Milton scoffed. “Gerald will change his mind after you give him a few grandchildren.”
What an amazing delusion. Richard’s tone was incredulous as he pointed out, “We could be getting a divorce. Did that never occur to you?”
“You won’t,” the earl said confidently. “Divorce causes the worst sort of scandal in our—”
“You really didn’t think divorce was a possibility?”
“Of course not.”
“When I don’t give a damn about scandal?”
“That scandal would have touched your brother and your nephew. You give a damn about them, don’t you?”
Richard suddenly laughed. “They’re protected.”
Milton didn’t like Richard’s humor, even asked suspiciously, “What’s different about you?”
“I’m in love,” Richard replied.
“You said that before.”
Richard nodded. “Before I hadn’t realized the depth of my feelings for Julia. Now I have. Before we were putting on a charade for you—”
“I knew it!”
“Now we’re not,” Richard finished. “So, no, there won’t be a divorce.”
“I thought you’d see it my—,” Milton began to gloat again.
Richard interrupted this time. “But that’s no benefit to you. Like Gerald, I’ve made it legal. Nothing of mine will ever come to you in my lifetime, or beyond. I have, in fact, disowned you, which effectively removes you from my new family.”
Milton’s eyes flared. “You can’t do that.”
“It’s already done.”
Milton shot out of his chair, furious. “How dare you ruin years of planning?”
“What planning?” Richard asked curiously. Julia had slipped her hand into his for support, but she realized he was quite calm in the face of his father’s fury. “I’m an adult. What’s hers is mine, not yours.”
“We were to be one family, and families take care of their own. I expected to never want for anything again.”
“The Millers offered you a fortune to release Julia from that marriage contract,” Richard reminded him. “Why didn’t you take it when you had the chance?”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“It would have been more’n enough if you sold that collection you have upstairs in your closet.”
Milton nearly screeched, “Are you mad? I’ve been collecting those vases since I was a young man. It’s the only real passion I have!”
Julia suddenly guessed, “My God, you’ve already spent the dowry on more vases, haven’t you?”
“Of course I did. Do you know how long I’ve had to wait to buy the pieces I wanted? What little was left of our family wealth ran out long before my wife died, thanks to her parents. I was fine before then, able to buy the occasional vase I coveted. But then the prices started getting too steep and that infuriated me. You have no idea what it’s like to love something so much and be unable to obtain it. It’s important to have things of beauty in your life that you can value and love. But I couldn’t afford them anymore! Year after year my suppliers would show up with a vase they knew I would want, and I had to turn them away, again and again.”
“Do you realize how pathetic that sounds?” Richard said. “And what a fool it makes of you, that you’d place more value on hard, cold objects than you do on the people in your life?”
“Don’t you judge me, boy,” Milton snarled. “It was your mother’s fault! Her debts, her parents’ debts. And on top of that, she saddled me with you! But you were going to tip the scales and correct the injustice. You were going to make this family prosperous again. And now look what you’ve done, you ungrateful whelp.”
“Are you even my real sire?”
“I raised you, didn’t I?” Milton said defensively.
“That doesn’t answer the question. But you call life with you being raised? If I’m not yours, I would rather you had given me away, even to the poorest dirt farmer. Any other life would have been preferable to the one I had here with you.”
“It’s what I should have done! Of course you’re not mine. She couldn’t wait to throw that in my face as soon as she got back from London, or tell me what a whore she’d been to assure it. She laughed when she confessed there were so many men, she had no idea who your father was. You can’t imagine how much I hated her.”
“And me,” Richard said.
“Yes! And you.”
“I’m afraid that’s not all of it,” Charles said from the doorway behind them.
“Charles, get out of here,” Milton ordered. “This is no concern of yours.”
“Actually, it is,” Charles said as he came farther into the room. “And it’s high time I spoke up. Mother told me everything, you know. I was her only confidant. It was to be our secret. I was barely old enough to understand, and her rage more often than not frightened me. She hated you so much. I tried to hate you, too, but I couldn’t. Richard is only my half brother, but I’m the bastard she produced from cuckolding you. Richard is your real son.”
