An Heir of Deception (12 page)

James responded by patting her hand solicitously. “Don’t fret, love.”

In the drawing room, her brother motioned for her to take a seat. It was clear it was going to be one of
those
conversations.

James waited until she and Katie had availed themselves of the sofa and he and Missy of the one opposite before he began. “Nicholas—”

“Is Alex’s son,” Charlotte concluded. “Of that I’m certain you’re aware.”

James exchanged a brief look with his wife. “When do you intend to tell him?”

“Alex already knows.”

Her brother’s brow rose. She’d managed to shock him again.

“Alex met Nicholas yesterday when he came by to pick up some papers,” Catherine explained.

Missy’s mouth formed a silent “o”. James’s gaze snapped to Katie and then back to Charlotte.

“And?” he prompted.

All eyes were on her now.

“He wants him. He says he intends to take him from me.” And that is when Charlotte’s composure crumbled and a sob shook her. Broke her.

Alex was sitting at his desk in the study when the explosion came, disrupting the calm of the morning. Rutherford’s pounding on the front door reverberated throughout the house. It was loud enough to send the servants scampering from their posts to discover the source of the commotion. Disturbances like these made excellent grist for the gossip mill.

A glance at the long case clock revealed it was almost half past ten. Yes, at least two hours earlier than Alex had expected. His friend’s arrival had been a foregone conclusion.

A minute later, Rutherford swept into his study like a whirlwind or perhaps more like a volcano on the verge of eruption. Alfred trailed in his wake, an eddying mass of gesticulations, his hands moving about as if trying to rein in a fractious stallion with a feather.

“My lord, Lord Windmere to see you,” Alfred finally announced when it became obvious Rutherford would not be restrained or controlled.

“So I see,” Alex replied, his voice heavy with derision. “Thank you, Alfred.”

His butler wasted no time in taking his leave. It was the fastest Alex had ever seen him move. Poor man probably didn’t want to be witness to the bloodletting he thought sure to come.

Alex shifted his gaze back to Rutherford, noting the red slash of anger along his cheekbones. If his arrival at the front door hadn’t all but advertised it, his expression surely said this was not to be a social visit. He’d come armed to do battle.

“Back from London so soon?” Alex asked, lifting a brow.

“What the hell are you doing? Have you deliberately set out to kill every ounce of affection I have for you?” Rutherford looked as if he wanted to hit him, the skin of his face tight, his pale eyes spitting fury.

The corners of Alex’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. Glibness would not be appropriate at this time but his tongue appeared to have a mind of its own. “Yes, everything I do is for the want of your affection. I fear if I ever lost it, I should perish and die of longing.”

Once upon a time—and under vastly different circumstances—such a response would have elicited a round of hearty laughter.

Today, Rutherford emitted something resembling a snarl and then lunged at him. But Alex knew him well enough to anticipate his reaction. He was out of his chair in a second flat while the earl caught himself in time to stop his forward momentum from sending him hurtling over the desk and into the now empty chair. Rutherford’s solid weight against the desk sent papers sliding across the mahogany surface and onto the floor. The inkwell tipped precariously before landing upright with a distinct plop, thankfully not spilling its contents all over three shipping contracts Alex had been working on the week past.

Cautiously, Alex retreated, not stupid enough to turn his back to him and not stopping until he’d put half the distance of the room between them and several chairs and a side table.

“I see you’ve spoken with your sister.” Alex didn’t want to have to fight him but he would if Rutherford gave him no choice.

“If you believe I shall just sit idly by and do nothing while you attempt to destroy her, you don’t know me at all.” His friend issued the warning in the kind of threatening tone that buckled soldiers’ knees and caused beads of sweat to spring up like geysers along their hairlines. He advanced toward him.

Alex gave a resigned sigh and met his friend’s frozen stare, his hands also mirroring Rutherford’s, curled as they were into tight fighting fists. Despite Alex’s aversion to violence, there may well be bloodletting after all.

“You cannot take her son from her.”

“You mean
my
son. The son of whose existence I knew nothing of until yesterday. Is that the son you’re speaking of?”

“She’s—”

“
She denied me my son!”

And it was as if the full import of what she had done crashed into him just then. He heard the pain splinter his voice, peaking above the rage like the last note in a crescendo. The true enormity of what he had lost, all that he had missed and could never
ever
get back made his sight blur and caused his legs to wobble dangerously.

“She kept the existence of my child from me and yet she’s the one you fight to shield from pain?” His question was low and gruff but yet not a question at all. It was an accusation meant to wound.

Silence blanketed the room as he and Rutherford continued to stare hard at one another. This was new, a novelty of the worst sort. Never had anything this contentious, this volatile and corrosive existed between them in the thirty-one years of their acquaintance. Betrayal could no longer be delegated to Charlotte and her alone, for it appeared her brother had picked up her baton.

His friend’s betrayal stung, embedding itself deep under the surface of Alex’s skin until it pierced his very soul. In many ways and for many years, Rutherford had been more a brother to him than Charles.

