by Kelly Boyce
When he’d received the letter from the late Lord Blackbourne, the earl had made a point of informing Arran that the heir to the Blackbourne title was on his way. An arrogant claim, as if he could will the sex of the baby to be as he wished. Arran had not questioned the baby to be Blackbourne’s. What man would boast about his wife expecting another man’s child, and then pass that child off as the heir to his fortune and title?
Had she duped the late earl as well?
Because seeing Nicholas Sheridan standing next to his mother, the similarities became more and more evident. Not only did he see his own build and coloring and gestures in the man but he recognized several that were also inherent in Callum. The devilish glint of humor in his eyes as if he were up to something, how his smile started in one corner of his mouth, tipping upward before it spread over to the other side.
“Uncle?”
Judith’s hand rested on his sleeve. He opened his mouth to tell her it was untrue. That the similarities were nothing more than coincidence, but the words would not come and his niece was far too astute to be fooled by a lie.
“Oh, Uncle.” She squeezed his arm and leaned closer. “Should we leave?”
He shook his head and placed a hand over hers. His mind raced and whirled. “No. No, it’s fine.” What was the point? Leaving would change nothing. He could not un-see what had been seen. He could not un-know it. He could not run from the truth.
The Earl of Blackbourne was his son.
Chapter Nine
The night wore on and despite the well wishes from friends and acquaintances alike, the one person Gloria wished to see most remained elusive. It was as if Arran had turned phantom and disappeared like a wisp of smoke just when she thought she’d caught sight of him. He was here, of that she was certain. Others claimed they had spoken with him, and on several occasions, she had caught sight of Lady Patience on the dance floor and once, even Miss Sutherland as she waltzed with Benedict. Their uncle would not have left without them.
And yet, she could find him nowhere, leaving her hope of speaking with Arran, of finally revealing to him the truth about their son and unburdening herself of the secret she had kept all these years, dashed.
A feeling she had more than her share of familiarity with.
The crush of the room pushed against her until she could stand it no longer. She needed to escape, to find a quiet space to regroup, regain her bearings enough to allow her to get through the rest of the party and decide what to do next. It had taken all the strength she had to gather the courage needed to speak to Arran about Nicholas. Would she be able to do it again? Or would fear of his anger and disappointment still her tongue?
She did not know.
Gloria sought out Nicholas and Abigail and found the couple huddled near an alcove half hidden by a large potted plant. “Heavens, you two, there are rooms upstairs.” But her admonishment came with a smile, for in truth, she wished everyone felt as free with their affections as her son and daughter-in-law. Such happiness was a beautiful thing to see, and a relief to a mother who’d once feared her son’s anger and bitterness would override any chance he had at finding peace and love. She did not want him taking after her in that regard.
Nicholas straightened and cleared his throat. “Mother. Why we were just—uh, that is the, um, plant was looking a little…unwell. I thought to, uh—” He pulled at the plant’s leaves and struggled for words.
“Make it jealous?” She suggested.
Her son’s cheeks flushed bright red as if he had been caught with his hand in the biscuit jar. “Mother!”
Abigail laughed, enjoying her husband’s horrified expression as she swiftly changed the subject. “Are you enjoying your party?”
“I am,” Gloria lied. She did not have the heart to tell them otherwise. They had put so much effort into the planning. “But I thought I might step outside and take some air in the garden. Do you think anyone would mind my absence?”
Abigail let go of Nicholas’s arm and took Gloria’s hands. “Not at all. Are you feeling well?”
“Oh, yes. I am fine. Truly.” She forced a smile. “But it is always nice to catch one’s breath for the second act, is it not?”
“Of course, Mother.” Nicholas leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Shall I escort you?”
“No, no. I will not be long. Stay here and enjoy your…plant.” She smiled and patted Nicholas’s cheek as she had when he was a young boy. “I shan’t be gone long.”
Gloria made her way across the dance floor, stopping periodically to share a few words with revelers. It would not do to appear rude, or as if she were running from her own party, even if that was exactly what she was doing. She needed out. A place to embrace the quiet and sort through her thoughts and what she needed to do next, how to go about it.
She retrieved her shawl and a lantern from the library, then slipped out the French doors and down the steps. The gardens of Sheridan Park were renowned for their vastness and beauty, but to Gloria they were a place of solitude and peace. The mazes and grottos peppered throughout had allowed her an escape during the long years of her marriage. Often she had taken Nicholas with her, to keep him from Blackbourne’s sight when he was in one of his rages and looking for someone to slake his anger on. And what better target than the boy—his only heir—who had been fathered by another man.
She searched out her favorite grotto and tucked away inside it, resting the lamp on the stone bench before sitting down. The still night air remained crisp and chilly and she wrapped her shawl tightly about her shoulders to keep from shivering.
Oh, if only she could stay out here for the remainder of the evening. The thought of facing her guests with the heaviness of truth weighing upon her heart offered no enticement to return any time soon. She had spent enough years feigning happiness for the masses, putting a proper face on a properly dismal existence wore one down and she was done with it.
So completely and utterly done.
