He was barely aware of moving forward, taking it from Aiden, unfolding it and staring at the words he’d longed to read for ages. Soon would follow a letter in the Times written by the Duke of Hedley proclaiming to the world that he’d sired a bastard and declaring Mick as his. Many shied away from admitting their illegitimacy, but Mick had always worn his like a badge of honor.
He imagined the reverence that would be given to him when he strolled into a ballroom. The dinners to which he’d be invited. The soirees he would attend.
He considered the pride with which Aslyn would walk beside him, knowing from whence he’d sprung and knowing how far he’d had to climb.
He might even discover who had given birth to him. He wanted to know about the woman who had brought him into the world and then allowed Hedley to cart him away. Had she been a longtime mistress? A lover for only a single night? Was she some servant he’d taken advantage of? Was she still alive? Did she ever think about him?
“The man was a wreck,” Aiden said, interrupting his satisfying musings, “sobbing like a babe in need of a tit, when he realized his wager hadn’t paid off and he wasn’t getting that property back.”
“He wagered it?”
“He was desperate to win that final hand at all costs. I had to do some negotiating with the fellow who did. You owe me five hundred quid.”
Five hundred? This property’s annual income was worth ten times that. He’d hoped for it but never truly believed Kipwick would be desperate enough or stupid enough to give it up.
“This is the last piece,” Aiden said. “You can destroy Hedley now if he doesn’t acknowledge you.”
“Why would Hedley acknowledge you?”
At the soft voice, the voice that only minutes ago had been screaming out his name in rapture, Mick squeezed his eyes shut. Damnation. Spinning around he faced her. She stood in the opening to the hallway, as beautiful as always, his dressing gown drawn protectively about her.
“Why?” she repeated insistently. “Why would he acknowledge you and as what precisely?”
He hadn’t meant for her to find out like this, had wanted to prepare her gently, once he had the promise of the duke’s acknowledgment.
“I’m his bastard.”
Chapter 19
It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.
The words spun through her mind like a child’s wooden top, only she would be the one to topple over when everything came to a stop.
Mick was the duke’s bastard? Certainly she’d had a passing thought there was some resemblance, but dark hair and blue eyes were not all that uncommon. The ramifications that the duke had been unfaithful to the duchess sickened her, caused her stomach to roil but not nearly as much as the realization that she knew as little about the man with whom she’d fallen in love as she’d known about Kip when she’d accepted his offer of marriage. Had she learned nothing from that disastrous affair?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. During all the moments when they were together, surely there had been one when he could have told her who he was.
“Because I couldn’t be certain you’d choose me over him.”
She slid her gaze over to the brother, the one who had burst in so jolly pleased that he now held the deed to Loudon Green. Kip’s heritage. It wasn’t part of the entailed properties, but the beautiful estate in Yorkshire had been in the family for at least two generations. She’d always preferred it to the ducal seat, had even imagined she would eventually make her home there when she’d thought she’d marry Kip. She cut her gaze back to Mick. “You took him to your brother’s club.”
“Yes.”
“Knew he gambled to distraction.”
“Yes. I needed him far into debt. I needed the properties. I need the threat of ruining him to convince Hedley to acknowledge me as his son.”
“Meeting at Cremorne wasn’t happenstance.”
“No.”
At least he was admitting—
Her thoughts slammed to a halt; her stomach was on the verge of heaving. “Am I part of your revenge or whatever the deuce it is you think you’re doing here?”
He didn’t look away from her, but she saw the guilt wash over his features. “In the beginning . . .” he said slowly, quietly.
Covering her mouth with her hand, she spun around, presenting her back to him. Dear God, her chest hurt. Her heart hurt. “All the random times our paths crossed . . . they weren’t random at all, were they?” Every encounter played itself over through her mind. She twirled around. The brother was gone, thank goodness. She didn’t need an audience to witness her humiliation, far worse than what she’d experienced when Kip had gambled away her jewels. “The urchin who nicked my bracelet . . . tell me he didn’t do it on your behest. Tell me it was not a ploy to speak with me, to appear to be heroic.”
He said nothing, and in the silence she heard his answer so loudly she thought she might go deaf. She slammed her eyes closed as every warning the Duchess of Hedley had ever given her mocked her. “I was such a fool.”
“What was I to do, Aslyn, in order to spend time in your company? I wasn’t invited to balls, soirees, or dinners.”
“You could have called on me like any other gentleman.”
He laughed harshly. “Hedley would have kicked me out the moment he saw me. Do you think he would have been pleased to know his bastard had an interest in his ward, a woman he intended to marry off to his heir?”
If that were true, the duke’s acknowledgment wasn’t going to change anything, wasn’t going to allow them to be together. “If I wasn’t his ward, if the gossip rags weren’t speculating that Kip and I would marry, if White’s wasn’t wagering on my receiving his proposal by the end of the Season, would you have even given me a glance?” Into the silence, she cursed and fought back the tears. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her weep. “This scheme of yours—why not just ask him for the acknowledgment?”