Rutherford halted just as suddenly as he’d burst into the room. He stood perfectly still for long seconds, then his chest seemed to deflate as he exhaled a long breath. It was as if the anger had drained from him. A sort of helplessness settled across his features and he appeared torn.

“While I understand your anger, this is not—”

“You cannot
ever
know how I feel,” Alex replied, quick to disabuse him of the notion they would ever share any solidarity in this.

“I didn’t say I know how you
feel
, I said I understand your anger. I did not meet my sisters—my flesh and blood—until they were fifteen years. To discover that my father had just
left
them in that school, knowing they had no mother, no adult who loved and cared for them, cut me to the core.”

How like his friend to try to disarm him with sentiment by drawing parallels of their lives. Still it wasn’t the same. “This was—is my
son
. A son who
should
be my heir. She didn’t only deny me, she denied him.”

“And for this, you intend to punish them both?” Rutherford asked, in a too reasoning tone. “You must see that you’ll only be hurting Nicholas if you hurt his mother.”

“I am not doing this to hurt her,” Alex replied, knowing what he said was a lie. He wanted to wreak the same hell she had and
still
visited upon him.

Rutherford’s face lost its hard edge. He slowly approached him, his hands up to indicate he had no intention of trying to beat him to a pulp. “I do not mean to excuse what Charlotte did. Believe me I do not. I don’t know why she left you. I don’t know why she stayed gone so long. But I’m glad she’s back. And what I
do
know is that my sister does not have a malicious heart. For God’s sake, she hasn’t seen her own
twin
in five years.”

Eyes softened and voice gentled, Rutherford continued to speak. “And given the circumstances of her own birth, do you really believe she would callously subject her child to the same? She
must
have had a powerful reason to do what she did, and I for one intend to find out what it was. Charlotte would never intentionally set out to hurt you or her family. That I would stake my life on. She has a generous soul and an even bigger heart. And if you weren’t so filled with bitterness and this need to punish her, you’d see that.”

Alex pivoted from his friend, dismissing his words with the sharp slice of an arm through the air while uttering a single vile epithet.

The very last thing he wanted to hear was excuses for her unforgivable behavior. He hadn’t been keen to hear them from the liar herself and he was even less inclined to hear it from her doting brother. If she should suffer even a portion of the agony he’d suffered, that would be enough. Let her believe he had just enough vengefulness in him to take their son from her. Let her suffer the agonies of imagining that kind of loss. It couldn’t come close to the loss he himself had endured.

“As I already said, this isn’t some vengeful attempt to make her pay,” he said, meeting Rutherford’s regard direct without blinking.

Through narrowed eyes, the earl watched him in stifling silence, as if attempting to ferret out the truth with just one deliberate and probing look.

“So you have no intention of separating my sister from her son?”

“
My son.”
He ground out the two words and it cost him everything to utter them with such restraint.

Rutherford sank into the nearby armchair and with a heavy sigh, dropped his head into his hand before running it wearily through his hair. “You’re not thinking, man. There will be a scandal.”

“Unless she returns to America, which I will not permit—at least not with my son—scandal is inevitable.” Alex had already resigned himself to the fact. He certainly wasn’t going to hide Nicholas like some shameful secret. He would claim him and damn Society.

Would that scandal stopped at Charlotte’s doorstep and went no further, but scandal would play havoc on all their lives.

Rutherford knew this too and didn’t speak for a good while, just regarded him, his expression a mixture of frustration, anger and pain. After too long under his friend’s scrutiny, Alex turned from him and walked to the window facing the grounds in the rear. A drink would come in handy right at that moment. The thought was fleeting enough not to rankle.

“We have to do something.”

“What precisely would you have us do?” Alex asked, shooting him a glance over his shoulder.

“I don’t bloody know.” Rutherford all but growled his reply, his hand tunneling through his hair again. “But the situation won’t be helped if you’re intent on going to war with her over your son. You have to try to put your animosity aside. You have to forgive her.” From any other person it would have sounded like a plea, but from his friend it was all conviction.

“What would you do in my place?” he asked in a toneless voice. “Imagine that Missy kept your children’s existence from you. What would you do?” Alex turned from the window to face Rutherford.

Such a look came over his friend’s face, as if the thought unimaginable. And indeed it was for the love Rutherford shared with his wife made it so. Missy would never have kept his child from him. Alex hadn’t been fortunate enough to fall in love with a woman like her. Instead he poured all his emotions into a woman to whom loyalty was a word tossed about when referring to countries and allegiances.

Rutherford’s eyebrows drew together. “I know my sister and so do you. There’s something else in play here. Something she’s not telling us.”

Alex wisely said nothing about Charlotte offering to divulge her reasons for leaving. No cause to incite his anger. But a small part of Alex—too foolish and sentimental for his own good—wanted to grab on to the notion that there was a reason sound enough to squelch his anger and ease his sense of betrayal.

But the sane part of him, the one that had eventually survived her stifling absence from his life, rebelled against it. Without conscious thought, his head began shaking in denial, his rejection of the idea unequivocal. There was no excuse to what she’d done to him, what she’d taken from him and he’d never permit her close enough to allow her to do it again.