A Sinful Deception

by Isabella Bradford

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked roughly, unable to keep back his emotions. “Why couldn’t you trust me?”

  She shook her head. She was crying now, and she didn’t try to stop. “I was afraid you’d despise me if you knew the truth.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I couldn’t, not you.”

  She closed her eyes, not believing, not yet. She had come this far, and she had to finish. He had to know everything. She owed it to her mother’s memory, and to Geoffrey as well. Slowly she looked up again, letting the hot tears slide down her face.

  “I never contrived to take my sister’s place,” she said. “The English who saved me mistook me for her when I was ill, and by the time I was well enough to understand what they’d done, I was too frightened to correct them. If they’d known, they would have sent me into the streets, and I would not have found a man as kind as my father to rescue me.”

  “Not in Calcutta, no,” he said. “But here you have me.”

  “But consider who I am, Geoffrey, what I am!” she cried miserably. “I’m half Hindi. I’m the daughter of a dancer from a brothel. I’m a bastard. For seven years, I’ve taken my dead sister’s place in her true family. I’ve taken the love that was meant for her, the fortune, the blessings and good wishes. From that last day at Sundara Manōra, I have been nothing but a falsehood, a deceiver, a liar, and a thief.”

  He took her hand and raised it to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers.

  “You are the woman I love more than any other,” he said, his blue eyes intent on hers so there would be no doubt of his meaning. “You are my love, my life, and my wife, and that is all that matters to me. All.”

  “But what of my uncle? What of his threats to tell all the world who and what I am?”

  She saw his jaw tighten, and at once she regretted mentioning her uncle.

  “I’m not afraid of Radnor,” he said firmly. “I believe I’ve proven that well enough. Together we’ll find a way to end his interference in your life once and for all.”

  She swallowed, wanting desperately to believe him.

  “You are the son of the Duke of Breconridge, a peer of the realm,” she said, the long years of guilt and shame too strong a memory to let go easily. “What will he say? What will your friends, your family, your—”

  “I told you, Jēsamina,” he said, every word deep and rich and filled with magic to her. “You are my love, my life, and my wife, and that is all that matters to me.”

  “I love you, too, Geoffrey, oh, so much.” She gulped through her tears. “But there is one more thing you must know. I think—I believe—that I’m with child. Your child. Our child.”

  “A child?” he asked, stunned. “You are sure?”

  She’d never seen him smile so warmly. “It’s early,” she said. “But Geoffrey, you must realize that this child may more resemble my mother. He or she may be—be dark.”

  “Our child,” he said fiercely. “That is all that matters to me. He or she will be our child.”

  Joy and relief left her speechless. And love: so much love for this man who loved her as she was, as she always had been.

  He pulled her from her chair onto his lap, into his arms, and threaded his fingers into her hair to draw her face closer to his. “Now come home with me, Serena. Come home, and be mine forever.”

  “Forever,” she echoed as he kissed her. “Forever.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  “They’re here.”

  Geoffrey stood at the window of the upstairs parlor with his hands clasped behind him. Below him in the street, his father’s carriage had drawn before their house, with all the usual pomp and fuss that a duke’s carriage made, and which his father thoroughly enjoyed. Already passersby were stopping on the pavement to gawk, but then, a gilded ducal crest on a carriage door, four matched gray horses, and footmen in plum livery trimmed in silver braid would stop most anyone, and that was before Father and Celia themselves had even stepped from the carriage.

  “Shall we go downstairs to greet them?” Serena asked behind him, still rearranging the tea table to suit herself after the servants had left them. “It’s the first time they’ve been to our home.”

  “It’s the first time they’ve been here at all,” Geoffrey said. He hadn’t really given the fact much thought until she mentioned it, but it was surprising that in all the time since he’d taken the lease on this house, his father had never once entered the door. “Father always prefers that my brothers and I come to him, but today it seemed right that he come here. And now he has.”

  “Because of me,” Serena said, her nervousness clear in her voice.

  “Because of us,” Geoffrey said firmly, watching the footmen open the carriage door. After the events of yesterday and last night, he would rather have taken the day to let her rest, but given those same circumstances, he wanted his father to learn what had happened—and what Serena had told him—from them, not from anyone else. There was simply too much at stake.

  “We’ll let Colburn show them upstairs,” he continued. “We’ll receive them here.”

  He turned away from the window and back toward her. He smiled; he couldn’t help it. She was wearing a pale sky-blue silk gown, trimmed with white lawn ruffles at the wrist to match the filmy white embroidered kerchief modestly covering her neckline. Her dark hair was simply dressed, and her only jewels were a single strand of pearls around her throat, and his betrothal ring back on her finger, where it belonged.

  He knew she had cautioned that it was early days in her pregnancy, but to his eye there was a glow and a ripeness to her that he could only attribute to the child. As she stood there with her hands lightly clasped at her waist, he sensed a new serenity as well, completely in keeping with her name. Whether that came from being with child, or from finally sharing the truth about her past with him, he couldn’t say. All he knew for certain was that she had never looked more enchantingly beautiful, and that he’d never loved her more.

