Robert Bracewell was typical of the merchant class. He was a practical man, toughened by a harsh upbringing and by the struggle to survive in a competitive world. Marriage was essentially a business proposition to him. Merchants’ sons married merchants’ daughters. A prudent choice of wife brought in a widening circle of friends and relations who could improve a man’s prospects considerably. The dowry, too, was important. It could save many a poor credit balance. That was a factor that weighed heavily with Robert Bracewell, and he had selected a bride for his elder son partly on that basis.
Fathers struck bargains. Katherine Hurrell was selected for Nicholas Bracewell in the same way as Mary Parr was the designated wife of Matthew Whetcombe. Love and happiness were a matter of chance. The commercial implications of the match were far more important. Paternal pressure on all sides was immense, but Nicholas and Mary resisted it. They rejected their chosen partners. They wanted each other, no matter what their fathers decreed. Robert Bracewell had been adamant that his son should marry Katherine Hurrell. His preference for her family had become an obsession.
Nicholas remembered why and his loathing intensified.
‘You stopped us!’ he accused.
‘I had to, Nick. You must see that.’
‘You killed our hopes.’
‘I had no choice.’
‘Mary was waiting for me,’ said Nicholas. ‘She would have run away with me sooner than marry him. She hated Matthew Whetcombe. He had nothing to offer her.’
‘Yes, he did,’ said his father. ‘He offered something that nobody else could match. There was more to Matthew than you might think. A deep man, believe me. Hidden virtues.’
‘Mary had no time for him.’
‘That is not true.’
‘She couldn’t bear the fellow near her!’
‘Yet she married him.’
It was offered as a simple statement of fact, but it had the impact of a punch. Nicholas recoiled. Matthew Whetcombe had indeed married Mary Parr, but only because Nicholas had deserted her. His one impulsive action all those years ago had committed a woman he wanted to a loveless relationship with a man whose death she could not even mourn. By extension, it had also thrust her into the humiliating situation that now faced her. Guilt pummelled away at Nicholas again but the real culprit was sitting calmly in front of him. His father was enjoying his son’s discomfort.
It had been a mistake to come. Robert Bracewell would not help a son who ran away from him or a woman who ruined his marriage plans for that son. The old man would take a perverse delight in obstructing them. Nicholas got up abruptly and moved to the door. His father’s voice halted him.
‘I witnessed that will,’ he said, ‘but I am not able to tell you its contents. They are confidential. If you insist on seeing it, apply to Barnard Sweete. He should have a copy of the first will.’
‘He has destroyed it.’
‘Matthew had a copy drafted.’
‘That, too, has disappeared.’
‘Find it, Nick.’
‘The house has been searched from top to bottom.’
‘Search again.’
‘Was Livermore the main beneficiary of the first will?’
‘Find it and you will know the truth.’
‘Will you give us no help at all, Father!’
‘What have you done to deserve it?’ said the other with scorn. ‘Get out of my house! Get out of my life!’
‘A crime is being committed here!’ urged Nicholas. ‘You can prevent it. We need you!’
But Robert Bracewell had said all that he was going to on the subject. The interview, which had been a torment for his son, had been an ordeal for him as well. All the strength had drained out of him and the pouched skin quivered. The woman came in from the scullery to stand behind him in case she was needed. They looked once again like two old servants in a farmer’s cottage. Nicholas was saddened.
He went quickly out but paused a few yards down the path, turning to call a question through the open door.
‘Why did you go so often to Matthew Whetcombe’s house?’
Robert Bracewell got up and lumbered towards him. One hand on the door, he stared at his visitor with a mixture of nostalgia and dismay.
‘Why did you go?’ repeated Nicholas.
‘To see my granddaughter.’
He slammed the door shut with echoing finality.
His mind was an inferno as he rode away from the cottage. Past and present seemed so inextricably linked that they had become one. Mary Whetcombe had reminded him of the young man he once was and Robert Bracewell had warned him of the old man he could become. Both experiences had torn at his very entrails. He rode at a steady canter and vowed never to return to the house. Seeing his father again had laid some ghosts to rest but awakened too many others. The picture of two aged people side by side in a run-down cottage stayed in his mind. Robert Bracewell had once lived with a handsome woman of good family who loved him devotedly and who bore him two children. That wife was sent to an early grave with a broken heart. All that the merchant had left now was a shuffling servant to fetch and carry for him.
So much had happened since he had come back to Barnstaple that he could not absorb it all. Nicholas Bracewell tried to pick out the salient facts. Mary Whetcombe was in serious danger of losing her inheritance through a conspiracy. Gideon Livermore was dispossessing her in order to bring her within his reach. As a rich widow, she would never deign to look at a man like him, but she might change her mind if marriage restored to her all that she had lost. Mary was an essential part of the property, and Livermore would not part with her. She had been forced to marry one man she hated. Why not another?
If she took Gideon Livermore, however, she would be sharing her life with a murderer. Lamparde had killed Susan Deakin and attempted to send Nicholas after her but the orders had come from Livermore. He stood to gain most and had just as much blood on his hands as Lamparde himself. Barnard Sweete was an accomplice. Against two men of such guile, a distraught widow would have little chance. They had even enlisted the aid of the vicar on their side to render Mary Whetcombe completely powerless.
Another consideration scalded its way into Nicholas’s brain. Mary was the mother of his child. The feeling that Nicholas had when he first saw Lucy had been strengthened. In spite of her mother’s denial, he sensed that the girl was his, and his father had confirmed it. The forlorn creature who was locked away with her dolls in a silent universe was Nicholas’s daughter. She deserved special protection.
Robert Bracewell’s regular visits to the house were now explained, but questions were raised about Matthew Whetcombe. Did he know that the child was his? Had his revulsion been based on the girl’s afflictions or on her true parentage? Nicholas’s father had called the merchant a deep man. In what sense? Would such a proud merchant accept a cuckoo in the nest? Was he aware of Mary’s pregnancy when he married her? The house in Crock Street was full of phantoms.
Nicholas had gone to such lengths to exorcise the demons from his mind that he could not be certain about dates and times. The specifics of Lucy’s birth did not matter. His own instinct was more reliable, especially as it now had his father’s endorsement. What hurt him most was that Mary had lied to him about the girl. Their daughter was conceived in love even if she had grown up with very little of it around her. Nicholas was sorrowful as he thought about the thin little body and the pinched face, but he also felt a strange joy. He knew the truth at last.
He passed the signpost to Marwood again and his thoughts turned once more to the company. With all its problems and pressures, life with Westfield’s Men was far preferable to this. He had a recognised position there and was able to impose some order. Barnstaple was chaos. Nicholas no longer had a place in the community and his feelings about it were ambivalent. Mary had hardly given him an ecstatic welcome and his own father had treated him like an intruder. Instead of being in control, he was being swept along by events.