Read Online The Wedding Night by Linda Needham - Free Book Online

undertakers around the conference table, and now they scrambled to their feet, all chattering at the same time.
    "Well … sir … my lord Rushford—" The youngest of the men struggled to right his chair, his fingers creasing an already folded sheaf of stiff documents.
    "Speak up, boy!" Jack stood fast at the end of the table, looking down its cold expanse of mirror-glossed mahogany. "You've had another year, Dodson. Have you added anything at all to my very thick but very empty file?"
    "No!" the young man said, casting a pleading glance at the elder Dodson. "I mean…"
    "What my son means is nothing explicit." Dodson punctuated his findings with a bow. "I'm sorry."
    Sorry . That answer still slashed as deeply through Jack's defenses as ever, made his throat close over and disabled his fury. He turned away to the windows and the green woods beyond the garden, where Mairey Faelyn was settling her brightness into the lodge.
    "Detail your report, if you please," Jack said, hearing the shuffle of papers and the whispering as though they were close-kept secrets. A scheme to keep him from his family, to expose his shame.
    "Um, sir. We … our operative, that is, he…" It was Dodson's son again, and more whispering.
    "Your operative did what?" Jack turned, his anger patched over thickly enough to shield his heart from the blows that would come.
    "Our operative searched the usual sources, sir, focusing this time on the parish records in Cornwall and Devonshire ."
    "You've searched both counties three times before."
    Greel wagged a patronizing finger. "But not for years—"
    " Seven years ago, Greel . I have the report in my own file, compiled by a Mr. Wilfred Rainey." He'd memorized every item, sorted and analyzed, hoping Dodson had overlooked some fact or an idiosyncrasy that only Jack himself would notice. Nothing. "Why do you waste my time looking in places you've already examined?"
    Greel lowered his finger. "Mr. Rainey no longer works for Dodson, Dodson, and Greel . We thought that our new operative—"
    "Tell me, Dodson, why I shouldn't fire your firm and find another."
    Dodson bristled and blinked. "We are the very best at these issues, sir. We've found many a lost relative, united heirs with fortunes—"
    "But what have you done for me? " Jack's righteous anger made him feel whole and in control, made him feel as though his mother and sisters were waiting for him at Southampton or at the shore in Brighton , eating frosted cakes, their hands and faces scrubbed clean of coal dust. He need only take the right train.
    "The 1842 Devonshire assize, my lord," Greel said quickly, sliding another page out of the report and across the table toward Jack. "As you can see there, a woman named Claire Radforth was fined three shillings for stealing eggs from her employer."
    Jack picked up the paper, tasting venom on his tongue. "And I see that the same woman served three months in the Female Penitentiary in Exeter . What has this creature to do with my mother?"
    Greel's face paled to match his ginger frizzled hair. "Well—we just thought—"
    "My mother's name is Claire Rushford , not Radforth ."
    "Yes, of course, sir. But mistakes are often made when the illiterate speak their names to a court official. Rushford quite easily becomes Radforth if one—"
    "Claire Rushford , Mr. Greel ." Jack came slowly around the table, grateful that the man was backing well out of his reach, else he might take him by the throat and squeeze too hard. "My mother was a collier's wife, not a street-corner slattern. She taught me and all my sisters to read and to write. She damn well knew how to spell her own name."
    "Yes, yes, of course she did, my lord. However—" Greel sat down hard, and Jack followed after him.
    "Nor was my mother a thief. You are looking once again in the wrong place."
    "There is the graveyard accounting, my lord," Greel said, shuffling wildly through his papers, thrusting one between Jack and himself. "Here."
    The graveyard accounting.