But love was a myth.
And Ara had chosen a life of comfort and ease instead of him.
The rage inside him had abated, as had the shock. In their places was a desperate need of knowledge. He wanted her admission. Her acknowledgment. Enough of her lies. He wanted—deserved—to know the truth.
And so did the lad.
“Tell me the truth,” he commanded her. Begged her. He lowered his head until his forehead almost touched hers. “Tell me I am Edward’s father.”
Chapter Twelve
“Tell me I am Edward’s father.”
Clay’s demand resonated in the chamber, so forceful and stern it echoed through the ballroom. It repeated itself all around them, haunting, insistent.
Dogged.
Though she tried not to be affected by the emotions she thought she heard in his voice, she was.
Longing. Hurt. Betrayal. Desperation.
Ara’s heart nearly stopped beating. Or perhaps it was beating so fast it threatened to stop. His hand was on her neck, huge and hot, caressing and threatening all at once. The Clay she had once known—or rather the Clay she had thought she’d known—would never have hurt her.
Not physically, anyway.
This Clay was a world away from the young man who had gently wooed her with his wit and humor and lively smiles. Of course, she now knew he had merely shown her the face he wished her to see so he could gain what he wanted.
He had taken everything from her: her heart, her innocence, her trust. And had left her with a bitter, empty shell. How dare he reappear eight years later, demanding to know he was the father of her son? Where had he been when she had been frightened and banished from her father’s home, unknowing of where to turn, when she had disgraced herself and had to find a way to live through the consequences of her actions?
He had left her when she needed him most.
She did not owe him anything, least of all the truth. If he had wanted to be a part of Edward’s life, he should not have gone away. He should not have fled to the Continent. He should never have left her waiting on the day he had promised they would run away together to be married.
Tears stung her eyes as she shook her head, not looking away from his dark intensity. “No.”
“No?” he repeated as though he could not believe her refusal. “Then tell me I am not his father, Ara.”
She swallowed, her gaze straying from his. She stared at the protrusion of his Adam’s apple. “You are not Edward’s father.”
“Look me in the eye when you lie to me, damn you,” he growled, releasing her neck and taking her chin in a firm grip instead. He forced her head back, until she could not look anywhere but at him. “Try again.”
“Freddie was his father,” she said instead, for that much was true.
Freddie had promised to raise Edward as his own, and he had held firm to his vow. He could not have loved Edward any better had he been the product of their own marital bed, and Ara knew it. He had been a good man. Compassionate and munificent. Unlike the man before her.
Clay sneered down at her now. “I will give you one more opportunity, Duchess. Tell me the truth, or I shall take the matter to Chancery Court. I will petition that Edward is my rightful son, and you have wrongfully kept him from me. I will attest to our affair, and the date of the lad’s birth will lend credence to my claims. I will also have him removed from your custody and placed into mine.”
She had not considered the possibility he would wish to take her son from her. The thought of such a private matter going before the court made her ill. If the court sided with him, Edward would be disinherited and she could lose her son. And the court always favored the rights of the father above those of the mother. Her mouth went dry, a sharp stab of fear cutting through her.
Surely, he had only issued such threats to force her to give in and admit Edward was his son.
“You would not do something so reckless,” she countered. “My reputation would be ruined. Edward’s inheritance would be called into question.”
“I don’t give a damn about your reputation, madam. I care about the truth you’ve been hiding for eight bloody years.” His expression was as rigid as the big, powerful body keeping her pinned to the wall. “I will not let you leave this chamber until you admit it.”
Anguish mingled with her fear. “You cannot take my son from me. I will not allow it.”
“You have already taken him from me for seven years,” he countered. “It will be your turn to see how it feels to have your child robbed from you, and you will be helpless to stop me. Is that what you want, Ara? Is that what you will force me to do?”
His questions hung in the air, sharp and angry and damning.
She could hold fast to her assertion Freddie was Edward’s father and pray Clay would not do what he warned and take the matter before the court. Or she could reveal the truth and hope he would be merciful. Why had she allowed him to give Edward lessons? Why, oh why, had her foolish tongue slipped, revealing his age? She should have known better. This entire, sordid mess was her fault.
And it seemed there was no good resolution.
No option save one.
“Ara? Answer me.”
“You are his father,” she whispered.
There. It was done.
Eight years of holding in her secret, and in a scant handful of seconds, the truth had been revealed. It felt simultaneously freeing and terrifying. Freeing because the weighty guilt that had been her constant companion, lurking in her heart whenever she thought of the father Edward would never know, could at last be banished. Terrifying because she had confirmed what Clay had only suspected. He could still attempt to take Edward from her. He could still ruin her.
He released her so abruptly she almost fell to her knees on the parquet before he turned to stride away from her. Blinking, she raised two fingers to her chin where his touch had been. She still tingled from the contact. Her body was a quivering mess of agony and dread and a tiny, unwanted surge of longing.
What would he do?
