An Heir of Deception (24 page)

Charlotte’s throat closed up on her response and she felt the tears smart her eyes. “Yes, I would like to have known her.” And that was the truth. She would have done, but had her mother lived, how different her life would have been. She and her sister would never have come to know James, she’d never have met Alex and she wouldn’t have Nicholas.

For a moment it looked as if Alex would continue on in that vein of questioning, but he seemed to think better of it and fell silent, turning to gaze off in the distance at the fire burning in the grate. He looked unaccountably forlorn for a moment, his defenses down.

“Alex.”

He turned to her.

“I did love you,” she said softly, but unwilling to lay her heart completely bare to let him know her feelings had not changed. “Please believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you.”

Some emotion flickered in his eyes. “What happened in the past is done. I accepted long ago it can’t be changed no matter how hard I may wish it could.”

Did that mean he now had it in his heart to forgive her?

“But we can’t resurrect long-dead emotions. Our love affair was in the past and there it shall remain.”

Charlotte bit her lip in an effort to override the pain of his words. While it appeared his bitterness was at an end, what seemed to have replaced it was indifference. He no longer felt enough for her to even elicit his anger. She’d never thought she’d ever prefer the former, but at that moment, she sorely did. Better he rage at her in anger and hurt than resign their
faux
marriage to the fate of complete indifference.

But he wanted her and that he hadn’t been able to hide. A physical relationship would be better than nothing at all.

“I should like to have another child.” If he would only but give her a chance, she was almost positive she could make him care for her again.

Alex’s whole form stiffened at her words. “Another child? With you? I thought I made my feelings on that clear.”

It wasn’t so much his words but his tone that felt like blows raining down on her. Sharp blows that had the power to bruise a person’s skin and destroy their soul.

“If we are to stay married…”

“Dear God, Charlotte, do not ask that of me. Even if we were to engage in marital relations, I fear another pregnancy would be too stark a reminder of everything I missed before, which would only cause me to resent you more.”

As difficult as it was to listen to what he was saying, to hear the thread of anguish in his voice, his
if
gave her a renewed sense of hope. Perhaps, tonight could be a new beginning for them. But in order for that to happen, he’d have to know the truth. “If you would only listen.”

Alex rose abruptly to his feet. “It has been a long day and I am fatigued.” And like that he closed himself off from her.

A rigid mask had once again settled over his face, his jaw tight and his eyes veiled. He looked impenetrable now. Charlotte glimpsed her future in his blank stare and it loomed before her as arid as the Sahara. No warmth, no affection.

Charlotte rose from the chair and faced him squarely. “You refuse to listen to me because you want to hold on to your resentment and in some ways, I understand that. But I wish you would see that doing so will do neither of us any good and it certainly will be of no benefit to our son. Whether you believe it or not, Alex, I left because I loved you. I left to spare you the embarrassment and humiliation of a scandal. You and my family.”

His too long black lashes flickered and his mouth tightened. He looked like a man struggling between two opposing emotions. The inner battle he appeared to be raging lasted several moments. Finally, but not in the manner of a man admitting defeat, he said, “Then speak. Go ahead and explain yourself for this will be your only opportunity.”

Relief almost made her lightheaded. “May we sit?”

With a curt nod, Alex resumed his seat as did Charlotte.

Nothing about him suggested he would be receptive to anything she had to say. In fact, his eyes seemed to challenge her to convince him of something he already didn’t believe.

Relief had been a respite for now she was doubly nervous not just in how he would receive the news but in whether he would understand.

“Months before the wedding, Katie and I were contacted by a woman, a Mrs. Henley. We would not have entertained her letter, except she said she knew our mother. She asked to meet with us.” Charlotte paused to swallow as Alex continued to watch her somewhat passively.

“We met her in Cheapside. She’d insisted she didn’t want anyone to see us together and when we saw her, we understood her reticence. She was a kitchen maid who’d once worked for the Earl of Forsythe. That is where she met our grandmother.” She drew in a deep breath before confessing, “My grandmother was a slave.” She paused a beat in order that the full import of her words would penetrate. Except for a blink, Alex appeared unfazed by the revelation.

“Both worked in the scullery. Mrs. Henley told us she was young at the time, they both were, neither not yet eighteen. Although, Mrs. Henley said she couldn’t attest to it herself, rumor amongst the servants was that our grandmother had been born of a rape by one of the former Earl of Forsythe’s peers during a house party. Many speculated it had been the late Viscount Radcliffe.”

It was the first time she’d ever relayed the story to anyone and she hadn’t expected it to pain her as much as it did.

“Our grandmother was very pretty and attracted the eye of the earl’s son, who made her his mistress the year following Mrs. Henley’s arrival at the estate. She became pregnant with my mother. Lord Forsythe allowed her to stay and raise her within the kitchens. When my mother was eighteen years, she met my father. When she became pregnant with me and Katie, the earl had recently married and the new countess dismissed her without notice or recommendation.”

The hardest part was out. Charlotte drew in a breath. Alex didn’t appear in the least bit perturbed or distressed or really anything. He just watched her, his face wiped clean of emotion.

“So that is it?” he asked, unblinking. “You discovered you and your sister’s blood is not as blue as you’d once thought?”

“That isn’t it at all.” He made her sound petty.

“And you thought that would matter to me? That I would learn of it and toss you aside?” His voice had taken on a hard tone.

“No,” she protested.

“Then what was it?”

“The letter.”

“What letter?”

