Beauty and the Earl (19 page)

“I haven’t told you the whole story of when my father arranged my marriage,” she whispered, forcing herself to look Liam straight in the face even when she wanted to turn away.
 

“You said he arranged a marriage, that the son of your would-be fiancé feared a young bride would cause a dilution of his inheritance so he…assaulted you. That your father demanded you marry the bastard.”

She nodded, trying not to flinch at the recitation of the most painful time of her life.

“He wanted me to marry the son of my fiancé because my virginity was compromised,” she whispered. “But it was more than that. There were other…
consequences
to what happened.”

He sat perfectly still for a moment and the color drained from his cheeks. “A child?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes,” she gasped out. “I became pregnant. And when I refused to marry my attacker, my father cast me into the street, completing the abandonment that had begun years before. I was lost, utterly bereft, and that was when I met Olivia. She took me in, explained her trade to me. Took care of me until my child was born.”

Liam shook his head. “A boy or a girl?”

She stared at him. Here was her deepest secret, and Liam wanted to know more about her child. No wonder she had come to love him, for he was unlike any man she had ever met in her life.

“A boy,” she whispered, thinking of that boy in ways she rarely allowed herself to do. “I named him Peter.”

Liam straightened. “Peter?
Peter
is your son?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes. Why?”

He stared at her, his eyes wide, and then shook his head even as a wide grin broke over his face.
 

“Nothing. No reason. Please, tell me more. What happened to him?”

“I had nothing except the kindness of my friend with which to support my baby,” she explained. “But I was beginning to see how Olivia could use her assets to make a life for herself. I made the most difficult decision of my life. Together we found a kind family in the North in Romwell who took my child and raised him. They are good people, I made sure of that. They love him and do not judge me. He knows me, we write letters, and I visit him whenever I have the means to do so.”

She realized she was weeping only when Liam produced a handkerchief and held it out to her. She took it and wiped away the tears that had begun to fall down her cheeks.

“You love him,” Liam said softly.

She nodded. “With everything that is worthy and good in me.”

“Does his presence not remind you of the circumstances of his conception?” he asked, and she heard the hesitation in the way he asked the delicate question.
 

She shook her head. “I cannot judge him by his father no more than I hope others judge me by my own. Peter has no control over that and knows nothing of the man who sired him.”

“And so you became a mistress and used your earnings to take care of him,” Liam said.

“Yes.” She sighed. “For years I have taken any penny I could scrape away and saved it, in the hopes that one day I could leave London and go to him, to live with him there by the sea. And now I’ve nearly saved enough that I could fulfill that dream. That is why I can’t be with you as your mistress, Liam. In the next few weeks, I will settle my business in London and I will finally go to my son.”

He stared at her, and there was regret as well as relief in his eyes. “Violet,” he whispered, holding her hand tightly in his. “You are the most remarkable woman. Thank you for telling me this.”

She nodded. “I wanted you to know. Although you are the first person I’ve ever confessed this secret to, outside of Olivia, of course.”

He drew back. “Never a lover, never a friend?”

“No.” She shivered. “It had to be someone I trusted. Someone who…who understood me.”

His fingers came up to stroke her jawline. “And that is me.”

She nodded, her love swelling inside of her even as she kept it to herself, letting it crash against the barrier that would always stand between them.

He smiled. “I am happy that you came to Bath,” he said. “Although I’m surprised you didn’t spend your holiday with your son.”

She tensed. She had never considered that hole that had been created in her story by the revelation of the truth. She
never
took a holiday, unless it was to visit Peter. And yet she had told Liam that she was here to kick up her heels and forget her troubles.

“I—well, Olivia insisted,” she said weakly, hating the falsehoods that seemed to pile upon each other.

Liam’s expression was beginning to change. He was thinking through her story.

“You say you will soon leave London and be with your son,” he pressed. “What has given you that freedom?”

She shifted and pulled her hands away. “A—a windfall,” she whispered, and that wasn’t exactly a lie. It was simply an ugly truth.

“A windfall,” he repeated, stressing the word as if he were testing its veracity. “From a former lover?”

“Why all the questions, Liam?” she asked as she stood a second time and moved away from him. “You are interrogating me about something very private and personal.”

He stood as well. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to interrogate you, but you tell me that this desire to be with your child is why you cannot be with me, be my lover. I’m simply trying to understand why and how this moment has come now, just as we have met, have come together.”

She hesitated, for she had no answer, or at least no answer she could share.
 

He didn’t seem to expect one. “I have always dealt in reason and I’m sure there is something here I’m missing. Is there more to this decision?”

“What do you mean?” she croaked.

He pursed his lips in what seemed to be frustration over her avoidance.
 

“I mean why is
now
the time that you must leave London? To go to your son?” His brow wrinkled further. “And if you are leaving London, why did you say we would meet again there if I returned?”

Violet’s head had begun to spin. Her carefully laid deceits and manipulations were beginning to unravel and she had no idea how to maintain them. Liam was treading close to the truth, and she knew him well enough to believe his dogged interest would only increase, not fade, the more he considered her past, her stories, her future which she denied him.

“Violet,” he said, his tone sharp in the face of her continued shocked silence. “What are you keeping from me?”

She covered her face. How she longed to tell him everything, to explain what she had come here for, but how coming here had changed her so much. She wanted to tell him, but she had no idea how.