As she looked on, he stalked from the ballroom, slamming the door behind him with so much force it rattled in its hinges. She flinched. And then she gave in to the overwhelming emotions roiling through her. She slid down the wall, her skirts billowing in a puddle of jet silk, and wept the same bitter, wracking sobs she had cried on the day she had discovered Freddie was murdered.
Clay required motion, and he required distance.
Specifically, he needed distance between himself and the Duchess of Burghly, the mother of his child, and the woman who had been withholding his son from him. Because if he did not leave her presence—leave her goddamn house, in fact—he would not be responsible for his actions. Because he had been installed at Burghly House to protect her from Fenian murderers and not to throttle her with his own bare hands.
So, he moved. He made certain his men were stationed and aware of his departure, because even as irate as he was with the woman, he would not have her death on his bloody conscience or his pristine record of service for Her Majesty. And then he walked. His legs ate up the streets of St. James’s Square. He paced. He wandered. He found his way back to Burghly House in a daze. He saddled a horse.
And then he rode.
He rode and rode.
Even when a driving rain unleashed its torrent, he did not halt until finally he found himself ensconced in Leo’s study. His brother, ordinarily unemotional and detached, had taken in his drenched body and thunderous expression and frowned with concern, ordering him to sit while he fetched him a whisky.
Clay did not accept orders from his little brother outside the Special League, so he ignored the directive. Instead, he paced the confines of Leo’s study like a lion stuck inside a cage, which was precisely how he felt. He wanted to rip something apart with his teeth. He wanted to destroy.
“What in the hell has you so agitated, Clay?” Leo demanded, appearing before him with two glasses in hand. He offered him one. “Here you are.
Take a head-clearing draught first and then answer me.”
He accepted the whisky and sent the lot of it down his throat. It singed a path to his gut, but he still felt numb. “I have a son,” he announced baldly.
The word felt strange and foreign on his tongue.
Son.
He thought of the lad, and finally, warmth trickled into his heart.
Leo nodded, taking a sip of his own whisky before answering. “The Duchess of Burghly’s boy.”
What in the bloody hell?
He froze. “You knew?”
His brother raised a brow. “You did not?”
“Of course not, damn your hide.” In typical Leo fashion, he gave no answer. Clay’s hand balled into a fist at his side. “Explain yourself, brother. I am not in the mood to play your games today.”
“I saw the boy when I first went to Burghly House after learning of the threats against the duchess,” Leo explained, apparently taking pity on him for the first time in their lives. “He is your image, poor lad.”
He ignored his brother’s slight, focusing instead upon the first half of what he’d said. Clay stalked forward. “You mean to tell me you knew before you assigned me to protect her?”
Leo took another sip of his whisky, eyeing him. “You are awfully thirsty, brother. Shall I fetch you another?”
“Answer the bloody question,” he gritted.
“Yes.”
Clay’s patience snapped, and the last vestige of his control went along with it. He hurled his empty tumbler against the wall. “Damn you, Leo. Why did you not speak up? Why did you not say something?”
Leo frowned. “It was not my place to intervene. I am not responsible for managing your by-blows.”
“Edward is not a bastard,” he roared.
And thank the Lord, too, for illegitimacy was not a curse he would willingly place upon any of his progeny. Though their father the duke had loved Clay’s mother, and he had been raised alongside Leo like an equal, that had not changed who he was to polite society, nor the way he was received or looked upon.
“Forgive me,” Leo drawled with patent insincerity. “How shall I refer to a seed you planted in the womb of a lady without first being wed to her?”
He supposed he deserved his brother’s scorn. He should never have taken Ara before they had married. He most certainly never should have gotten her with child. Nor should he have left without making certain there were no such repercussions. But he had been young and stupid, thinking first with his prick and then with his pride. He had not been able to stomach remaining after Ara’s betrayal.
“Fair enough,” he rasped. “I was wrong to do what I did. I have no defense of my actions. I was young and bloody reckless, and I did not know there would be a child. But for Christ’s sake, Leo, why would you send me there without warning?”
His brother calmly sauntered to the sideboard, filled a fresh glass, and returned to him, holding it out in offering. “How should I have known you were unaware?”
He checked the urge to throw the tumbler against the wall to join the first, accepting it with great reluctance. “Did you not think I would have mentioned it to you at least once in these last eight years?”
Leo returned his stare, unflinching. “Do you think you are the only man in London who has fathered a child with another chap’s wife? Half the sons and daughters of the ton do not resemble their supposed sires in the slightest.”
It was true, and Clay knew it. The way of the world, or at least of the privileged world. “She was not another man’s wife then.”
“No, but she became one.”
His brother was only stating fact. It should not feel as if he had plunged a dagger into Clay’s heart. But yet it did. Ara’s betrayal ran so much deeper than he had ever fathomed. He had thought nothing could be worse than the twin scars he bore from her—the one on his face and the one on his heart—but he had been wrong. Keeping his son from him, willfully allowing another man to claim the lad as his own without ever breathing a word of it to Clay…
Little wonder he had needed to flee Burghly House. He itched to shake her. And then raise her skirts and drive himself so deep inside her she would never forget he had been the first one to claim her. To make her his.