“It occurred to me this evening—”
Gloria jumped at the unexpected voice and whirled around in her seat, nearly upending the lantern as she came face to face with the man she had spent the better part of the evening searching for.
“Arran!”
The moonlight and lantern conspired to cast sharp shadows against the planes and angles of his face, making him far more handsome than any man had a right to be, if a lady wanted to keep her wits and senses about her. And she did. She had to.
He continued to speak as if she had not, his voice quiet, steady. “—That there is a part of the story that I have missed. A very definitive part. And, for the life of me, I’m not certain how that happened; how it came to be that this particular part of our history was not revealed to me.”
He knew.
She tried to breathe, but all the air had rushed out of her lungs, leaving them burning. She attempted to speak, but nothing came, the necessary explanations jumbled and nonsensical and trapped deep within her.
“He is my son.” Arran stated the fact plainly, his hand lifting to rest against his chest, near his heart. “Mine. Not Blackbourne’s.”
He took a step closer and the shadows shifted, illuminating the breadth of his chest and his shoulders where they pressed against the cut of his jacket. His eyebrows dipped and two lines creased between them. So like Nicholas only a few moments before.
Funny, the little things you noticed when your life suddenly teetered on the edge and you knew you were mere seconds from losing your balance and tumbling into a dark abyss.
He laughed, sharp and mirthless. “You know, people kept telling me upon my return that I reminded them of someone, that my face was familiar. I found it odd, given the length of time I had been gone and that I had not known most of these people previous to my departure.”
They had seen it too. Even without knowing to look for it, they had seen the similarities just as she had.
She reached out a hand to him; needing to touch him, to anchor herself. “Arran—”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t me they were seeing, though, was it? It was your son. Our son.” The last two words came out harshly, an accusation. She pulled her hand back.
For years, Gloria had lived with the secret, caged into a life of her own making. Not a life she wanted, that was something different all together, but it was the life she’d chosen for reasons that, even now, she did not doubt were sound. And that life, and the secrets it protected, became what she knew, and everything else nothing more than supposition and imagination. A collection of what ifs. Scenarios concocted out of might have beens. But like most things in life, eventually a time came where one had to answer for their choices.
Her time was now.
“Yes,” she whispered past the constriction in her throat. “Yes, Nicholas is your son.”
Her voice caught, breaking on the liberty of finally—finally!—uttering the words she had wanted to shout from the rooftops for over three decades. She smiled, she could not help herself, for even if every hope she’d dreamed upon Arran’s return crumbled to dust at her feet, at least the truth was out. He knew, as he had always deserved to. Blackbourne could not hurt them now. She no longer had to lie and the knowledge of this filled her with an incredible sense of freedom.
“Why did you not tell me?” His fists clenched at his sides and anger emanated from him in waves, beating against her. He looked away as if the sight of her sickened him. Her heart ached. How did she make him understand? He was a proud man. A hero. She knew the thought of being protected would not sit well with him. It never had.
“I did tell you.”
His gaze shot back to grab hers. “You lie to me? Still? Do you think I would have forgotten such a conversation as if it bore no significance? He is my son!”
Fury vibrated through him and he stalked as far away from her as the small, enclosed space would allow, one hand diving through his dark hair and leaving furrows. She took a deep breath. He’d always been quick to anger and she bore him no enmity for feeling such vehemence now. But if he knew…if he understood the circumstances, surely…
“Please allow me to explain.”
He shook his head and turned back to face her, his hand held out to stave off her words. “There is nothing you can say, Glory. Nothing that can rectify the fact you allowed another man to raise my son. Does he even know I am his father?”
“No—”
“Then your lies know no bounds, do they? How easily you have decided who deserved the truth and who received the lies.”
“I had no choice! I did what I had to and it was a torture, I assure you!” She vaulted up from the bench and he met her toe to toe.
“Then it was a torture you well-deserved! How dare you keep this from me! You are not the woman I thought you were. I came here this evening thinking I may have behaved in haste to turn you away after our kiss, that perhaps you were right and we did deserve another chance. What a fool I was!”
“You were not a fool.” Her voice broke and with it, her heart, torn apart into jagged pieces. “If you will only let me explain. Please, Arran!”
She extended a hand toward him again, but he brushed her away and took a step back beyond her reach. “We are over,” he whispered in the same steady, quiet voice he had first used upon entering the grotto. It echoed with finality and promised no absolution or understanding. “Whatever chance may have existed for us has been forever extinguished by your lies and secrets.”
Arran turned on his heel like a soldier executing a swift maneuver and marched out of the grotto. Out of her life.
Her knees gave way and she sank to the cold ground, its hardness offering no reprieve from the pain echoing through her. A sob caught in her throat and then broke free, bringing with it a torrent of all the pain she had suffered, all the guilt she had carried, all the hopes she had lost.
“Mother?”
How long had she cried before Nicholas found her? It hardly mattered. She looked up into his handsome face, the whisper of his father living and breathing through him. For the longest time, seeing this had given her the strength she’d needed to keep going. Now, its existence only mocked her, another dagger through her broken heart.