“Two days before the wedding, I received a letter threatening to expose my mother’s identity if I married you.” There, he now had the whole of it. The truth she buried for years.

He didn’t speak for what felt like a year, the silence stretching tortuously as the months flew by. “And where is this letter?”

The question took Charlotte aback. “I-I didn’t keep it. I threw it away.” The thought that someone would discover it had compelled her to burn it at the first opportunity.

“And you believed everything this Mrs. Henley had to say?”

“Yes, I believed her. Katie and I both did. She knew everything about us. The home we were taken to after our mother’s death. She knew the boarding school we attended. She kept track of us because our mother was like a daughter to her. She helped raise her. If you had met her, you’d not have doubted her either.”

“She showed you proof?”

Charlotte nodded. “She had a miniature of the portrait painted of us just before we were sent to boarding school. You’ve seen it, the one James has up in the gallery.”

Mrs. Doubletree, the headmistress at the boarding school, had had the portrait delivered to them—at James’s expense, of course—when she’d discovered it in the attic where they’d stored it.

“For God’s sake, Charlotte, why didn’t you come to me?”

“If I had come to you—”

“I would have gotten to the bottom of it. I would have stopped it.” Anger now laced his words.

“She would have ruined us.”

“She? You know who sent the letter?”

“I believe it was James’s mother, the dowager. She’d always despised us.”

“That she did, which is why it doesn’t make sense for her to keep something like that to herself. And she had no great affection for me, so why would she threaten you with that?”

“I don’t know it was particular to you. I believe she would have done anything to cause us pain, thwart our happiness. Had I been marrying a viscount or the local butcher I’m sure she would have tried to prevent it.”

“But if she could have ruined you both just like that, why wouldn’t she just do so?”

“I imagine it is because it would have also caused considerable pain to her sons. I think she wanted to prevent me and Katie from being happy, from finding a place in Society without cost to James and Christopher.”

Bracing his forearms on his thighs, Alex gave a heavy sigh as he looked off to the side and appeared to consider her explanation.

“And when did you realize you were with child?” he asked, directing his gaze back to her.

“Not until after I arrived in America. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to travel that great a distance had I known. I attributed the sickness I was experiencing to the voyage. I’d never traveled by sea before. It was only when it continued after I arrived in New York that I realized.” Oh the terror that had gripped her then. The prospect of managing in a country she didn’t know by herself had been daunting enough, but a child added to the mix had at times seemed insurmountable. Jillian had helped and soon after, Lucas had come into her life.

“You should have come to me,” he said with such ferocity she wanted to weep.

“I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t do that to you. Your parents made no secret of their feelings toward me. James had to practically bully his peers into accepting Katie and me into their drawing rooms. We were already hovering on the fringes of Society as it was. This would have done us in and with us, you and James’s family.

Alex came abruptly to his feet, plowing his hand through his hair. He circled the chair, his movements agitated, his lips tight and his eyes stormy.

He rounded on her. “Did you fear my reaction if you told me? Did you think I would reject you?”

If nothing else, she owed him honesty. Charlotte drew in a breath and expelled it slowly. “In truth, a part of me feared you’d no longer see me the same. And a larger part of me thought even if it didn’t matter to you then, it would over the course of our marriage. I feared you’d come to resent me, resent all I had cost you. And that, Alex, I simply couldn’t bear—to see the love you had for me—to see it die.”

The silence that followed had never been louder. Charlotte could barely stand to look at him. It hurt too much to see the pain in his eyes, which he did nothing to hide.

“That is what you thought of me, that I would abandon you when you needed me most. That my love was so fickle that something beyond your control—as no one has control over the parents they’re born to or the life they’ve been born into—would send me running?”

Alex tolerated the crushing pain of his heart because he could do little else but bear it. He had loved her with everything in him and she hadn’t trusted in that love. Hadn’t trusted that it could and would endure the travails of life, small and large. And because of that lack of faith, she’d abandoned him and stolen from him five years of his life, years without his son.

“Oh Alex.” She was on her feet, her hand reaching out to him. He jerked sharply back. He didn’t trust himself not to shake her senseless or crush her in his arms. Either response would be like playing with fire for he was certain to get scorched by the flames.

“I was so scared. I did what I thought was best for everyone. I felt I had no other choice. Surely, you understand the situation I was in?”

He understood that she must have been terrified. But to leave England? To bear him a child without sending word to him?

“I do understand fear and accept that one can act impetuously, but how can you possibly explain five years?”

Had she’d stayed gone only two years, he’d have forgiven her without question—such had been the depth of his love…and his pain. At three years, he’d been teetering on the brink of self-destruction and she’d been the oasis he sought in those dark and arid times. During the fourth year, he’d finally regained the lucidity and control he'd lacked for quite some time. Then, she might have found him receptive for without the panacea of alcohol, the pain of her loss had come rushing back full force. But this last year he’d finally accepted that his once-in-a-lifetime love was no more. Now, it would be like trying to resurrect the dead when there was nothing left in the grave but bones and ashes.

“You could have written to me and I would have been on the next ship to America. I would have given all this up for you if need be.” He gestured widely, the sweep of his hand encompassing the well-appointed master suite equipped with the symbolic trappings of wealth and rank. An unsatisfactory affirmation of his station in life when compared to the love he once had for her.

All color drained from her face. Such a haunted look came into her eyes, one would think she had hell well within her sights. Tears glassed her eyes. One escaped and rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away almost angrily.