you to people as ‘my illegitimate son, Mr. Whitworth.’ Wouldn’t want anyone confusing me with his true heir, after all.” The smile faded as Aaron’s gaze sharpened into more serious consideration. “You’ve never cared about it before, though. Why are you asking now?”

“It’s never mattered before.”

Aaron’s eyes registered his shock. “And it does now?”

Graham dropped his mask and foil and threw a punch at the practice sandbag, making it swing between them. “Not like that. I’ve just come to realize that it might matter in ways I hadn’t considered before. I had a lot of time to think when I was stuck in the farmer’s kitchen.”

Aaron said nothing for several moments, just stared at Graham, not flinching as the bag swung back and forth, inches from his face. “What do you want to know?”

The quiet voice, so unlike the jovial friend Graham was used to, made him thrust out a hand and bring the slowly swinging bag to a stop. “Everything.”

“This is a seriously depressing conversation, Graham,” Oliver mumbled.

“Of all the people in this room,” Aaron said, “you’re the one who appears to be suffering a fit of the blue devils at the moment. So don’t go casting your gloom over mine. I’m not doing so bad.” Aaron shifted until he was leaning against the wall, one ankle crossed over the other. “Something I always liked about you, Graham, was that you never saw me as different. At least you never seemed to.”

Graham’s eyes narrowed. The truth was, by the time he’d realized Aaron was different, they’d been too good of friends for Graham to care. “We went to the same schools. We’re both members of this club. I’m fairly certain my mother likes you more than me sometimes.”

A ghost of a grin flickered across Aaron’s face. “I thought you were a bit touched in the upper works until I met your parents.”

“He is touched,” Oliver said, starting to sound a bit like his old self.

Graham was more than willing to put up with Oliver’s teasing if it made him feel better, but he really wanted to have this conversation with Aaron. Besides, if he didn’t give as good as he got, Oliver would know Graham felt sorry for him.

Reaching out one foot, Graham kicked Oliver’s boots. “Why don’t you go get us a table in the coffeehouse upstairs? But order tea for me.” He couldn’t drink coffee without thinking of the number of cups he’d drunk at the manor. Jess always had it ready and available, and he hadn’t seen anyone else preparing tea, so he’d drunk the bitter brew.

Oliver frowned. “I don’t want to miss this revealing conversation.”

“You mean the one you called depressing?”

Since Graham had thrown his own words back at him, Oliver didn’t have much recourse. He grumbled good-naturedly as he rose from the bench. As he walked through the club, greeting people he’d ignored as they entered, he almost looked like he did before the entire mess with Priscilla began. Whether Oliver wanted to admit it or not, having his father acknowledge that something was wrong but that Priscilla was safe had done wonders for Oliver’s peace of mind.

Graham turned back to Aaron to find the larger man looking at him, face devoid of expression. “My father acknowledged me from the beginning. I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. The only thing he really had to do was pay for my living until I was old enough to do so myself. Instead he claimed me, set me and my mother up in a cottage on the corner of one of his estates. There was a series of nannies as I got older, but none of them stayed long.”

Aaron crossed his arms over his chest, still maintaining eye contact with Graham, still keeping any sign of emotion off his wide, strong face. “I saw him twice a year. When I was eight, he brought his six-year-old son to meet me. I’m pretty sure I was a lesson in responsibility or something like that. About a year after that, Mother left. I still don’t know if that was her decision or his. He paid for school, brought me to London, and made sure everyone knew I was under his protection.”

Graham knew what Aaron’s life had been like from age ten and on, since they’d met during those early years at school, but they’d never spoken of his childhood. It wasn’t often that Graham saw Aaron and his father in the same room together, but when he did the two always seemed to have a cold but cordial relationship. In many ways it seemed better than the one many legitimate sons had with their fathers.

It was certainly better than Oliver’s. Graham said as much.

Aaron nodded. “It’s better now that I’m older and have business interests of my own. We can meet and pretend the connection is merely superficial.

“The thing is, Graham, I’ll never really be one of you. I wear the clothes, live the life, even attend some of the same parties. I get an allowance from my father, and he’s assured me there will be a small settlement on his death. It’s rather a lot like being a younger son. Except I’m not. And everyone knows it.