She wiped at the tears where they stained her cheeks. Her eyes burned but her conscience demanded she was not yet done.
Nicholas assisted her to her feet. “What is it? Are you injured? Did someone—”
She shook her head. “No. This is my own doing.”
He gave her a confused look. “Your own doing? I don’t understand.”
“I know.” She waved a shaking hand toward the stone bench where the lantern still burned. “Sit down, my sweet boy. There is something I must tell you.”
Chapter Ten
“You, sir, are an idiot and a coward.”
If Arran thought this horrid night was at an end, he was sadly mistaken. After his confrontation with Glory, a battle that left no true victor, he had collected his nieces and returned home, his anger a tangible entity shadowing his every move. Upon arriving, he sought out the sanctuary of his study and a bottle of brandy to numb his heart, but the fine liquor offered no solace or oblivion.
“Forgive me, Sir,” the butler squeaked from behind the irate man filling the doorway. “I told him you were not in but—”
Arran stood and faced the Earl of Blackbourne. His son. “Leave us, Edger. It is fine.”
The butler quickly acquiesced and the doors closed behind Nicholas’s imposing figure, caging his anger inside the four walls of the study.
“How dare you,” the younger man seethed. The hands fisted at his sides shook, his need to do violence palpable. That he didn’t was a testament to his character and somehow, in some odd way, it made Arran proud. In his younger years, he had not controlled his temper so well. He’d been quick to anger and quicker to act, yet far too slow to regret and apologize.
He often wondered if he hadn’t left for London when Glory first made her decision to marry Blackbourne, if he had stayed and tried to convince her to change her mind, would the outcome have been different?
The question haunted him now, but for far different reasons.
“And what is it I have dared?” He stepped away from the warmth of the fire and set the snifter of brandy on his desk.
They were of a height and build. And while his unannounced guest had an even paler version of his mother’s silvery eyes, it was his elder brother’s straight nose and Arran’s firm mouth and sharp cheekbones that had been cobbled together to create the rest of his handsome visage. How strange to see such similarities in someone you had only just met. Stranger yet that others had noticed it before he, even if they lacked the ability to put the full story together.
“Mother has told me the truth.”
“Ah.” Arran nodded. “How noble of her. Yet, you do not seem anywhere near as angry as I over it. Why is that?”
“Because I was not so oblivious to the truth as you.” He spoke the fact like an accusation, like somehow Arran should have known. Should he? The question poked at his conscience, but Nicholas pressed on before he could explore the sensation further. “I have known since I was a boy that Blackbourne was not my true father. He made certain of that, and even more certain that I knew the moment another male heir was borne, I would be sent away, as would my mother.”
“Then you have known for some time. A luxury I was not afforded.”
“That Blackbourne was not my father, yes. That it was you, no. That I learned tonight.”
“And yet you show up on my doorstep and accuse me of being an idiot and…what was the other thing?”
One of Nicholas’s dark eyebrows arched upward. “A coward.”
“Hm. I cannot claim I have never been called an idiot before, however, a coward—I fail to see the correlation between the two in conjunction with this particular issue. Perhaps you could enlighten me?”
“You are a coward, sir, because you ran off into the night instead of staying and fighting for something that is
far more precious than your damnable pride.” Nicholas spat out the last word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. As if he had drunk the same elixir, only to discover it contained nothing but poison.
“I left,” he countered. “Because your mother has lied to me for over thirty years. Because she has kept you from me all this time, disallowed me the opportunity to be a father to you, a husband to her—”
“She had a husband!” Nicholas’s shout echoed against the walls, soaked into the bookcases, rattled the windows. “Or did you forget that when you laid with her the night of my conception?”
His accusation set Arran aback, unprepared for it as he was. He had built his defense based on Glory’s culpability. She had done this. She had not done that. He had not excised his own accountability. But Nicholas had the right of it. Arran had sneaked into her room that night, into her bed. His only thought had been in claiming her, proving his love was the one she needed, deserved. Proving her wrong in her decision to marry Blackbourne.
A truth conveniently disregarded over the years when the pain of losing her made it easier to forget. Blaming her, venting his anger on her memory and betrayal, had kept him going. Kept him from falling apart.
But his son’s pointed accusation no longer afforded him such ignorance.
Nicholas took a step closer. “I sometimes wondered who you would be. I invented every kind of scenario and every reason imaginable as to why my mother broke her marriage vows to be with you. But one part of it remained clear to me—whatever it was, it had left her broken-hearted. She mourned your loss every day of my life. She mourns it still.”
Nicholas’s words cut into him, slicing with sharp blades until he was left scrambling to pull together some semblance of a defense on his behalf. “She made her decision.”
Nicholas closed the space between them until they stood nose to nose. His son possessed a very formidable presence. “What would you have had her do differently? Should she have abandoned her husband and son? Blackbourne had claimed me as his own for the sake of his pride, to not appear the cuckold, but he resented every moment of it and he let us both know at every opportunity. Mother protected me as best she could from his rages, but it meant she took the brunt of it. And Blackbourne made it clear, if she did not play the part of his wife as he expected, if she tried to leave, he would destroy her, me—and you.”