“Ah,” his mother said crisply. “I remember now. Lord Dunthorpe’s French wife.” She wiped away another tear with the back of her hand and turned back to Sam.
“There’s a grassy area around the bend in the path,” he said gently. “Let’s go sit there … I think we all have some explaining to do.”
“May I suggest we return to our camp and have some dinner,” Lowell interjected. “I caught a few fine trout this afternoon, and we would be happy to share a meal with you.”
When his mother vigorously agreed to this plan, Sam nodded, though he could hardly look at the older man without his hands curling into fists. But he refused to lose his temper. Once he heard the explanation of his mother’s disappearance, he’d decide whether the kidnapping bastard required a pummeling.
The four of them tramped back down the hill in relative silence. He let the older couple lead, and he followed, grasping Élise’s arm firmly. Not that she came even close to stumbling. She was the nimblest woman he’d ever known. Still, he intended to keep her safe, even if his efforts proved excessive.
Near the road, they fetched the cart and horses, and Lowell led them another half mile to the location of his camp at the edge of Lake Ullswater. It appeared as though people had made camp there before—a large sunken fire pit dominated the clearing. Lowell had erected a simple tent under the shelter of an ancient oak.
As Sam secured the horses, the older man got the fire going quickly as the duchess expertly fileted the trout.
He could do nothing but gape at his mother—a woman who’d been waited upon hand and foot her entire life—covered in fish guts. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around the change in her. Still, she was undoubtedly his mother—emotional and direct and larger than life.
She and Lowell were like a long-married couple welcoming friends into their beloved home. “Sit, sit,” Lowell told them, gesturing flamboyantly to a pair of flat rocks adjacent to the fire as if they were fashionable, silk-upholstered armchairs. Uncharacteristically quiet, Élise obeyed, and Sam followed suit.
Lowell withdrew several small new potatoes from a burlap sack and began to juggle, first with three, then adding more until he juggled seven at once while Sam and Élise watched, speechless. Then, as he continued juggling, he tossed them one at a time into the fire until his hands were empty.
Meanwhile, clearly immune to Lowell’s juggling expertise, Sam’s mother set a long pan filled with globs of fat on the flames. When the fat began to sizzle, she added the trout and then hurried to the lake to wash her hands. She returned a minute later to lower herself beside Sam on his rock, arranging her brightly colored skirt around her.
He hesitated, uncertain how to begin this monumental conversation.
The truth was, he needed answers. He needed them now.
“Why did you leave?” He glanced at Lowell, who was placidly watching them from the other side of the fire. “Did he take you against your will?”
She laughed, a pleasant tinkling sound. He’d always loved the sound of his mother’s laughter. He’d missed it.
“Well, Steven did not have the best timing. I’ll grant you that. I was angry when his man came to take me away. I was given no warning and had left so much undone. But”—she cast a fond glance at Lowell, and they shared a secret, intimate smile—“that is all settled now. No, darling. He did not take me against my will.”
“But why?” Sam asked. “Why did you leave Iron-wood Park? Do you understand how your disappearance affected us? You cannot know what it did to my brothers and Esme.” And me, Mama? Do you know how it affected me?
She blinked, her eyes filling again. “How is my dear little Esme?”
“She is well.” She was also writing torrid romances for a publisher in London under an assumed name, but that was Esme’s secret, not his.
“And the boys?”
He hesitated. So much had been revealed, and there was so much to tell, not the least of which was that in the past year, both Trent and Luke had found love and had married.
He leveled his gaze on her. “Mama. You must tell me why you left.”
Lowell cleared his throat, and Sam glanced at him to see the older man had narrowed his eyes slightly at him in a clear warning not to upset his mother. Respect bubbled up from the well of deep suspicion Sam felt for him. Very deliberately, Lowell turned from Sam to Sam’s mother. “Why don’t you serve up the trout, Maddie.”
Maddie. It took a moment for Sam to translate the name. It was a nickname for his mother’s given name, Madeline. But Sam had never in his life heard anyone call his mother “Madeline,” not to mention “Maddie.”
His mother used a spatula to scoop the fried fish from the pan into bowls, which she handed first to Élise, then Sam, then Lowell, and finally herself. Lowell deftly dropped a few small, hot potatoes into each of their bowls.
Élise looked around for utensils with which to eat, and Sam’s mother laughed again. “Oh, no, my lady. We’ve no forks. You are to eat it in the Roma way—with your fingers.” She wiggled her bare, callused fingers at Élise.
Now it was Sam’s turn to narrow his eyes. Was his mother testing Élise? Expecting her to throw a tantrum as most ladies of the ton would?
She passed the test, because she grinned at Sam’s mother. “That is a most excellent way to eat, I am sure.” And she blew on the hot food for a moment before taking up a whole potato between her fingers and taking a bite.
His mother had been attempting to scandalize Élise, but he’d learned she was very difficult to scandalize. He’d succeeded in scandalizing her to her bones when he’d shot Dunthorpe, but since then, she’d managed just about everything he’d tossed her way with good humor.
