A Flight of Fancy by Laurie Alice Eakes

but we are.” Bainbridge spoke in an undertone barely audible amidst the hubbub of the room, a murmur that sent a chill racing up Whittaker’s spine.
    He kept his face blank and arched his brows. “Indeed, my lord.”
    “Indeed.” Bainbridge’s face also was expressionless. “We have information regarding your mother.”

    Whittaker’s breath snagged in his throat. His hands balled into fists on his thighs. He said nothing for fear he would give away a trace of emotion. But they had to be lying. His mother was a Christian lady, devout in her faith, if a bit too involved with dissenters for the liking of the local gentry. Even so, that was nothing anyone did not already know, and Mama did not care that they either knew or disapproved. He should not fear knowledge these men might have.
    “Regarding the paternity of your brother,” said one of the officers, the younger of the two, with a salacious glint in his eye. “It could not have been your father.”
    “You are accusing my mother of being unfaithful to my father?” Whittaker managed a credibly scoffing laugh. “What a faradiddle.”
    “We know,” Bainbridge said, “we have witnesses to the fact that your father, the seventh earl, was not home for eleven months, at the end of which your brother was born.”
    “Even if I believed you—” Whittaker had to pause to swallow against a dry mouth. “Which I do not, the law says that a child born in wedlock is presumed that of the husband. So you would have a difficult time making anyone believe such a tale about my mother.”
    “Not particularly.” Crawford drew a cheroot from an inside pocket of his scarlet coat and lit it from the candle.
    “The child is presumed legitimate unless the father is out of the country—or, as in this case, away from the estate, which the wife did not leave—for more than ten months.” Bainbridge waved a hand in front of his face. “And put that thing out.”
    “I beg your pardon.” The officer stubbed out the cheroot at once.
    Though smoke still swirled around the low ceiling beams of the taproom, the cloud over their table dissipated.

    “You cannot possibly know that thirty years later.” The calmness of his tone pleased Whittaker.
    “But we can.” Bainbridge’s complacence wasn’t feigned. No one could be that good an actor. “Your father was on a diplomatic mission with France thirty years ago.”
    “But my brother and I look—” Whittaker stopped, but the damage was done.
    He and his brother looked alike because they took after their dark-haired, brown-eyed mother, not their blond-haired, blue-eyed father. They possessed her curved brows and solitary dimple when they smiled. John’s height and breadth of shoulders could have come from anywhere, anyone.
    Mama an adulterer, though? It wasn’t possible.
    “But you do not dare test whether or not we are bluffing,” Bainbridge said.
    “You know I do not.” Whittaker did not care how it appeared. He scrubbed his hands over his face, wishing he could scrub his entire body with harsh soap to eliminate the filth about his mother they had just poured over him. She was a new creature in Christ. God had forgiven her sins.
    But Society would not, however old they were. They did not like being duped, and they would feel so. It would spill over into her present life. Even some church friends would shun her.
    And Cassandra by being there.
    So that was why the Bainbridges insisted Cassandra accept Mama’s invitation, even though they now objected to the marriage. No wonder they objected to the marriage.
    Whittaker managed to hold his head up and keep his voice steady as he asked, “What do you want me to do this time?”
    They spent an hour telling him. By the time the taproom began to quiet as the patrons drifted out in ones and twos orgroups, Whittaker learned what role they needed him to play in the game to stop, or at least damage, the Luddite rebellion in the northern counties. He was young enough to appear