Page 30 of Lyon’s Obsession (The Lyon’s Den Connected World #91)
Alexander shrugged his acceptance of what she said.
“Your hair is red with auburn tones, but perhaps instead of describing her, I should speak of her habits.” He paused to close his eyes in remembrance.
“My mother possessed an angelic voice. Father always said he fell in love with her when she sang a song requested by her betrothed.”
“She was pledged to another?” Miss Moreau asked.
“Yes, a long-standing friend of our father.” Alexander recognized how she had come not to argue whenever he used a plural possessive pronoun.
“Robert Dutton ignored all who warned him against his obsession with Miss Madelyn Smithfield. Eventually, they made a dash to Gretna Green, both thinking once the deed was done, all would be forgiven.”
“Yet, it was not,” his sister whispered into the silence which had fallen between them. She shook her head in denial of what he asserted. Instead, she declared, “My father was a sea captain. His name was Darwood Lisey.”
Alexander flinched internally at her assertion that Lisey was her father. Cautiously, he said, “Captain Lisey was the man who purchased my mother at the marketplace. I have papers to prove his doing so, if and when you have a desire to view them.”
“You are mistaken,” she argued, but she had stopped her pacing, and tears had filled her eyes. “My mother was always afraid of him,” she whispered.
She had yet to be fully convinced, but a crack in her armor had appeared. Instead of arguing, Alexander continued his side of the story.
“As to my parents, they were both disowned by my grandfather.” He counted to ten before he added, “In the beginning, they managed with a small inheritance from my paternal grandmother, but neither of them adapted well to their severely reduced circumstances. Father knew nothing of farming, and Mother was equally ignorant of household chores. That being said, our mother managed to claim the life they had chosen faster than did Robert Dutton. By the time of my birth, she knew something of tending a house and cooking for her family. Eventually, they lost their land to the debts Father had accumulated, and they ended up in a set of rooms, and by the time my sister joined us, we all resided in a single room.”
“Why did your father not do more to tend to his wife’s needs?” Miss Moreau asked as she abandoned her position on the opposite side of the room to come closer to where he sat.
“I cannot say with confidence. I have come to believe his guilt drove our father to act as he did. After he sent my mother and sister away, he would tell me he acted as such to allow them a chance at a better life. He would say we were men, and men were better equipped to see to their own needs, which generally meant he would spend the last of his coins on heavy drink while I begged for bread, along with a dozen other children, or earned a pence or two performing work others would not attempt.”
“Your life was very hard,” she observed in sympathy.
“It was, but I was always thankful my mother and sister were not in the rookery to witness my father’s complete decline. Each night, I prayed they both had a decent meal and a proper bed. If so, my sacrifices were worth my pitiful efforts.”
His sister’s eyes filled with tears. “When did things change for you?”
“I was nearing my tenth naming day when Lord Duncan arrived at our little hovel. He was searching for my father.”
“Lady Theodora’s father came for you?” she asked.
“My savior. I told you previously, I owe Duncan my life. He arranged everything, quite literally dragging my father from a drunken stupor to deposit him at Marksman Abbey as the 11th Earl Marksman. Robert Dutton’s father, our grandfather, had passed unexpectedly from consumption.
The eldest son, Lawrence, passed from a heart attack three days after he had been named the new earl.
As Lawrence had only sired daughters, and the earldom was to pass through the male line, a search immediately began for our grandfather’s second son, Oscar, only to learn Lord Oscar Dutton had succumbed to his wounds in a duel over an opera singer from Naples while he was on the Continent.
Ironically, Oscar’s death had come before Lawrence’s. ”
“Oh, my,” Miss Moreau gasped as she sat on the stool opposite him. Her fear of his attacking her had been long abandoned.
“Those serving as executors of the estate and title petitioned for the return of our Uncle Evert from Spain. Unfortunately, Lord Evert Dutton lost his life in a Yorkshire rainstorm when he was thrown from his horse—breaking his neck.
“Next in line was Robert Dutton, who was dying from his heavy use of alcohol and a variety of other illnesses, but mostly because he was sick at heart for his actions against the love of his life. Accepting the challenge of living long enough to be recognized by the House of Lords as ‘Marksman’ was his greatest success in life. Our father made a promise to me to set my steps on a road he thought never to see, and I made a promise to myself and to him, on his deathbed, that I would right the wrongs executed by him against my mother and my sister. I have spent a sizable portion of the Marksman fortune to learn what happened to Madelyn Dutton after Darwood Lisey, the man who purchased her from my father, also abandoned her. My search has led me to this house and to you. I believe you are my sister Annalise.”
“Annalise,” she whispered. “It is a beautiful name.”
“It is,” he said.
“And you are ‘Alexander’? I recall asking for ‘Axe’ when my mother and I were on Captain Lisey’s ship. She made me promise not to use that name again.”
“Was she angry at me for not coming for her?” he asked, for such was a constant dream when he was younger.
“Captain Lisey demanded that my mother never use the names of any on shore. He was quite angry when she cried out. He hit her. That was when she demanded I perform likewise in my denial of home.” She paused again for several elongated seconds before saying, “So you are ‘Axe’?”
“You could not say ‘Alexander,’ so I became ‘Axe’ to you. When you broke your doll, you asked me to repair it. When you had a nightmare, you would curl up next to me on the mat upon which I slept.”
“What was it like for you when Mama left?” she asked.
“I became the ‘parent’ of my father, who grieved so greatly for the loss of the woman he loved, he basically laid down and waited for death. I lived on the streets, begging for bread and executing what I could to survive. And you?”
“Obviously, a bit more than you,” she confessed. “The typical food found on a ship. Salt pork. Salted fish. Dry biscuits so hard I had difficulty biting into them. Hard cheese. I imagine you already know more about me than I will ever know about you.”
“If I had brought home salted fish and hard biscuits in the rookeries, I would have had to defend myself and my father to keep the meal,” he explained.
“I never wished for you to suffer as I did. But as to what I know of you and our mother, it is mostly where you lived, not how you lived.” He shrugged and so did she.
“As to our relationship or how I survived, ask me all you wish, my dear,” he said with a grin.
“I will not mind answering the same questions over and over. New questions as they occur to you. I am your servant in that manner. Just to know you are alive is all that is important at this moment. The idea fills my soul with great joy.” He paused to gather his thoughts.
“Let us start with the basics. I am not yet five and twenty, and you will soon be one and twenty.”
She nodded her head in understanding as they both became quieter and sat in silence for several minutes.
“May I ask… I know you were very young,” he said finally, “but is there anything you can recall of our mother?”
A frown marked his sister’s features. “We were with Captain Lisey for perhaps a year.
Mayhap a bit more. Mama and I never left the ship, though she often begged Captain Lisey to permit her to go to the shops wherever we landed, but he never permitted us to do so.
Then one day, Captain Lisey took us onto the pier where he turned her and me over to a bayman from Honduras.
We did not even spend an hour on land before we were on another ship.
“In Honduras, she was offered the position as mistress of the house, but she chose to be its housekeeper instead.”
Alexander understood the “mistress” did not mean marriage. Perhaps his sister, too, understood the implications, but neither of them spoke of what they suspected.
She said, “Permit me to fetch some of the cakes I know Beaufort brought this evening. He is always so kind to me. The tea will not be hot, but we might enjoy what we have, may we not?”
Alexander’s heart leapt higher. He had never thought this moment would arrive. He had a family, one he would permit no one to take from him.