“I did. Half a dozen times. He ignored every missive I sent except for the first. ‘I have no bastard.’ That was all he wrote. You think I look like him now? You should see me without the beard. I have his damned dimpled chin.”
“And if he will not acknowledge you?”
“Then I will see his heir ruined.”
“You can’t ask Kip to pay for the sins of his father.”
“Why not? I’ve paid for them my entire life. I’m the duke’s bastard, Aslyn. His bastard.” He fairly spat the word. She flinched at the disgust she heard in his tone.
“But you’ve risen above it.”
“You never rise above it. Always it’s there. Do you know there are foundling homes that won’t take in bastards? Neither will workhouses. Because we are born in sin, of sin. We are the devil’s work.”
“But Kip’s done nothing to you.”
“He’s lived within the shadow of the man who sired me then cast me aside.”
“Then punish the father not the son.”
“I am punishing the father. He will see his legitimate son ruined and his bastard succeed. He will know he is leaving his titles and estates to someone unworthy of them, while the worthy one can’t have them.”
“If you do this, you’re not worthy of anything. You shall be the lowest of the low, not even worthy of a gutter in which to lie.”
“He wanted me killed!” He charged away from her. “He gave me to a woman knowing she would kill me.” He spun around and glared at her. “No. Worse. He paid her to starve me. That is how bastards are dealt with when they are not considered deserving of life.”
Her stomach roiled. “I don’t believe the duke would condone such a horrible practice, would partake in it.”
“My mum took out an advert in the Daily Telegraph, saying she would take on a sickly child for a fee. There were code words in the advert, in the way it was written, alerting potential customers
to the fact she would dispose of the child. He brought me to her in the dead of night, naked except for the blanket in which I was wrapped. ‘I don’t want it to suffer,’ he told her. It. To him, I was not even human. But she couldn’t bring herself to kill me. Two others had been brought to her. She’d kept them tranquil with laudanum until they eventually died. Then her own three children died of typhus, and she thought God was punishing her for the deaths she’d brought to innocents. So I was spared. She raised me as her own. But it did not change the fact that my father—and I suppose my mother, whoever the hell she was—wanted me dead. I often wonder if he continued to fuck her, if his other bastards were put to death without any more thought than one might give the killing of a fly.”
She didn’t know what to say. She knew the Duke of Hedley, had grown up in his residences, had taken breakfast with him nearly every morning since she was nine years old. “The man who raised me would not have done that.”
“A hundred and fifty quid. That’s what my death was worth to him.”
He seemed so sure, yet it was inconceivable to her that Hedley would condone murder. It was also inconceivable that this man would seek to destroy those she loved. “Being wronged does not justify hurting others.”
“Tell that to your precious duke. All I want is for him to publicly recognize me as his son. To admit to me what he did—he does not have to do that publicly. But he does have to acknowledge me, invite me to their affairs—”
“They don’t have affairs. They never entertain.”
“Then he can take me to his clubs, introduce me as his son, assist me in gaining the respect I deserve.”
“But you’ve done that on your own, with your business—”
“I can’t get into his bloody clubs!”
That was what was important to him? Membership in gentlemen’s clubs? Disappointment slammed into her. When it came to men, apparently she was a terrible judge of character. “All the wooing. Was your goal to ruin me or to wed me?”
“Once way or the other I will be accepted by the nobility. I will move about in their circles.”
“Even if it costs you whatever affection I might hold for you?”
“You don’t love me, Aslyn. I’m a commoner to play with for a bit, to come to when you’re looking for some scandalous adventure, a bit of the rough. When your life is too clean and you want to play in the dirt for a while. Then you can scrub it all off and forget you’d ever dallied with the likes of me.”
“You’re wrong.”
She arrived at Hedley Hall in a hansom that she had walked miles to find. Past the area where Mick’s buildings loomed, she’d marched with dogged determination. He’d offered use of his carriage, but she wanted nothing from him. He’d used her, she’d been part of his scheme. Even with her disgust of him radiating from her, he’d walked along behind her, serving as her silent protector until she’d finally located a hansom.
The front door was locked, but she used the key she’d procured. The silence that greeted her wasn’t surprising. If things were locked up, everyone was abed.
Gathering what little strength remained to her, she dragged herself up the stairs. All she wanted was to take a bath, to wash him off. Every touch, every caress, every kiss, every lick. The things he’d done to her, she’d done to him. The cries, the raw need, the way her body had sung to his tune only added to her humiliation, to her anger, to her fury.
Opening the door to her bedchamber, she came up short at the sight of the solitary lamp illuminating the figure sitting in a chair in the corner.
“Where have you been?” Kip asked.
“None of your concern.” Closing the door quietly behind her, she wandered nearer to him. He looked awful, worse than she’d ever seen him, with his hair greasy and unkempt, his jacket wrinkled, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his neck cloth unknotted. He’d not shaved in days, in nights. His eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen and red-rimmed. His cheeks were hollowed out, his skin sallow. She could clearly envision him as Aiden had described him: desperate to win that final hand at all costs.