His mother eyed Élise, an expression of surprise flickering over her face before she quickly masked it.
They all ate in silence for a moment. The food was excellent—far better than the dried meat, bread, and cheese that had become Élise and Sam’s standard fare over the last few days.
Finally, his mother sighed. “I never thought I would need to explain.”
He could only snort in response to that.
“I thought you would note my absence eventually, then perhaps wonder at it for a short while, and finally you would go on with your lives.”
He stared at her for a moment, flabbergasted. Then he shook his head, tamping down the anger bubbling within him. “That’s so foolish.”
She closed her eyes. “Perhaps it was only wishful thinking. I thought you’d continue with your lives and I’d begin my own. But it has been difficult for me, darling. I have missed all of you more than words can express. The distance between us has created a deep, aching void in my very soul.”
“Then why didn’t you come home?”
“I … cannot. Don’t you see?” She gestured at herself, then at Lowell. “This is who I am now. I am no longer the Duchess of Trent. How could I possibly explain this to anyone? I left the way I did because I knew that making a public spectacle of it would ruin my family, ruin my beloved children. A duchess running off with a gypsy isn’t the sort of thing a family is able to recover from, Sam. You know this.
“The way I did it …” Her face crumpled a bit, and tears pooled in her eyes. She sniffed and blinked them back. “I know … I do know it was a cruelty to all of you, but the other way would have been even more cruel. I chose the lesser of two evils. I knew you’d be sad for a while, but in our world you can recover from the loss of a mother. You cannot recover from the loss of your position in society.”
Sam stared at her, unable to hide the shock that must be written all over his face. “You’re saying that you disappeared without a trace because you didn’t want to bring scandal down upon the House of Trent? Because you might embarrass us?”
“Embarrass you … perhaps. But more than that, it would scandalize you, ruin you …” After a long silence, she added, “You know how vehemently Trent despises scandal. And having his own mother choose the life of a gypsy traveling playe
r over the life of a duchess … I am not sure his pride could endure the blow. Luke was on the brink of utter failure already. I knew the news of Lowell just might push him over the edge. Mark and Theo, with their shining futures lying ahead of them like bright stars—I did not want my actions to snatch it away from them. And Esme …” She shook her head. “I had done all I could for the poor dear. She needed the apron strings cut, once and for all.”
Sam was speechless. He shook his head. The woman simply did not fathom the upheaval she’d caused over the last year as they’d all desperately tried to make sense of what had happened.
Élise placed her hand on his forearm and squeezed gently, a gesture that did not escape his mother’s keen notice. But she—wisely—kept her mouth shut on the subject of him and Élise. For now. Though he had no doubt that the questions would be flowing later.
Sam still couldn’t find any words, so Élise rescued him. Over the last few days, he’d told her in great detail of what he and his siblings had gone through in the quest for answers regarding their mother.
She spoke in a quiet voice. “Sam and his brothers and sister have been searching desperately for you for the past year. They thought you’d been murdered. They’ve been overturning every stone in England to find answers.”
His mother frowned. “For the past year? For an entire year?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “We didn’t intend to give up until we found you, no matter how long it took.”
“But …” She shook her head, her brows drawn together in an expression of befuddlement. “You have your own lives.”
“That doesn’t mean we forgot we had a mother.” The words came out harsher than Sam had intended, and his mother flinched as if he’d struck her.
Twin tears crested over her lower lids, then trailed down her cheeks. Across the fire, Lowell was watching them, his lips pressed together. Sam glared at him. He was finished trying to contain his anger. “And what have you to say about turning an entire family upside down for more than a year? Or do you not care since you know nothing of us?”
Lowell took a deep breath. “I know much about you. More than you think, boy.” His expression was mild, but the warning in his voice was unmistakable.
Sam turned back to his mother. “It was Esme who discovered you were gone. She and Sarah called the family immediately to Ironwood Park. Luke didn’t receive the message, but the rest of us rode straight there.
“We searched everywhere. The grounds. The village. We dragged the lake. Mark came up to Lake Windermere, thinking you might have gone to your lake house. Trent and I pursued clues in London, and when Luke was finally informed that you were missing, he threw himself into the search as well.”
“Oh, Luke,” his mother murmured. “My poor Luke. How desperately I miss him.”
Sam continued. “We wrote to all of your relatives, all of your friends. Word eventually spread, and soon all of London was talking about your disappearance. And then …” He hesitated, but he assumed his mother was just as ignorant of this as she was ignorant of the lengths they’d been going to in the search for her. In any case, the truth needed to be known. “And then Trent found your maid’s body.”
His mother’s eyes went wide and she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Binnie?”
He nodded. “She had half your jewels in her possession. I see now why you gave them to her—you had no need of them any longer, correct?”
“Yes, but …”
“She flaunted them, and she was robbed and murdered.”
“Oh no,” his mother whispered, her eyes filling with tears yet again. “My sweet, loyal Binnie.”
“We thought your manservant had suffered the same fate, but Sarah eventually found him. He told us about how Roger Morton had taken you from the dower house.”
“Roger Morton.” His mother pressed her lips together in distaste, making it clear she’d disliked the man.
