“Oh darling, I’m so sorry.” It appeared her sister had grown fond of the woman if her death years later pained her still.
When Mrs. Henley had finally tracked them down a month before her wedding, they hadn’t precisely welcomed what she imparted to them. They’d been stunned not just to learn she had been a close friend of their mother’s but rendered speechless at who exactly their mother was.
Instinctively, they’d both felt they could trust her. Mrs. Henley had known who they were for many years and by all appearances, had told no one. She’d merely kept a watch on them, relieved when she discovered their half brother had taken them in. And then upon deciding they were old enough to know about their mother, she’d told them. It had been she who had cautioned them to keep the information to themselves, fearing the grave repercussions of something like that becoming public.
Your brother need not know.
She’d said nothing of Alex but that had been inferred.
No, her sister was right. Mrs. Henley would never have told a soul. Had she wanted to ruin them, she’d have done so long ago.
Katie finally looked up and flashed a tight smile. “She was a good woman. She asked about you many times before she died.”
Charlotte felt a pinch in her heart. It had been clear Mrs. Henley, seventy if she was a day, with fine, weathered skin and diminutive in stature, had formed a very strong bond with their mother.
Mrs. Henley had spoken of her in the fondest of terms, tearing up when she spoke of her death and when she’d lost track of her and Katie’s whereabouts. When she had found them after a year of searching, they were living with the nanny and nursemaid their father had hired to care for them until they could be shipped off to boarding school.
Their mother had been like a daughter to her and hence the connection she felt to them.
“I’m sorry she’s gone,” Charlotte said and truly meant it.
With a small nod, Katie commenced drinking her tea. The silence following was stark with so many questions Charlotte dare not ask, at least not yet for it would only fuel questions she herself could not answer.
“You must go and speak to Alex—today,” Katie announced after a time.
This Charlotte knew. It’s what was creating butterflies in her stomach and making her heart feel as if it were lodged in her throat. Her only response was a slow nod.
“You must tell him the truth,” Katie continued, now looking at her direct.
The truth. Now that was a scary prospect and something Charlotte had considered only briefly after meeting Mrs. Henley. The letter had taken care of that unruly compulsion. How could she when the truth had the power to destroy lives if it fell into the wrong hands? Worse than that, should there be anything worse, the truth would make him look at her differently. It had made her look at herself differently since the day she’d learned of it. How could it not fail to do the same to Alex?
“I need to explain.”
“If you lie to him, he will know.”
That Charlotte also knew, which would only make him hate her more. Oh God, she could see she had no choice in this. She had to tell him the truth.
Days before, her sole concern had been her sister. Since the moment Lucas had told her, she’d made countless bargains with God to spare Katie’s life. She’d been so scared, heartsick with it. Now she knew an entirely different kind of fear but one she felt just as acutely.
Charlotte arrived at Gretchen Manor an hour later and after spending two minutes in the foyer while the footman ascertained if his lord was in to visitors, she was finally led into the drawing room to await him there.
The manor house was smaller than her brother’s but her entire residence could likely fit into three of the rooms with room to spare. The drawing room held two tan sofas, a settee, one rather lofty winged-back chair and a chaise lounge, which looked incongruously feminine amid furniture somber and square. Everything in the room suited Alex from the oil painting that hung like an island in the middle of an endless sea of wall, to the redwood center table and the oblong brown rug.
Charlotte had elected to wear her most flattering day dress, pale pink in color with a ruched neckline and an unadorned satin skirt. Amid tasseled gold and brown cushions, she was the brightest thing in the room.
She’d come here to bare her soul, as it were. However, when Alex arrived a full ten minutes later, his tight jaw, cold, gray eyes and thin-lipped expression did not invite her to remove her gloves—which she’d already done—much less bare her soul.
Nonetheless, her stomach went into a free fall and her equilibrium was duly tested. She imagined it would take time for her to see him again and not feel so completely undone. Like his appearance did not literally steal the breath from her lungs. That her pulse did not race like a raging river during a storm and every cell in her body did not immediately become acutely aware of him as the devastatingly handsome man he was.
Clad in nothing but shirtsleeves, black trousers and a pair of black scuffed boots, he hardly appeared ready for company. He stood at the entrance looking precisely the same as she’d first met him in the vestibule of her brother’s home; unyielding and walled off. She willed her courage not to crumble and her speech not to declare mutiny in the face of his obvious aversion.
He moved toward the winged-back chair but did not sit, watching her all the while.
“Good morning, Alex.” How perfectly rattled she sounded.
It should not have come as a surprise to her when he responded by lifting one eyebrow, a silent query regarding her presence there.
Heavens, this was going to be much harder than she’d imagined. Charlotte tried to steady her nerves with a lungful of air.
“I had to speak to you.”
“Truly?” He dragged out the word to ensure it was infused with just the right amount of mockery to give her a taste of what was to come.
She didn’t have to wait long.
“So after five years of absolute silence, suddenly you can’t wait to speak to me. Should I be flattered?”
Alex wasn’t merely going to make this difficult; it appeared he wouldn’t be content until she crawled.