He’d paid the price with his heritage, his pride, his manhood.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m in trouble, Aslyn.” Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his thighs, bent his head as though it weighed too much to hold upright. Finally he lifted it, met her gaze. “I’ve lost everything. Everything.”
She’d known that, of course. Knew what he’d lost, the circumstances that had led to the loss. He’d played so easily into Mick’s hands. At that moment she despised them both.
Shakily he shoved himself to his feet, held out a trembling hand toward her. “I need you.” How she had once longed for words spoken so passionately from him. “If we marry quickly, soon, I will be given access to your trust and can put everything back to rights before Father finds out what I’ve done. Else I am ruined.”
How was it that she managed to circle herself with men who wanted her only for their own gain? She was bloody well tired of it. She angled up her chin, faced him squarely. “What’s in it for me?”
He seemed taken aback, whether from the bluntness of her question or her demanding tone, she didn’t know. “You will become a countess, one day you will be a duchess.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to be a duchess. I want only to be loved.” As she’d believed Mick loved her. Moments filled with smiles, laughter and believing that happily-ever-afters existed.
“I love you. Of course I do.”
“Not as much as you love your gambling.”
“I’ll do as you ask. I’ll give it up.”
“I can’t marry you.” She didn’t trust him to keep his word. Nor had she fallen in love with him as she’d fallen in love with another. Now that she knew what it was to want, to desire, to yearn for—how could she ever settle for less? Even as her heart ached with Mick’s betrayal, she wouldn’t marry a man who couldn’t stir passion within her breast, who didn’t make her more than she’d thought herself capable of being.
“We have an understanding.”
“We don’t. I’ve been trying for days to meet with you so we could officially call off our betrothal, so I could stop making excuses to your mother for not discussing the details of the wedding. Kip, I love you as a brother, not as a man to warm my bed.”
“Are you going to marry him? Trewlove?”
“No.” He’d betrayed her, used her, schemed to destroy those she loved—all for want of an acknowledgment that would gain him nothing he didn’t already possess. “He’s your brother.”
He blinked, looked as though he might be more ill. “I beg your pardon?”
“He’s your father’s by-blow.”
“Did Trewlove tell you that?”
She nodded, sank into a chair. “But once he told me, I could see it. I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.”
“You care for him.”
She had. What she felt now was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. She wanted to never see him again, wanted him to comfort her. She wanted him to have been honest from beginning, yearned to know if he’d ever meant anything he’d ever said to her or if it had all just been posturing, to put himself in a position to destroy the duke. She hated him with every fiber of her being.
Unfortunately she loved him just as deeply—which was the reason that the truth of him hurt so damned much.
Chapter 20
I have managed to obtain the deeds to the properties you lost as well as your markers from various gaming hells. Bring the duke to my office at eleven so we might discuss the terms upon which they will be returned to you. No duke, no meeting. No meeting, and I shall see you ruined.
—Mick Trewlove
Mick had the missive delivered to Kipwick first thing that morning.
Now as his valet brushed shaving lather over his thick beard,
he studied his reflection in the mirror. When he’d discovered the bones in Ettie Trewlove’s garden, he’d also uncovered his own past. She’d given him the tattered remains of the blanket in which he’d been wrapped, and she’d told him the tale of the gent, in the fancy carriage, who’d brought Mick to her door. The man had never given his name, and it was possible the blanket had been nicked, but the first time Mick had caught sight of Hedley, he’d known the truth: his father was a bloody duke.
He’d seen himself in the tall, slender man with the black hair and the vivid blue eyes. He’d seen himself in the pronounced dimpled chin. The same chin that the Earl of Kipwick sported.
He’d been fifteen at the time, hauling the dustbin out of the iron trench near the servants’ entrance where it was kept. The duke—striding toward the stables, no doubt about to enjoy his morning ride—hadn’t even bothered to give the laborers who disposed of his rubbish a passing glance. Not a tip of his hat nor a “Good day to you.”
They were beneath him, not even worthy of being noticed.
He’d damned well notice Mick today or tomorrow or the day after. Whenever it was that he decided the reputation of his legitimate son was worth saving. He had no guarantee the man would heed his summons for a meeting today, but eventually he would come.
As the valet carefully scraped the razor over his jaw, Mick felt the cool air touch upon skin that he’d not seen in years. As soon as he’d begun to sprout facial hair, he’d set about hiding beneath dark whiskers what he considered a mark of his heritage. The duke hadn’t wanted him when he was born. He’d determined he’d gain nothing by approaching the man directly, since the scapegrace didn’t believe his own flesh and blood deserved to breathe London’s air and all but one of his missives for a meeting had gone unanswered.
Mick was fairly certain he wouldn’t want him now, but his plans would remove the duke’s wishes on the matter. He would be publicly acknowledged before the week was out. Then he would call upon Aslyn as a gentleman would and convince her that what had been done had been necessary if they were to have any future together.
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