“Luke went after Morton,” Sam continued, “chasing him from Wales to Bristol to Scotland and back to London, where he finally caught him. Morton was guilty of several crimes unrelated to your disappearance, including having Luke falsely arrested for theft. He ended up dying in prison of the wounds Luke inflicted upon him. But before his death, he revealed the name of Steven Lowell.”
His mother glanced at Lowell. “I told you that blackguard couldn’t be trusted,” she murmured.
“You were right about that,” Lowell agreed placidly.
“Trent was the one who learned where we might be able to find Lowell. He discovered that your last-known location was in Preston, so Mark and Theo traveled up here to continue the search. I happened to be here for different reasons.” He gestured to Élise. “We’ve been following your trail from waterfall to waterfall for the last few days.”
His mother drew in a deep breath. “Good God. Sam, I had no idea. Truly I didn’t. I thought—”
He cut her off. “I know. You thought we’d mourn your loss for a few days and then go on with our lives. You have a very low opinion of your children.”
His mother looked from him to Lowell and back again. “Eat,” she said huskily. “You’ve hardly touched your food.”
It was a command from his childhood, and before he knew it, he was obediently taking a bite of the roasted potato.
After he’d swallowed, he cocked his chin toward Lowell, but he didn’t look at the man again. “Who is he, Mama? What possessed you to leave us behind for him?” He tried to keep his voice even, but he failed. It cracked and wavered with emotion. “For this? Did you have an association with him before last year? An assignation of some kind?”
Sam had no recollection of meeting this man at Iron-wood Park, though he had met some of his mother’s lovers, both there and in London—which had always been a more-than-awkward experience. But he’d never seen Lowell before.
His mother hesitated. Again, she looked at Lowell, who gave her a succinct nod, then back to Sam. “You were never meant to know this,” she murmured.
“Know what?”
She gazed at him with shining golden brown eyes. “My darling Sam.” She held her hands out toward Lowell, blinked hard, and then whispered, “I’d like you to meet your father.”
Chapter Twenty
Sam froze. Beside him, Élise tensed, and he felt her hand come to his forearm again in a comforting gesture.
He wrenched his gaze to the older man.
My father.
No.
He’d never thought of himself as having a father. And now this man sat before him, in the flesh.
My father.
He stared at Lowell, who gazed back at him, an implacable expression on his face. Judging by that expression, it seemed the man had known about him all along.
His father had been aware he had a son for the past thirty-two years. And he had never tried to know him.
Sam blinked. The words pounded against his skull—meet your father—but his skull was thick, and the words couldn’t penetrate. Not completely.
He didn’t have a father. He was the bastard son of the Dowager Duchess of Trent. He was simply a product of one of her many affairs.
“No,” he croaked out.
“Yes,” his mother said firmly.
“I … don’t understand.” His voice had gone low and hoarse, sounding foreign to his ears. Élise squeezed his arm. He turned to her, saw the expression of sympathy on her beautiful face. “I don’t understand,” he repeated to her.
“I know,” she said.
He turned helplessly back to his mother. “Explain,” he croaked out.
“Oh, my darling”—there was sympathy in her voice, too—“it is a very long story.”
He shook his head. “I … I need to know.”
She ducked her head to take a bite of her food, her gaze meeting Lowell’s again. The silent communications between them were driving Sam mad.
“It is your story to tell, Maddie,” the older man said quietly. “We have discussed this. You know what you must do.”
>
She sighed dramatically, then turned back to Sam. “It was better you didn’t know. So much better. Despite your illegitimacy, you have gone far in your life. You were an officer in the army, and now … Well, I don’t know exactly what it is you do now, but I know you hold a position of great importance.”
She placed both her hands over the fist he’d clenched in his lap. “I know you, my darling. If you’d known your father was who he was, you wouldn’t have kept it to yourself. You’d allow the world to know, to beat you down with its prejudices. As it stood, you rose quickly through the ranks of the army. Would any of that have happened if the world knew you were not only illegitimate, but the son of a half-breed gypsy?”
Sam glanced at Lowell again, who gazed back at him with those fathomless dark eyes. So the man was a half-breed. It explained quite a bit, not the least of which was why he didn’t seem to be connected to a tribe. They’d probably rejected him for being half gadjó. As the English had undoubtedly rejected him for being half gypsy. Being a half-breed meant you were accepted by no one.
Sam closed his eyes. His mother was right. Without Cambridge, without the army, knowing he was a quarter gypsy, what would he have become? He had no idea.
“It was a secret that needed to be kept,” she said.
And yet she told him now. She’d chosen this moment to destroy him.
Élise must have seen something in his expression, because her fingers tightened over his arm. “You’re still who you are, Sam,” she said. “Nothing you learn today or any other time can change that.”
Sam took a long moment to absorb her words.
She was right. Bolstered by this, he opened his eyes.
“I kept it from you,” his mother continued, “not because I felt you would hate me for the truth, but because I knew the world would heap abuse upon you for it. I did it to protect you from that.”
The Scoundrel’s Seduction Page 24
