Page 67 of To Seduce a Stranger

“I can see that.” A smile creased her face. “My boy has become a man.”

“Be proud of him,” Mari urged from over his shoulder. “He has been a part of making something terrible into something bearable.”

“A very small part,” he protested.

“You survived, Mr. Edward,” Mari insisted, folding her arms over her chest. “And you helped others do the same. Your mother has a right to know the sort of man her son has turned out to be. I’ll not let you make your work seem less than it was—not to her, and not to yourself.”

Mama still watched her with wide eyes.

“Thank you, Mari,” Edward said, brushing aside her praise. “But I still don’t understand how you knew who Tessie really was—did you suspect, somehow? Did you ask her to come here this morning?”

When Mari shook her head in surprised denial, Garrick stepped forward and mumbled, “No, sir,” crumbs spraying from his lips as he spoke. He had been watching the reunion from the doorway, gnawing on a roll he had snatched from a nearby basket. “Mrs. Cary tol’ me t’ fetch her, right afore she left.”

At the same moment, his mother said, “It was Charlotte who guessed.”

“You’ve met Charlotte?”

“Mrs. Cary?” Mama’s eyes were bewildered. “She told me she was the steward’s wife.”

The cross talk, each voice louder than the last, succeeded in rousing Jack from his faint. When he groaned behind them, Mama twisted slightly to bring him into her line of sight. “And who is that young man?”

“I’m not perfectly sure,” Edward said, shoving the table so that it pushed Jack more upright. “But he’s been telling everyone he’s the long lost son of the Earl of Beckley.”

Slowly, Jack lifted his head and cracked open one eye with a groan that owed more to last night’s drinking than to Mari’s supposed witchcraft. “I am. His eldest son, in point of fact.”

“No.” Mama’s voice was firm, but there was uncertainty in her face. “This is my son,” she said, placing her hand over Edward’s where it lay on the table.

“I don’t doubt it.” Jack gave a bitter-sounding laugh. “That’s been my luck, over the years.” After sending Mari a sidelong glance, he rubbed the back of his head and said, “My name is Jacques Revard.”

Edward felt, rather than heard, his mother’s sharp intake of breath. “Revard?”

“You remember my mother, then?” Anger mingled with surprise in his expression.

“Yes. Of course. Louise Revard was my maid,” she explained to Edward. “When I married, my papa told me I could take her with me to my new home. I was so relieved to have her by. Afterward, I—I wished I had not been so selfish. I wished I had left her behind. Once I fully understood the sort of man I had married . . .” Slowly, she shook her head. “It was too late. She came to me, and she told me she was with child . . . Your father dismissed her, of course. I did not know whether to plead for her, or whether it would only make things worse. And by then I had discovered I was expecting you . . .”

“The heir,” Jack sneered.

“Yes.”

Mari slipped into the chair closest to her, listening unabashedly, and after snagging the entire basket of rolls to himself, Garrick sank into the chair opposite and followed suit. “What became of her?” Mama asked in a whisper.

“She was forced to . . . hard times,” Jack replied. Edward found himself almost glad when he did not elaborate. “When I grew old enough, I was apprenticed to a printer, who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, wrap his tongue around Jacques. That’s how I became Jack. Once he discovered I had a knack for making a picture as a person described a scene or a face, he found a way to make a pretty penny off me. I drew charcoal sketches of people who’d died, for loved ones who couldn’t afford a portrait. And a time or two, when there was a hunt for a wanted man, the constable brought me in to draw the face on the poster.”

“That’s how you knew about Charlotte,” Edward said.

“Yes. Her stepson wanted her picture splashed about. I made the first sketch from his secretary’s description . . . and when I saw her here, I knew.”

“Knew what?” Mama asked. “Where is she? And what is this about her being Mrs. Cary?”

“She’s gone, Mama. She left early this morning. And she is not Mrs. Cary. She was . . . is the Dowager Duchess of Langerton, apparently.”

“Though a nobody by birth,” Jack inserted. “Half French, like me.”

“And caught up in quite a mess—”

Jack laughed. “You could say that.”

“Though I did not know the extent of it until now,” Edward finished, speaking over him. “When I first met her, it seemed clear to me that she needed a safe place to stay. I brought her to Ravenswood. But things here were in such a state of uncertainty that I was reluctant to announce who I was—even to her. So I told everyone I was the new steward. And to keep from raising further suspicions, we decided to claim we were man and wife.”