“But if he were buried as Harry Spenlove, then how did the Hathaway family hear of his actual death?”
“I cabled them, in the name of a British doctor,” he said, managing to look a little shamefaced. “It was only slightly dishonest,” he went on hastily. “Jonathan was, after all, gone. As soon as I sent the cable, I had well and truly crossed the Rubicon. I was Jonathan Hathaway from that moment on. My life as Harry Spenlove was finished.”
“As was our marriage,” I remarked.
His smile was bittersweet. “I think that was well and truly done before I left. You made it quite clear you were having doubts. I took that badly. I knew I had behaved poorly, but I thought with Jonathan’s name I could put it all behind me. I could be different. And my family are all gone,” he said simply. “There was no one to hurt by the loss of Harry Spenlove. Jonathan and I had planned to go on to South America together, so I booked passage to Santiago. When I arrived, the Chilean authorities accepted my masquerade. I collected Jonathan’s letters from the poste restante, and there was one waiting from his grandmother with a five-pound note in it, bless her. I was stony broke by that point, you understand, but with that note I was able to feed myself and buy a new set of clothes and take a comfortable room. And I was grateful to the old dear. I felt sorry for her. I realized the news of Jonathan’s death would be difficult for her to bear. So, I read the letters he had given me. Long letters from her full of news of home. I got to know Lady H, you see. It was one-sided, of course. I longed to write to her, but I could not. I was living as Jonathan and he was supposed to be dead and buried. But I read those letters over and over again, and, well, I became quite fond of her, really.”
“Fond of her!”
“I know it sounds ludicrous, but you must understand. For the past six years I have traveled, mostly in the Americas, never staying very long, never really getting to know anyone. It has been a lonely life, Veronica. Lady Hathaway has been my only constant.”
I shook my head.
“You have done the cruelest thing imaginable, Harry. Jonathan is dead but you have given them hope.”
He winced. “It was never my intention, believe me. Matters got entirely out of hand. I only meant to get out of Sumatra with my skin intact and lay quite low. South America, I decided. A good place to start over as Jonathan Hathaway. I bought a small farm and tried my hand at growing coffee.”
“You? A farmer?” I tried to keep the scorn from my voice, but I was not successful. “You have not done an honest day’s work in the whole of your life.”
He looked affronted. “I will have you know that I applied myself, Veronica. I cleared land, I plowed. I had blisters upon blisters and calluses that would have made you weep for the state of my hands. As it happens, I was unlucky. The rains that year were positively monsoonal. Wiped out the whole crop and I was ruined. I had to flee, once more with creditors on my heels. I set up again in the Argentine. I planned to open a gambling den, but the authorities were a little too curious. So, I tried again—Mexico, then America. I thought I could lose myself in the west, prospecting for gold in California.”
“And how did you manage to ruin that?”
“I believed a pack of lies,” he said darkly. “To hear them tell it, nuggets of gold are simply waiting to be plucked from the riverbeds. The truth is rather more bleak. It must be dug out, slowly and painfully. Almost as bad as opal mining in Australia.”
“Which is what you had just given up when I first met you,” I reminded him.
His face lit. “So it was! Heavens, that was a lifetime ago. I shudder to think what might have happened if Jonathan and I hadn’t met in Sydney and decided to travel together. Of all the benighted countries I have known, Australia must certainly be the worst.”
“What is your intention here, Harry? You realize all I need do is walk into that house and tell them the truth and your little charade is over.”
“Oh, you mustn’t!” he said, his voice anguished. “Not yet. It isn’t finished.”
“If you think I intend to stand by and watch you fleece these poor people out of their estate—”
“Good God, that’s not what I want! I have had quite enough of land, thank you very much. I do not comprehend why everyone is so enamored of land. Do you have any notion of how much work it is? No, indeed.”
“Then what do you want?” I demanded.
He ducked his head, and when he spoke, his voice was low. “You won’t believe me.”
“Then be persuasive.”
“Very well. I . . . I have grown fond of Lady Hathaway. She is the nearest thing I have to family. Sir Geoffrey’s death hit her terribly hard, and her health has suffered,” he added, looking away. He suddenly clamped his mouth shut, as if damming strong emotion, a small muscle working furiously in his jaw.
“And you think she ought to spend her last months with someone pretending to be her grandson?”
“But to her I am Jonathan. So why can’t I be?” The question was presented, as Harry presented all his most outrageous schemes—in so reasonable a tone that it seemed perfectly plausible.
“Because you are not Jonathan Hathaway,” I reminded him.
“What does that matter? Jonathan is dead. If I am exposed, then she has lost him, forever. So long as she calls me Jonathan, then she has a grandson, and what is in a name?”
“And that is justification for lying to her, for leaving her brokenhearted—”
“Who said a word about leaving?” he asked, his mouth quirking into a crooked, winsome little smile I remembered only too well.
“You cannot be serious.”
“As the grave, my dear. It is a comfortable enough place, although gloomy, I grant you. And Mary is dreadfully bossy, and her children are frightful, and Charles is so dreary, constantly wittering on about sheep. But I am content to remain here as long as Lady Hathaway lives.”
“And when she dies?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “I will spin a pretty tale for the family. I will simply tell them that it is difficult to remain here with Lady Hathaway gone, and I suspect, with the greatest irony, that it will actually be true. I will leave them as I came, quickly and without fanfare. Perhaps the odd postcard on my travels, but nothing more. I will be a footnote in the family folklore, the brief candle who flickered once again to life before slowly fading. I will ask nothing else of them,” he finished firmly. “And I will make Lady Hathaway entirely happy for the remainder of her time.”
“That might be years,” I pointed out.
He shook his head mournfully. “No, I am afraid. The poor old darling has an extremely bad heart. She has died more than once, you know. The last time in my very arms.”