Mary Nichols - Regency High Society Vol 5 - The Disgraced Marchioness / The Reluctant Escort / The Outrageous Debutante / A Damnable Rogue

Her low voice and the shadows in her eyes made his blood chill. There was something here. He set his mind and his will to remain calm.

‘Come and sit,’ he encouraged. ‘Tell me what it is.’

She resisted still, remaining tall and straight in the centre of the room. He noted that her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, although half-hidden by the folds of her dress.

‘No. I must stand. Listen, Hal. You must not go back to America without knowing…without realising…’ Her words dried on her lips.

Hal’s concern deepened, acquiring a sharp edge that sliced at his heart. ‘Do I really need to know?’ he asked gently. It was the coward’s way, he knew, to prevent her opening her heart to him, but what good would it do? Was she indeed going to confess at last that she had rejected him to set her sights so much higher—and had achieved her goal through less than honourable means? He did not think that he wanted to know. He would rather live without the unpalatable knowledge of her betrayal and perfidy, rather carry the memory of her softness and sweetness as she turned to him in the night.

‘I must say it,’ she said simply, studying her fingers now linked before her, white with tension. ‘It is on my conscience. And it could affect your future, your whole life. I must say it. By keeping silent I committed a great wrong.’

A pause. She moistened her lips with her tongue, then raised her eyes to his, a silent plea for understanding and compassion. For acceptance of a situation that had not been entirely of her own making, in which she had made the only choice possible.

‘My son. Tom. He is not Thomas’s child. He is yours…your son, Hal.’

The resulting silence echoed in the room, filling it from floor to ceiling with a tension that could be felt, tasted even. Lord Henry stared at her, blank shock imprinting his face, his brain repeating the words over and over again as if it might make for clearer understanding. Incomprehensibly, he could not grasp their significance.

‘What?’ The question was harsh, even though his voice was soft. He had suspected her of carrying Thomas’s child and cursed himself for his lack of trust. But he had never suspected this.

‘Tom is your child.’ Eleanor never once took her gaze from his face, pinning him with her words, challenging him to deny it. ‘That last night we spent together. I found that I was carrying him when you had gone…’

‘My son.’ The meaning took hold, searingly bright, as the implications began to leap into sharp and painful focus. As Henry recalled, suddenly with a terrible clarity, the words that he had overheard her speak to the child, his child, in the small sunlit parlour. Before he had held the infant in his own arms. You can never know your father…you will never keep his image in your memory… And he had not known, not understood. How could he have held his own son and not have realised? But then he had not understood her meaning. The powerful tangle of emotions threatened to choke him, but his eyes were stark, austere even, all emotion effectively buried when he turned his gaze on the woman who stood before him. ‘Why did you not tell me? Why did I not know of this?’

‘I did not know how to reach you. I wrote to you, but received no reply. And then it was too late—I was married to Thomas and it would have done more harm than good to tell you. And…'But there were no excuses, really. She gave up, eyes still searching his face to determine his reaction.

‘Did Thomas know?’ Henry rubbed his hands over his face, struggling to make sense of the incredible confession. ‘When you married him, did he know that you carried my child?’

‘Of course he did!’ She grew pale with anger and not a little shame that she had put Thomas in such an invidious position. ‘Would you accuse me of tricking him? Of course Thomas knew that Tom was your son.’

Baxendale’s words returned to Henry like a blow to the gut. Your precious sister-in-law made sure that she ensnared your brother, did she not? This terrible scenario opening before him, revealed by the only woman whom he had ever loved, was even worse than the one painted by his enemy with such malicious intent. The shock wave rolled over him with remorseless power. It coated his next words with pitiless despair.

‘Or did you allow my gullible brother to think that the child was his? Was that why he married you, to give his name to his own bastard child? Poor Thomas always did believe the best of everyone. Did you indeed trap him into marriage? Baxendale did not realise how far from the mark he was. Even he did not imagine that you would be capable of such a depth of deceit and trickery.’

Eleanor drew in her breath at the deliberate and ruthless assassination of her character. The pain in her heart was tangible.

How could he accuse her of such dishonesty? What could Edward Baxendale have possibly said to cause this volley of spiteful words?

‘Why tell me now?’ Lord Henry demanded, lips curled in a snarl. ‘If you made so little effort to inform me two years ago, why now?’

She strove for calm in the midst of this storm of callous cruelty. There must be a way out of this maelstrom if only she could find it. ‘Because with Thomas’s death it has changed everything. The title is yours by rights. You should be Marquis of Burford. My son—your son—has no right to inherit before you.’

No! Oh God, no!

An icy hand closed inexorably round his heart with exquisite torture as he contemplated the one thing in life he did not want, had never wanted.

‘I do not want it.’ The denial was flat and instantaneous, disguising his fear. ‘Neither the title nor the estate.’

‘Perhaps not. But it would be wrong if you never knew, never had the knowledge to make the choice.’ She swallowed against the lump in her throat. ‘If you never had the choice to claim your son and recognise him as your own.’

‘Do you really expect me to believe all this?’ She would never have believed the flat denial in his eyes, in his voice.

‘Why not? Why should you not believe me?’ Anger began to replace shock in her veins and she lifted her head, drawing pride and dignity around her shoulders like a velvet cloak. ‘I could have let you leave next week—without ever telling you that you had a child. Why should I make up a situation that would compromise my own honour? I have nothing to gain from this confession other than society’s condemnation if it becomes known outside these four walls. It was my decision to allow you…intimacies without marriage. For that I certainly deserve censure. And how I paid the price!’ She stifled a sob. She would not shed tears over this. Never again! ‘I trusted you to marry me.’

Her accusation hit home, but he was too angry to give it credence, to contemplate it for more than a heartbeat. Even though a small part of his brain admitted that in all honesty she could not take all the blame for this. The child was the making of both of them in a moment of mutual love and desire. Hers had been the innocence on that occasion. How could he be so utterly selfish as to heap the blame on her? If the child was really his, of course, a nasty little voice insinuated in his mind. But he pushed away the uncomfortable thoughts and concentrated on the burning issue that raged, destructive and uncurbed, through his blood.

‘You ask why I should accept your words. Perhaps you think your timely confession to be in your own interests. I suppose that it is just conceivable that, given the glad news of a son and heir, I would fall at your feet in guilt for my past actions and in gratitude marry you. That would restore all your status and wealth as Marchioness of Burford. An achievement indeed! Instead of the power being held in trust and your own income limited to that from the widow’s jointure, however generous it might be.’