“Alex—”
“Tell me this, would you have told me had I not confronted you with the knowledge myself?” There was a steely quality to his tone.
His question was rhetorical, as they both knew full well.
“No, you wouldn’t have done.” His stare condemned her.
“Alex, I cannot begin to tell you how truly sorry I am.” Her apology felt as if it had been wrenched from her throat and seemed to linger in the air long enough for the walls to throw her words back at her. But she knew if she stopped now, her courage would fail her completely.
Alex did not move, the thick lashes veiling half his eyes did not flicker. He didn’t swallow. Charlotte couldn’t even see a sign that he took a breath in the tortuous seconds that followed. She wasn’t holding her breath that her apology would be so forthrightly accepted but she thought he’d say something, even if it was to deny her the very thing she craved most at that moment.
“Is that all?”
Charlotte could well imagine her own expression: her eyes wide with surprise and not blank as his own, her eyebrows in quest of her hairline, which was the polar opposite of his uncreased brow. She must look the way she felt, stunned and at an utter loss for words. She blinked like a dullard asked to explain the true meaning of life.
“Is that all you’ve come to say?” He expanded on his original question, his speech deliberately slower this time, as if English wasn’t the language she’d spoken since birth.
What she’d expected him to ask was why, but as it appeared this was not to be the course of the conversation, it was now up to her to set things to rights. “I would like to explain why I left.”
His gaze became fierce, a fissure in his composure. “You would like to explain?” He paused and it wasn’t apparent whether he’d intended it to be dramatic but it was the kind of pause th
at would make Edward Fitzball beam with pride. “You would like to explain,” he repeated, seeming to enjoy savoring the words like one would a superior vintage of wine.
His hands glided over the wood frame of the chair while he remained an immovable figure behind. “Tell me, were you taken against your will?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, but—”
“So no one held a pistol to you, no one had a knife at your throat?” His eyebrow rose. He was playing with her.
“Not physically, no,” she said. This is what he would reduce it to? Her sister had been correct. It would have been better had she been captured by pirates.
The smile he flashed her was faintly smug and wholly dark. “So perhaps you would like to tell me a tale of how you left me on our wedding day with my son in your belly for my own good, eh? Let me see,” he murmured, tipping his head to the side in a clear pretense to ponder the issue. “I imagine you will tell me how your uneasiness at becoming my marchioness and future duchess grew as the time drew near. Your lineage was uncertain, you were after all the by-blow of an earl, you had no knowledge of your mother and in the end you were leaving to protect me from the inevitable disdain of my peers?”
Although his statement resounded in the air with unerring accuracy, those reasons would not have been difficult to conclude to anyone who knew her.
And Alex had known her most intimately.
No, not even he could imagine what had really compelled her to leave.
“While all that is true, that wasn’t—”
“No,” he bit out sharply. All pretense of humor fled from his expression and his jaw and mouth turned as stony as his unwavering stare.
“Truth be told, you are too late for explanations, for excuses and apologies for there is nothing, nothing you could tell me that will change how I feel about you now and in the future. Nothing,” he added for emphasis, as if she required it.
Charlotte’s first instinct was to plead her case, make him listen. But his voice was as unyielding as the coldness etched in the chiseled planes of his face. His mind was set, he would not be moved. Trying to appeal to him now would be fruitless.
Her fingers absently smoothed her satin-trimmed skirts. What was she to say?
“I-I-I…” Words simply failed her. She fell silent.
“It is unpleasant, is it not?”
Charlotte lifted her gaze from her lap. She had been doing that a lot of late. She despised the habit for it was cowardly.
“To expect one thing and get something different entirely. You expected that after five bloody years, I would permit you an audience for you to tell me your woeful tale. You expected that I would sit here and listen to the reasons you kept me from my child—my son who should by all rights be my heir.” His quickened breath spoke of rising anger tethered by a taut rein of control.
And then, as if he could not bear to be even that close to her, he crossed the room until the distance between them was as vast as it was unbridgeable.
“Alex—” she started, not even certain what she was going to say.
“There is only one thing I want from you and that is my son.”
“I shan’t keep you from him any longer. We shall make some sort of arrangement.” The logistics of which would be a nightmare. Scandal was almost a certainty unless she took Nicholas to the country, away from the prying eyes and flapping jaws of the ton.
But what other choice did she have? Alex would not relent. That much was obvious. And she owed him this at the very least, unfettered access to his son. Of course that now meant she’d be remaining in England. There was no possibility of them returning to America.
“I am not proposing an arrangement.” He spoke softly and an ominous chill swept the length of her spine, causing her to freeze. A sense of foreboding now permeated the air and her breath slowed to a halt.
She looked at him and he held her gaze. No one spoke but she could read his meaning in his eyes, in his wide-legged stance, his hands folded across the breadth of his chest.
“No,” she whispered, barely able to speak, so horrified was she at what she saw in his emotionless eyes.
“I want my son.”
“You can’t mean to take him from me?” Charlotte’s voice wavered as she clutched the arm of the settee.