“And we all walk around smiling and pretending that it doesn’t matter that my father’s true heir is two years younger than me or that my birth was the result of a mistake that couldn’t be swept under the rug. But we all know.”

When Graham had met Aaron, his greatest concern had been the fact that Aaron had a fancy set of marbles and ran faster than the third-form boys.

He’d never given a thought to anyone else’s parents before—probably because he’d never been around anyone who wasn’t of impeccable breeding—and the first time he’d heard another boy call Aaron a mongrel, he’d learned the truth. He’d been too young to really understand what it meant, though, so he’d carried on being Aaron’s friend like it hadn’t mattered.

“Does it bother you?” Graham couldn’t get the image of Benedict out of his head. When he’d gone to tell the boy good-bye, he’d shaken Graham’s hand like a man. He said he didn’t know much about his own father, but if he had to pick a man to grow up to be like, he wanted to be like Graham.

It had made it nearly impossible for Graham to get on his horse and leave.

Aaron’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know, Graham? After all these years, why now?”

“Because I’m beginning to realize that if it weren’t for the grace of God, it could have been me.”

Aaron tilted his head and looked at Graham for a moment before nodding and reaching for the buckles on his protective jacket. “Come along.”

Graham grabbed his gear and followed Aaron up the stairs to the coffeehouse. “Where are we going?”

“To show you the life of a side slip.”

“Don’t call yourself that,” Graham grunted.

Aaron stopped and faced Graham, getting right in his face, more serious than Graham had ever seen him. “First point, words like that can’t mean anything because you’re going to hear them. A lot. This society thinks nothing of airing your shortcomings quite loudly behind your back while smiling to your face.

“Second,” Aaron said as they stepped out of the room, “as you’ve noted, my birth doesn’t affect my life all that much. I’ve every opportunity, if not every benefit. But it’s there. Always there.”

“Are you glad that you know?”

“Know what?” he asked as they moved toward the table where Oliver sat with three cups of tea in front of him. “That I’m a by-blow?” He shrugged. “What would be the alternative?”

Graham pretended to think. “Thinking yourself an orphan, perhaps?”

He snorted. “And grow up in a workhouse or foundling hospital? Or perhaps as the hated poor relation of a distant relative who locked me away in a tower until his obligatory years of care were met?” He shook his head sharply. “No thank you. At least now I’ve the opportunity to seek a life that will actually support me and gain me respect.”

That was what Graham had thought when he’d watched the children learning skills that could set them up for a life of work and potential drudgery. But even as he nodded a niggling thought hit the back of his mind. “What about your mother?”

Aaron stiffened. He glanced from Oliver back to Graham. “I don’t wish to talk about my mother.”

Oliver sighed. “Are you still discussing that? I thought we’d agreed to ignore the whole business. It’s not like anyone cared about it when we were sailing to Jamaica.”

Graham didn’t acknowledge Oliver. He just looked at Aaron, noticing the flat coldness in his eyes. What had happened to his mother? And why did Graham care? What did he hope to learn?

Already he knew that he liked Kit, that he liked the man he was when he was at Haven Manor, trying to make life better for the children and lighten the load of the women who cared for them. He knew that Kit’s strength and spirit drew him more than any other woman he’d met. It didn’t hurt that her dark blond hair and bright blue eyes were extremely pleasing to look at or that she fit perfectly in his arms and had a kiss that was sweeter than any confection his chef had ever produced.

What more was he wanting to know?

Aaron dropped into the seat across from Oliver. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you, just . . . not here.”

Graham settled into his own seat, lost in thought as the conversation between Aaron and Oliver drifted to other things.

Aaron’s life was turning out well, especially when one considered the alternative. But apparently his mother’s hadn’t.

What was it Kit had said? The very existence of the children could ruin their mothers?

Knowing what he knew about Daphne and Kit and the way they’d left London, it was entirely possible that Haven Manor was more for the mothers than it was for the children. Even Kit had acknowledged that it had its flaws. And if that was the case, was it what was best for the children?