But he could not do either of those things.
“Yes,” he agreed, heaving out a sigh borne of the magnitude of his whirling thoughts and emotions. “She married Burghly, and she passed my son off as his.”
“It has been done before,” Leo said quietly. “Many, many times. Why should this one be any different?”
“Because he is my son, damn it.” His grip tightened painfully on the glass, and still he did not take another drink. “I did not know, Leo. I should have known. If I had, I never would have left for the Continent. And if I had not gone, I would have realized she carried my child. I would have married her myself.”
“Why did you not?” Leo asked, taking another sip of whisky, eyeing him with that penetrating stare he had. “Marry her, I mean. You were mad for her then, and you had obviously ruined her. Why did you go?”
He had never confided the truth of his scar to anyone but his mother years later. When he had returned to Brixton Manor bloodied and shaken, he had been too ashamed to admit what had happened.
Clay took a long draught of whisky once more. Perhaps this was a day of catharsis. It certainly seemed so. He swallowed, relishing the burn of the spirits down his gullet. Mayhap this would help him heal.
Or forget.
He touched a finger to his scar. “This is why I left, and she was responsible.”
Leo did not seem particularly surprised by this revelation either. “Do tell, brother.”
“I was going to marry her.” Memories he had suppressed for so many years returned, visceral and vicious. “Until the day she betrayed me, and everything changed.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eight years earlier
Let me choose you, if you dare.
Try as he might, Clay had not been able to expel Ara’s fierce words from his mind.
He had gone to her the next day as she had asked, against his sense of honor. Against his better judgment. And against everything he had been taught, he had lost control. One kiss from her was all it required for him to vacate his sanity.
One kiss had led to another. Then another. Then another.
Until they had fallen as one to the blanket she had spread on the forest floor. Until he had lifted her gown to her waist and kissed his way up her beautiful legs. Until he had pleasured her with his mouth so thoroughly, she had spent twice, writhing and crying out beneath him like a beautiful sylvan goddess.
Afterward, she had asked to touch him, and he had allowed her to free his aching cock from his trousers. He had shown her how to pleasure him, how to stroke him, and he had come in her hand like a callow youth. It had been the most blisteringly satisfying experience of his life, and he had not even been inside her.
For he had not taken her innocence. Not entirely. But he had gone beyond the pale. He had behaved in a dishonorable fashion toward her. He had been weak and sinful, and he had not been able to resist wanting her when he knew he ought to leave her the hell alone.
Ruining Lady Araminta Winters that day would have been bad enough. But he had continued his folly. For weeks, they had met in secret. In the forest. In a hunting cabin on his father’s estate. Thrice, he had even smuggled her back into his bedchamber by using the servant’s stair with no one being the wiser. With each assignation, they grew bolder and his ability to keep from sinking home inside her diminished in increasing increments until he knew he had to act or the day would come that he committed the worst sin of all.
So today, he was choosing her.
He stood in the ante-room of Kingswood Hall, pinned beneath the contemptuous glares of half a dozen lords and ladies from previous centuries. There was also a picture of the Nativity and one of the Holy Family, having no less censorious an effect.
It was not
that he hadn’t wished to choose her from the start. His heart had always known Ara was for him. But gaining the courage to approach her father had been another matter. He had the modest means his father had settled upon him, no title to speak of, and he had been born a bastard. Add to that the old, persisting feud between Ara’s father and his, and his prospects were as sterling as counterfeit candlesticks.
The pompous butler returned then, his expression revealing nothing. “I am afraid His Lordship is not at home.”
The refusal to grant him an audience was expected. There was no reason for it to sting, and yet it did. He’d be damned if he would allow anyone to see it, however.
He straightened to his full, formidable height. “I shall wait for him to return. As I said, the matter is of grave import.”
The domestic looked as if he had stepped in something undesirable. “I regret to say the earl will not be returning today.”
The devil he wasn’t.
“Tomorrow, then,” he suggested through gritted teeth.
The butler did not blink. “That will not be possible. His Lordship has a great deal of estate matters which will occupy his time.”
Ara’s father would not speak with him, and he hadn’t even an inkling of Clay’s reason for requesting to see him. There was no help for it. He was in love with the man’s daughter, and though part of him knew any attempts on his part to be granted her hand in marriage would prove futile, he was willing to do anything to make her his.
She was the first thing he thought of when he woke each morning and the last thing on his mind before he faded into slumber. She was smart and witty, lovely and charming, everything he could hope for in a wife. More than he could hope for, actually. So much more.
He made up his mind.
Striding past the gawping butler, he made his way down the main corridor, throwing doors open as he went. The servant was at his heels, protesting profusely along the way.
Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 13