“I want my son.”
“Alex, please.” She would unashamedly plead for Nicholas. She would give her life for him.
“I want my son. And I will use everything I have at my disposal—my rank, my fortune, and my family’s considerable influence—if you dare think to fight me.”
It was more than an implacable statement, it warned of a ruthlessness she’d never before seen in him—certainly not directed at her.
Alex knew the moment enough terror left her to allow room for anger to set in. Her lips thinned and her blue eyes narrowed. The only time her eyes turned this blue—the blue of tropical skies—was when she was aroused. She wasn’t aroused now. Her expression said she would fight him, like a lioness guarding her young.
Good. He welcomed the fight for he’d no doubt this was one he would win. Even if winning called for bribery and coercion, even if it meant he’d have to bend the law to his will, he’d do so without a pang of conscience.
“You would be so cruel as to take a child from his mother?” she asked, her tone almost disbelieving.
“You kept his existence from me for over four years. Sadly, you are not inclined to my sympathy or lenience in matters pertaining to you.”
“I’m not asking you for me, I’m pleading for your son.”
Ah yes, Nicholas was now his son when it suited her purpose. There wasn’t anything she would not do for him. Oddly, the thought was a comforting one.
“Can you imagine what it would do to him to be apart from me? As much as it must pain you to know, I am all he has. I am the one solitary familiar person in his life. I love him and he loves me.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that. But he now has me. His father,” Alex said, lest she forgot that for even a fraction of a second as she’d conveniently done since his son’s birth.
“Alex, he doesn’t know you. You must see that any attempt to take him from me will cause him great pain.”
Had he not experienced her treachery firsthand, her pleas may very well have worked. She had a way about her; the cadence of her voice, soft and lilting, the way her curled lashes created a shadow on the crest of her cheeks when she looked down. Even knowing her as he did now, all that she was capable of, he could see her allure. But seeing it didn’t mean he’d ever fall for it again. And it certainly didn’t mean he’d ever act on it.
“I think you misunderstand me. Unlike you, I’m not so coldhearted as to deny you contact with him altogether. Would I not be a hypocrite if I did the same to you as you did to me?”
Charlotte’s face turned ashen. A direct hit. He ruthlessly quashed any twinge of consciousness that had the temerity to rear its head. He’d merely reminded her of the facts.
“But I never meant to hurt you. I never wanted to keep him—”
“Stop!” He made sure to keep his voice relatively low as he refused to actually shout at her. Raised voices conveyed too much emotion. But his tone was severe enough to halt her mid-word.
Eyes raised toward the ceiling, her furrowed brow gave all indications she was thinking…hard. When her gaze returned to him, she appeared resolute and calm.
“I would have cut off my right arm to spare you pain. Point in fact, that is precisely what I did. Yet you refuse to hear my reasons.”
“Because they are at least four years too late in coming,” he shot back. “You cared so much about my well-being, that I received not so much as a by-your-leave from you. No warning of what awaited me at the church. This was how much you cared for me?”
Charlotte looked stricken. “I sent a letter.”
“A letter?” He rolled his eyes. It had been three weeks before he could bring himself to read it. He’d gotten very very drunk that day a
nd stayed drunk two weeks thereafter.
“A letter is what you send a friend to keep them apprised of your goings-on when you live a fair distance apart. A letter is not what you send your fiancé when you intend to stand him up at the altar on his wedding day.”
Abruptly, she rose to her feet, her gloves and reticule clutched in her hands and pressed tight against her skirts. “I will not allow you to take my son.” But her words were all bravado for her voice shook with fear and uncertainty.
“Pray tell, did I hear you correctly? You will not allow me to have my son? Madam, you can hardly stop me.”
Her plush bottom lip trembled and some long-suppressed and barely recognizable emotion caused his heart to contract and a stinging pain to pierce his chest.
Marrying her had meant defying the express wishes of his parents, which he’d done gladly. Most in Society had been aghast at his choice of bride. But she’d been the only woman he’d ever loved and no other would do for that kind of lifetime commitment. Who’d have thought they’d ever come to this? Why the devil had she run and ruined every good thing in his world?
No, he did not want to know. As he’d just told her, time for explanations was long past. The only thing that mattered was his son.
Alex rallied, determined not to permit himself to be misled by those quivering lips he’d kissed more in his dreams than in real life, and the torment in her eyes. The pain he felt was for all he’d lost—those years without his son. The pain had nothing to do with any lingering feelings for her. She meant nothing to him.
He should not have to fight against the urge to take her in his arms and kiss the frown from her face and touch her until the cause of her trembling was desire, not fear. Softening toward her would mean his experience with her had taught him nothing. Softening toward her would reveal just how weak a man he was in all matters concerning her.
With a quick pivot, he turned and strode to the entrance of the drawing room. He could hear the rustle of her dress as she followed. He had to get her out of his house. Her scent was so subtle, one could hardly detect it. But every time he inhaled, it felt as if the air around him was saturated with it, making breathing with relative ease difficult.
An Heir of Deception (The Elusive Lords) Page 7