Milton fell back into his chair, his complexion gone white. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m finally telling the truth. She craved revenge and hers was twofold. She wanted you to love your bastard and hate your son. My father is the man she loved, the one she wanted to marry. She’d known him all her life. But his family wasn’t rich enough to suit them, so her parents gave her to you instead.”
“You’re lying!” Milton said again.
Charles shook his head sadly. “She loved my father till the day she died. They trysted daily in the woods near here until an emergency called him home. Then he died—suspiciously. She blamed you. She really thought you’d found out about them and arranged his death. So she devised the ultimate revenge. She wanted you to think your real son was her bastard. She was already pregnant with Richard when she went to London. But she knew she was having her lover’s child soon after your marriage. Did you never wonder why she came to your bed, begging for a child, even though she hated you?”
Milton was too shocked to reply as he stared at Richard with new eyes. Julia was speechless, too. This wasn’t a real family, being so filled with hate, lies, and revenge. That her husband had risen beyond this legacy to become the tender, caring man he was, was a marvel. Ironically, Richard seemed unaffected by what he’d just learned.
“Well, that was certainly short-lived relief,” he remarked drily.
“I’m sorry, Richard,” Charles said, shamefaced. “I was supposed to tell him at an appropriate time, and you. There were so many appropriate times, but—I never had the guts to do it.”
“It’s all right.” Richard said, and he even smiled at his brother. “As I told my wife, whether he is or isn’t my sire changes nothing. I would have liked to think he wasn’t. I can’t deny that. But all these years I’ve never doubted he was, which accounted for such a rotten feeling inside me, that I couldn’t love him. That seems to be gone now and I have you to thank for that. It’s a relief knowing he had his reasons, however selfish and wrongheaded, for treating me as he did.”
Milton found his voice. “Richard—?”
“Don’t,” Richard said, cutting off what sounded like a conciliatory tone coming from his father. “You know it’s too late. You let hate govern your life, and because of it, you made it govern mine, too. That’s the only legacy I have from you. But I’m cutting myself off from the source for good.”
“But this changes everything.”
“My God, how delusional you are. All bridges have been burned here. You can’t change what you’ve wrought, old man. There’s no going back. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t even exist anymore.”
The room fell silent. No one there other than Milton might have thought Richard’s statement was harsh. Milton had sundered his own family, deliberately, obsessively. There was no room for pity for someone like him.
“Let’s get out of here,” Charles suggested. “Mathew and I are leaving, too. I was misguided in thinking he
needed to know both of his grandfathers, when he only really has one.”
“Don’t take him from me. Please.”
The pleading tone from Milton was so incongruous it didn’t even sound real, but it stopped Charles long enough for him to say, “A burden has been lifted from my shoulders today. You’re not going to put it back there. Mathew is no relation of yours. I’m no relation of yours.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I love Mathew.”
They were incredulous, and while the brothers weren’t going to ask the obvious question, Julia wasn’t so reticent. “Why couldn’t you love your own sons?”
Milton glared at her for her impertinence. “Because they were her sons and I despised her. But she died so many years ago, and nothing about Mathew has ever reminded me of her.”
“I could almost pity you, but I don’t,” Julia said. “You, sir, are a disease, and you’ve infected the people in this room long enough, myself included. You’ve placed value on objects instead of people. You’ve hurt innocent children because you didn’t like their mother. You had a family and you didn’t cherish it, didn’t even try. You don’t deserve another. My husband has put ‘paid’ to this account. The receipt stands before you. Now you live with what you’ve wrought, having no one left who gives a damn about you.”
“Mathew loves me!”
“Mathew doesn’t know you! It doesn’t matter what face you show him. The taint is still there and thank God he’s going to be removed from it.”
Chapter Fifty-three
JULIA WAS ONLY SLIGHTLY embarrassed when they left Willow Woods—for the last time. She hadn’t meant to display her no-nonsense business instincts in that meeting with the earl. She hadn’t meant to display her disgust either. But she’d been unable to stop herself. Now she was a bit concerned about Richard’s reaction not only to what he’d learned today, but to her indecorous behavior.
