Louise Allen - Silk And Seduction Bundle 2

As he stalked down the length of the aisle, the eyes of all the assembled guests followed his progress avidly. He reflected how he had once foolishly thought that marrying her would be the price he would have to pay for his ungentlemanly conduct on Lady Carteret’s terrace. Now he knew better. The price he must pay for alienating Midge would be letting her go.

‘Midge, the fellow is an impostor!’ Rick was saying. ‘You know he is. My father left no stone unturned in his search for the little boy your mother wanted to adopt. He found the orphanage where your grandfather had tried to conceal him.’ He took hold of her shoulders, forcing her to look into his face. ‘And the records that proved he was killed in a great fire that destroyed a whole wing of the place.’

‘But look at him!’ Imogen protested. ‘The records must have been wrong. Or your father…’ A dreadful doubt shook her. ‘He didn’t want to have him in the house!’ She gasped. ‘Just like my grandfather!’

‘Do not say one word against your grandfather,’ her uncle weighed in. ‘He was doing his best to put things right. Utter disgrace to foist the brat on your poor mother in the first place! Should never have been brought into the marital home!’

Rick shot him a look of annoyance. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but tearing a boy she thought of as her son away from her was not the best thing for my stepmother at all. Nearly broke her heart to lose the boy, wherever he might have come from. Mourned his loss to her dying day. Midge,’ he sighed, ‘for heaven’s sake, my father may have had his faults, but he would not have broken his word. Amanda only agreed to marry him on condition he promised to search for that boy.’

But Imogen no longer shared Rick’s faith in his father’s notion of honour. He had not been unduly worried about leaving her penniless, when he had helped himself to the inheritance her mother had tried to bequeath her. With hindsight, she could see that he had only tolerated having her about, for Amanda’s sake. She did not think he had ever quite managed to forget she was Kit Hebden’s child too. And Stephen had not one single drop of Amanda’s blood running through his veins. Would he really have welcomed Kit’s bastard into his home and allowed him to be brought up alongside his own sons?

Catching a movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned and saw Stephen push himself off the pillar, against which he had been lounging, to stare at her as though he could not believe what he was hearing.

‘Hugh Bredon was not lying, and the records were not wrong!’ Lord Callandar shouted. ‘He did manage to locate the foundling home where my father sent the boy. And there was no question the brat died in a fire. I saw the records myself.’

‘Then who is he?’ Imogen’s bouquet swooshed through the air as she waved in the direction of the Gypsy. ‘Why does he know so much about what everyone tried to hush up? Why does he look like me?’

‘Stop talking such nonsense, girl! He looks nothing like you.’

‘But his smile, Uncle! And the shape of his brows when he frowns. They are straight. Just like mine. Like my father’s.’

‘What is going on?’

At the sound of Viscount Mildenhall’s calm authoritative voice, everyone involved in the altercation turned to where he was standing in the church doorway.

Imogen ran to him and grabbed hold of his forearms.

‘Oh, please, Monty, help me! I have done everything you have asked of me, haven’t I? Won’t you let me have my way in just this one thing? It is our wedding. Yours and mine. Surely I may have just one guest of my own choosing? If you say he may come in, then nobody else has the right to refuse him. He can sit right at the back, if you like, right out of sight!’

He tensed as she specified that it was a ‘he’ they were all arguing about.

‘Perhaps,’ he said coldly, ‘it would help if you were to explain exactly who he is you are so keen to attend our wedding despite your uncle’s objections?’

‘Stephen,’ she said, stepping back and releasing his arms as though they burnt her. ‘My brother.’

‘Your brother ?’ It felt as though the sun had come out. ‘I see no reason why your brother should not attend if he wishes. Why all this fuss?’

‘Because he is not her brother, that’s why!’ bellowed her uncle. ‘The impudent rogue who claims kinship with her is just some filthy Gypsy, trying to cause trouble!’

‘It’s true, Monty,’ put in Rick, stepping forward. ‘The Gypsy boy in question died years ago.’

‘A Gypsy?’ He was so relieved it was not the marriage itself she was objecting to he would have cheerfully given permission for a whole tribe of Gypsies to dance right down the aisle banging tambourines if that was what she wanted.

But before he could tell her so, she had lifted her chin, and said, ‘Yes! My father took a Gypsy woman as a lover…’

Her uncle groaned and covered his face in his hands. She flung her shoulders back, her whole posture now screaming defiance as she continued, ‘And she had his son. And my father brought him to live with us until my grandfather sent him away while my mother was too ill to know what was happening. And his name is Stephen, and he brought me a gift!’ She waved her bouquet towards one of the pillars where he had noticed a swarthy individual lurking before. But there was no one there now.

‘Oh!’ she shrieked, darting to the edge of the portico. ‘He has gone! I must find him!’

Her uncle, surprisingly swift for such a portly man, darted after her, grabbed her arm and pulled her back as she would have run down the steps.

‘Oh, no, you don’t! We have a church full of guests waiting!’

Viscount Mildenhall strode across to the top of the steps, where she was still struggling with her uncle. ‘Midge,’ he said firmly. ‘Your uncle is right.’ For a second, a look of utter loathing blazed across her face. He gritted his teeth and went on, ‘You cannot go running all over town, today of all days. Let Rick find him for you. Captain Bredon!’ he barked.

To his relief, years of military discipline had Rick snapping instantly to attention. ‘Sir!’

‘Find out where the fellow went, and see if you can make some sense out of all this.’

‘Right away, sir!’

Imogen’s eyes widened as Rick ran obediently down the steps, crossed the street and approached a group of people who had been avidly watching the altercation on the church steps. One of them raised his arm and pointed. Rick promptly trotted off in that direction, and was soon lost to sight.

‘Rick will get to the bottom of this,’ he vowed. ‘You know you can trust him.’

He saw the fight go out of her.

‘Y-yes,’ she said in a muted voice, hanging her head. Viscount Mildenhall looked pointedly at where her uncle’s hand still held her arm in a vice-like grip and Lord Callandar finally released her, but she just stood there, looking so lost and alone that the viscount could not help himself. He drew her into his arms and held her close, rubbing his hands up and down her back. After an initial start of surprise, she leaned into him. He felt a flare of triumph at the way she was drawing comfort from him, even if it was only because nobody else was offering it.

Her uncle made a disparaging noise at the back of his throat and stalked off towards a knot of people who’d had the temerity to creep up the steps at the far end of the portico.

‘Better now?’ said Viscount Mildenhall presently, slackening his hold.

She nodded, stepping back and glancing around her guiltily, as though just becoming aware of their breach of etiquette.

Until her eyes snagged on the pillar where the man who claimed to be her brother had been standing. And gasped.