“Liam,” she began, her voice shaking.

But before she could say anything else, the door to the parlor opened and Malcolm strode through, his face dark and angry as he looked at her.

Terror sliced through her at that look because it only meant one thing.
 

“I overheard you in the hallway, asking the young woman what she was keeping from you,” Malcolm said, his voice vibrating with anger. “I believe I can answer that since she will not, or at least not with honesty, since that is not in her nature.”

Liam turned on his friend, his cheeks dark with color and his eyes snapping with anger. “What do you mean?”

Violet stepped forward, wishing this wasn’t happening. Wishing it were all a dream.

Only it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare and it was real as Malcolm said, “Your lovely paramour came here on the behest of Ava and Rothcastle.
You
have been sleeping with a spy.”

What Liam would remember most about the moment later was two things. One was the horribly broken expression that all but collapsed Violet’s beautiful face. The second was that she never denied what Mal said. She only turned away with a sob that seemed to echo through him and stab him in the heart.

“What are you talking about?” Liam asked his friend. At least it was his voice that asked the question, he didn’t recall using the mind power to do it.

Mal looked at him, his expression softening with regret…pity. Liam had seem that look before. He hated it just as much now as he had then.

“I’m sorry, Liam,” his friend said softly. “The report from London was very clear.”

“Report?” Violet asked, looking first at him, then Mal, as pink flooded her cheeks. “You had someone looking into me?”

Mal glared at her. “And for good fucking reason, don’t you think?” He pivoted toward Liam. “She was hired by your sister and Rothcastle a few weeks ago. They paid for the place she was letting in Bath before she was moved to your estate. In fact, they are still letting it for her—she never gave the place up at all.”

Violet sucked in a breath that sounded painful, but before she could respond to Mal’s charge, Olivia entered the parlor, smiling broadly before she took in the tense, charged scene before her.

“Violet?” she murmured, looking between the three of them. “What—”

Mal spun on her, his face dark and angry. All the light Liam had seen in his friend since Olivia’s arrival, all the joy, was gone.
 

Liam felt for him, understood the betrayal in Mal’s voice as he hissed, “Did you know? Did you know why she was here?”

Olivia turned her gaze to Violet and for a moment the women held stares. Then Violet jerked out a single nod.

And Liam’s world collapsed around him. Mal wasn’t mistaken. Violet couldn’t explain this away.
 

Everything his friend said was true.
 

He remained silent, but Mal didn’t. “Of course you knew. You two are so bonded together, you would probably stab me through the heart if she told you it would help. So you were the distraction not just the first time we met, but all along. How hard did you laugh, Olivia?”

“Malcolm,” Olivia sobbed, reaching for him even as he jerked away and exited the room without a backward glance or another word. Olivia sank onto the settee, staring toward where his friend had sat.

Violet, on the other hand, seemed to gather herself. “Liam,” she whispered. “Please let me explain.”

She moved toward him, but he backed away a step. “Were you hired by my sister to come here? To spy?
Have
you been reporting back to her and that bastard she married?”

She caught her breath, and he knew the answer before she said it out loud.
 

“Yes,” she admitted, her voice cracking. “But Liam, I swear to you that everything I ever shared with you, everything I ever said…it was all true. I came here with one agenda, but the moment I met you, there was more to it than that.”

 
He stared at her, her eyes brimmed with tears, her hands shaking. Her expressions of remorse, of emotion were very real…but then that was what she had been trained to be. To appear real when everything she did was a lie.

And he had been taken in by it. And given her, and Rothcastle, everything they needed.

“Please leave,” he said, his tone flat and emotionless even though inside he felt like someone had ripped his heart from his chest and crushed it.
 

“Liam,” she gasped.
 

“Just go,” he repeated, spinning away before he lost all control and said and did things he couldn’t take back.
 

She was silent for so long that he looked back at her. She stood, staring at him, pain lining every part of her face. Pain and regret, heartbreak and sorrow. And he wanted to believe it all, even though he refused to allow himself to be so foolish.

“Did I not make myself clear?” he asked, fighting to keep the break from his voice that would fully reveal his weakness to her.

She shook her head. “No, my lord. You are very clear. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

She turned and moved toward the door. Only at the settee did she hesitate. Slowly, she caught Olivia’s elbow and drew her to her feet.
 

As she wrapped an arm around her friend’s waist, Liam heard her whisper, “Come, Olivia. Come away.”

The other woman seemed too much in shock to resist and together they left his parlor. Left him alone.

He moved to the front window and looked out as a carriage was brought along for them. They climbed in and the vehicle pulled away, its horses prancing like there was some kind of joy left in the world.
 

But as Liam drew the curtain and enshrouded himself in darkness, he knew the truth.

There was no joy left. There would be no joy again.

Chapter Sixteen

It was early evening when the lady’s maids arrived at the house back in Bath with all of Olivia and Violet’s things hastily packed. Once the footmen had unloaded the items into each woman’s room, Violet looked at Rachel.

“How bad was it?” she asked softly.

Her maid shrugged, but her tense face said more than her words would ever express.
 

“Belle and I were watched every moment while we packed for you, miss,” she admitted.
 

“By his lordship?” Violet asked, her heart aching as she tried not to think of Liam and failed, just as she had been failing since her departure from his home earlier in the day.