‘Poor thing.’
‘Yes, awful. Ten years later, they found a cure for it. Tragic, isn’t it? She was so young.’
‘Very tragic, yeah. And the baby?’
‘Well, there’s the thing. I looked through all the birth certificates, but there weren’t any with Frances named as the mother. Then I looked again and there was a baby born in December of that year to her parents! Richard and Sarah Manning had a baby boy called David.’
‘But it wasn’t theirs really?’
‘No, that was just what they told the registrars. And Frances, when she died, wasn’t living at home. She was living at an address in a very shady part of town. I wish, wish, wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the meeting when it was decided to raise the child as her little brother. Can you imagine how heart-breaking it must have been?’
‘Don’t you think Harville ever went looking for her? Perhaps that’s why they registered the baby like that?’
‘Perhaps. If Harville couldn’t prove the baby was his, then he couldn’t claim him. No DNA tests in those days. Besides – I looked up Harville. He married again within a year of Frances running off, and had another son a year after that, who went on to inherit Harville Hall. Except the real heir …’
‘Was alive and well and in Nottingham …’ Linda’s jaw dropped. ‘Are you saying …?’
‘David had two daughters,’ said Jenna eagerly. ‘Edith and Jane. Then he went and got himself killed in the First World War, God bless him.’
‘Edith’s my grandma,’ said Linda. ‘Edie Manning, as was – then Edie Craven. Came to Bledburn to do nursing and met Granddad Craven when she was looking after him after he broke a wrist down the mine. I remember her telling me her dad was killed at Mons. Bloody hell. Bloody hell, Jen. What does it all mean?’
‘It means a lot of things,’ said Jenna. ‘But one of them … an important one … is that you are actually the legitimate heir of the Harvilles.’
‘Bullshit! How can I be?’
‘Linda, you’re in the direct line of succession. David was Harville’s first born son. Your grandmother was that son’s older daughter. And so on down the line. You are Lady bloody Harville.’
The pair of them burst into wild laughter.
‘That’s fucking funny,’ said Linda, once she was able to speak through her tears of mirth. ‘Me a Lady. C’mon, Jenna, you’re pulling my leg.’
‘I’m not,’ insisted Jenna. ‘I’ve seen all the certificates. I mean, I don’t suppose you’d ever be able to claim your inheritance because of David being registered as the Manning parents’ child, but all the same …’
Linda clapped a hand over her mouth, her eye suddenly big with horror.
‘But that means that me and Harville …’
‘You’re cousins, albeit fairly distant ones now.’
‘All the same … ugh. It’s incest, isn’t it? What we did?’
‘No, I don’t think so. That’s first cousins. Children of your aunts and uncles.’
‘Oh, well, that’s all right then. I think. Still seems wrong though.’
‘It makes Jason a Harville on both sides, though. I haven’t dared mention it to him.’
‘I can’t take this in. It’s mad.’
‘I know. I nearly screamed when I put all the documentation together and realised what it meant.’
‘So bloody Lord High and Mighty Harville isn’t even the right bloke for the job,’ said Linda indignantly.
‘Ah, well, who knows? Perhaps there’s legal documentation to insist the Hall is always entailed away to a male member of the family. So you might never have got to live there and use the title anyway. But all the same …’
‘It’s quite a nice feeling,’ said Linda, lifting her chin and looking, despite herself, surprisingly regal. ‘Lady Linda. I like it.’
Jenna smiled at Linda’s burst of pomp and circumstance, then put her cup down.