  “My own Jēsamina,” he said softly. “It’s not too late to spare yourself, and let me do the telling. You are certain you wish to do this?”

  She nodded, her smile radiant.

  “I am,” she said. “I won’t deny that I am anxious, Geoffrey, but this is something I must do for myself, and for you, and for my mother’s memory, too.”

  “You’re very brave as well as very beautiful.” He heard his father’s voice on the stairs, and he kissed Serena, a quick burst of passion. “No wonder I love you so much.”

  “And I you,” she said, swiftly linking her hands with his.

  Lightly he squeezed her fingers, and she smiled up at him. This was how he wished his father to find them, joined together as one. He couldn’t guess what Father would make of Serena’s revelations, but his reaction would not change Geoffrey’s own feelings one bit. Serena was his wife, and nothing else mattered.

  “The Duke and Duchess of Breconridge,” Colburn announced solemnly (if unnecessarily), and Father and Celia joined them.

  For the first minutes, it was all smiles and small talk of last night’s rain and the loveliness of the parlor’s decoration. Chairs were taken and tea was dispensed, and finally Father opened the true conversation.

  “We are glad to see you safely returned to your proper place, Serena,” he said, smiling warmly. “I trust you are none the worse for your, ah, adventure?”

  “Thank you, Brecon,” Serena said with a graceful nod of her head. “As you see, I am quite recovered, and even improved by it.”

  “It was but a misunderstanding between us, Father,” Geoffrey said, watching Serena with careful concern. What she planned to say would not be easy for her, and he worried that it might prove to be too much.

  “Ah, the misunderstandings of newlyweds,” Father said indulgently. “Common enough, to be sure, though perhaps yours had more of the high drama to it than most.”

  Celia leaned closer, gently placing her hand in its silk mitt on Serena’s arm. “But everythin
g is quite resolved between you and Geoffrey now, my dear? Everything is settled to your satisfaction? We cannot have you running away like that again. It’s so very dangerous.”

  Serena smiled. “I won’t, Celia, I promise, and I am sorry for the distress I must have caused. There were many things I needed to say to Geoffrey that were finally said. Things that I now must say to you as well.”

  She put down her teacup, and took a deep breath. Geoffrey rose from his chair, and came to stand behind her, placing his hands protectively on her shoulders.

  “My history is not as you believe it to be,” she began. “I am indeed the daughter of Lord Thomas Carew, but my mother was not his wife. I am instead his second daughter, his illegitimate child with his bibi, his Hindi mistress, whom he loved above all others. My mother was named Ramya Das, and was a nautch dancer from a brothel.”

  She drew the locket with her mother’s portrait from her pocket, and set it on the tablecloth before Father and Celia. Father took the locket from the table to study the portrait, frowning with concentration, not disapproval, and Geoffrey realized he was holding his breath.

  “You are quite like her, and as beautiful as she,” Father said finally. “Does your grandfather know of this?”

  She lifted her chin a fraction with determination.

  “No,” she said. “He does not. He knows nothing of who I am, or what carried me to London. Geoffrey is the first person in England to whom I have told my story, and now you shall be the second and third.”

  And tell it she did, from the blissful days of her childhood through the horrors of the fever and the first misunderstanding that changed her life forever, all the way to the soldier who’d tried to blackmail her yesterday. As Geoffrey listened, he was struck again by her strength and courage. He could not fathom how she alone had survived in the face of so much, nor how she had borne the guilt of such a secret for so long.

  Yet she never faltered, her voice even and sure with every difficult word, and he realized why this telling was so important to her. As much as he wanted to protect her, this was something she had to do for herself. It was a confession, seeking absolution in the truth from the deception that had become part of her life. He had longed for her trust, but the magnitude of what she’d given him was stunning, and humbling as well.

  “Oh, my dear,” Celia murmured, reaching out to pat Serena’s arm. “I had no idea. What an astonishing history!”

  Father didn’t say anything, his silence stretching out uncomfortably as he waited to make sure Serena was done. He was sitting with his fingertips tented together, his expression noncommittal. He’d always been good at that, hiding his true thoughts and feelings; it was why he’d been so successful at Court.

  Finally he glanced down at the locket on the table, and back at Serena.

  “So, Serena,” he said. “It would seem that you are by birth half English and half Hindi.”

  Of all the things he might have said after Serena had told her story, this struck Geoffrey as the most appallingly insensitive, and at once he rose up to defend her.

  “She is, Father,” he said furiously. “She has made that abundantly clear. Does this knowledge disturb you?”

  Father looked at him, his expression still unreadable. “Does it disturb you, Geoffrey?”

  “She is my wife,” Geoffrey answered sharply. “I love Serena for herself, with no regard for the bigoted perceptions of others.”

  “I am glad of it,” Father said, smiling at last, “because that is what this estimable lady deserves after the trials she has faced. My only regret is that she has suffered from fear of disappointing us, when such ill favor could not be further from the truth.”

  “But you are an English duke with royal blood,” Serena protested, and for the first time this day Geoffrey heard that little tremor of uncertainty. “My grandfather does not believe it, of course, but most others say the Fitzroys are second in the realm only to His Majesty’s family.”