But she didn’t get a chance to discuss it with him until that night when they were finally alone at the inn they’d stopped at to break up the journey back to London. Charles and Mathew had ended up sharing the coach with them.
Charles hadn’t wanted to spend another moment in that house any more than they did, not even long enough to pack. He would send for their belongings later. Right now, he wanted to spend as much time with his brother as he could, before The Triton sailed again. Then he intended to stay with Mathew’s real grandfather briefly, until he found them a house of their own in Manchester.
Julia worried that that would be too close to Willow Woods and mentioned it to Richard on the way into the inn when Charles and Mathew went ahead of them. She was actually delighted to hear about Charles’s lady friend and that he couldn’t bear to move too far from her. But she got Charles to promise that they would visit the islands after she and Richard were settled there. Mathew was already excited by the idea, so she didn’t expect them to wait too long.
The four of them shared a relaxing dinner that evening, the tension gone, the burdens gone. Mathew didn’t yet know that he and his father were no longer going to live at Willow Woods. Charles had told Julia in an aside that he would eventually tell his son a story about two brothers and a not-so-nice father and let him decide for himself if he wanted such a person in his life. Again, choices were very, very important to these two men who’d never been allowed to make any of their own while growing up.
She retired first, leaving the brothers a little time on their own. But Richard wasn’t long in joining her in their room. She’d been sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed, combing her hair, but she immediately got up to meet him in the middle of the room and put her arms around him.
“I’m so glad this day is behind us,” she told him.
“So am I. But I’ve been dying to ask you since we left there—you’re not feeling sorry for him, are you?”
“Me?” she said, somewhat in surprise. “I was going to ask that question of you.”
He chuckled. “Well, my answer is a resounding no. What about yours?”
“The same.”
“Glad to hear it. Because he really did kill whatever love I had for him when I was a child. That I’m apparently his only son now is simply an amusing irony. As I said before, I couldn’t care less.”
She grinned. “You know that means his title will eventually come to you.”
Richard snorted. “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything of his. I’d rather it went to Charles as I always assumed it would, then to Matthew after him. I’m sure Milton will consider that, too, and tell no one of this. Besides, you’re the only thing I want, Jewels. But …”
She leaned back and swatted his chest lightly. “You can’t put a but after that statement!”
“However?” he teased.
“No however either.”
“Then maybe you should just let me finish. I can’t deny you got my hopes up that I was a bastard, and now I’m a little disappointed that I’m still related to Milton Allen by blood. But I’ll get over it.” Then he grinned roguishly. “Will you help me get over it?”
That was practically the same question he’d asked her when he came back into her life the night of the Malory ball. She laughed and leaned into him suggestively and said, “That’s—very likely.”
He laughed with her. “God, I love you. And that’s yet another irony, isn’t it?”
“I beg your pardon? You’re really stepping on thin ice now.”
He pulled her closer despite her huffy warning. “I thought my forced marriage would be just like my father’s.” He gave her a loving smile before he kissed her, then kissed her again. “The irony is, how wrong I was.”
She’d been touching him too long. Any more discussion could wait until later. She wrapped an arm around his waist, drew his lips down to hers with the other, threaded her hand through his hair—and finally realized what was missing! With a gasp, she turned him around to verify that his long queue was nowhere to be found.
“Good God, what’d you do?” she cried, aghast. “I liked your hair!”
“I thought it was time to finally cut it, since I don’t have anything to rebel against anymore, so Charles, Mathew, and I hunted down a barber after dinner. But I’ll grow it back for you.”
“No, not for me. It’s your choice.”
He laughed at her effort not to sound disappointed. “You’re my choice, Jewels, and whatever makes you happy makes me happy.”
She wondered if he realized he’d just ceded all his future choices to her. But not really, because perfect matches—and he was certainly hers—had many benefits. Happy compromises, for one. With her loving him so much, whatever made him happy would always make her happy, too. It could be no other way.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter T
hirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
That Perfect Someone Page 30