  Father sighed. “People like your grandfather believe that noblemen should be like overbred horses, limited to a certain breeding stock and no more,” he said. “It’s an impractical course that leads to spavined horses and weak-brained lordlings, rather like your uncle, Radnor. But consider our own family. We can count a king among our ancestors, true. But his royal blood included that from Italy, France, Austria, and Germany, and we’re all improved by it.”

  Relief washed over Geoffrey with such force that he realized how much he’d dreaded this moment with his father, fearing a much different resolution. He would have chosen Serena even if it meant breaking with the rest of his family, but how much better for them both—and for their child, and other children sure to follow—that it hadn’t been necessary.

  But Serena remained unconvinced. “To be from India is much different than to be born in Italy or Spain,” she said wistfully. “You see from that portrait how dark my mother was.”

  “And I counter with Her Majesty Queen Charlotte,” Father said easily. “You have been presented to her. Her skin may be fair, but her features bear the mark of her royal Portuguese and Moorish ancestors, who were African, and a good deal darker than your mother. Yet Her Majesty is the first lady of our realm.”

  Geoffrey nodded. He’d heard this story of the queen before, of course, and he did not doubt its veracity. But he was impressed that Father had thought to tell it now to Serena. What better way to ease her worries about her mixed blood than to say that Her Majesty herself was much the same? He’d always known his father was a clever man, but until this moment he hadn’t credited him with being so wise as well.

  “I had not known that of the queen,” Serena said slowly. “Her Majesty is a most refined lady.”

  “And her heritage has no effect on that refinement, except to improve it,” Father said firmly. “All that matters to me, Serena, is that you love my son, and he loves you.”

  “Thank you,” Geoffrey said, stepping forward to offer his father his hand. “You cannot know what that means to me.”

  He couldn’t recall his father ever smiling at him like this before, with warmth but with pride as well, and he held his clasped hand another moment longer, savoring the connection. It was ironic how neither of them had wanted this match in the beginning, yet through the unpredictable nature of love, Serena had brought them to a kind of rapprochement that he never would have anticipated.

  “It is a marvel that Serena found her way here to become your wife,” Father said. “We couldn’t possibly let something as petty as this stand in the way of your happiness now, could we?”

  “Not at all,” Geoffrey agreed heartily. “Once we’ve confounded Radnor, then everything shall be as it should.”

  “I thank you, too,” Serena said with a graciousness that Geoffrey knew masked her uncertainty. “But how exactly do you mean to confound my uncle? Once he learns of my secret, he will not stop his persecution.”

  “But why must he learn of it?” Father said with a dismissive twist of his hand, the way he often addressed other people’s problems. “A secret implies some shame, some mortification. But if we regard your past as a matter of privacy, to be shared within our family and no further, then it simply becomes a question of discretion. I see no reason for either him or your grandfather to be told.”

  Abruptly Serena rose, and went to stand before the fireplace and placed her hands on the edge of the mantel. Her head was bowed, her shoulders stiff, and her hands in tight, clenched knots.

  “It’s my father’s fortune,” she said to the window, though he was certain she was seeing nothing of what lay beyond it. “My uncle has always believed it should belong to him, not to me, and has resented my very existence because of it. He has done so many hateful things to me over the years that I would gladly give him every last farthing if he pledged to leave me alone.”

  Geoffrey rose and went to her at once. Heedless of his father and Celia, he circled his arms around her waist.

  “If I believed that would bring you peace,
then I would carry the bank draft to him myself,” he said softly, against her cheek. “I didn’t marry you for your fortune, and if you’d come to me in your shift alone, I would love you the same. But giving Radnor the money would be the last thing your father would have wished. If what you say of how much the two brothers disliked each other is true, then your father would likely prefer that you toss it all in the Thames rather than give it to Radnor.”

  Behind them, Father sighed. “You needn’t do anything so wastefully dramatic,” he said, ever the pragmatist. “Don’t touch the money yourself if you don’t wish to, but put it into trust for your children.”

  “Our children,” Geoffrey echoed, wanting to remind her of that first child in particular. She had not wanted to announce her pregnancy to his family yet, but he couldn’t help sliding his hands a little lower from her waist, protectively over her unborn child. “I’d much rather they received your father’s largesse than Radnor.”

  But she shook her head. “Everyone advises me on what I should do, how I should behave, and what I should say and think,” she said with a mixture of sorrow and frustration. “Yet how can I decide anything for my future? I’ve pretended to be my sister for so long that now I’ve no notion at all of who I truly am, or who I’m supposed to be.”

  “Oh, my love.” Gently he turned her around to face him, and cradled her cheek in his palm. “You may have borrowed your sister’s name, but everything else is entirely your own. What you’ve experienced, good and bad, has made you who you are. Let people judge you for that, not for how you were born. You’re brave and strong and determined, kind and intelligent and endlessly fascinating, and there is no other woman like you anywhere. As long as you know that, nothing anyone else says can harm you, because it will not matter.”

  “Geoffrey, Geoffrey,” she said, trying to smile. “When you say it like that, I can almost believe you.”

  “You should believe me, because it’s the truth,” he said. “You’re an entire original, and no one can take that from you.”