“She just abandoned her own daughter?” Thea could not imagine any woman ever doing such a thing.
“She sold her daughter,” Blackmoor corrected harshly. “I insisted on having a legal contract drawn up—”
“Thank God,” Daniel muttered in the background.
“I was young and naïve, but not completely stupid,” Julian acknowledged with hard self-derision. “I was to be allowed to keep Amelia, and in exchange, I would not have Jennifer arrested for murdering Robert. I would also give her the large sum of money to set up her own home in Italy with her real husband, James Brown, after which neither I nor Amelia would ever see or hear from either of the Browns again.”
“And did you?” Daniel probed.
Blackmoor’s jaw tightened. “Until recently, Jennifer has complied with our agreement.”
“Recently…?” Thea echoed, her eyes wide.
He nodded. “It is my belief that Jennifer may have returned to London.”
Thea gasped. “She is not dead…?”
“She is not dead,” Julian confirmed grimly.
Chapter 13
Thea could see from her brother’s expression that he was as stunned by what he had heard as she was. Not only had Julian Remington never been married to the woman who had been publicly known as his duchess for over a year, but he was not Amelia’s father. Also, Amelia’s mother was responsible for killing Julian’s brother.
And she is not dead, as everyone believes, but still very much alive.
“I am presuming you have decided to tell us all this because Mrs. Brown has now reneged on that last promise?” Daniel prompted softly.
Thea gave Blackmoor a sharp glance. “Is this woman out to make mischief before Amelia’s wedding?”
“I doubt Jennifer knows the meaning of the word mischief,” he dismissed scornfully. “She is, however, vicious and obviously capable of committing murder. I have also discovered her real husband died some weeks ago of influenza, and I fear his death may have unhinged her completely.” His mouth tightened. “I have had someone in Italy watching her all these years, but he disappeared some weeks ago.”
Daniel frowned. “Do you suspect foul play?”
“As I have learned only too well, where Jennifer is concerned, it is always wise to think the worst.” Blackmoor sighed. “It is certainly true that none of my enquiries for the man proved to be successful. I did, however, discover that Jennifer has left Italy. It is now my belief she is in London somewhere, but so far neither I nor the men I employed to do so have been able to find where she is staying.”
“Has she contacted you, or has something untoward happened to make you think she is here?” Daniel looked puzzled.
Thea’s breath stilled as Blackmoor gazed at her between narrowed lids. The only thing untoward which had happened in recent weeks had been her accident, when she stumbled and fell in front of the horses and carriage.
Stumbled…or was pushed?
Thea thought back to that day. The crowded street. The jostling from behind her. The push that sent me stumbling from the pavement and into the path of the horses and carriage.
Oh dear God…
If that push had indeed been deliberate, then Jennifer Brown had to be aware of Thea’s relationship with Blackmoor. And the only way for the other woman to have known about that was if she had followed Thea, that day, and for several days before it.
Was this the reason for Blackmoor’s sudden disappearance after her accident? Because, suspecting the worst, he had traveled to Italy himself to make his enquiries?
Was it possible that Jennifer really was here in London? That her husband’s death had unhinged her and caused her to turn her anger on the man whom her confused and grief-stricken mind now probably held responsible for all the ills in her life? Grief did strange things to people, and Jennifer appeared to be a woman of strong and not always logical emotions.
Thea knew with startling clarity this was exactly what Blackmoor feared had happened.
Meaning he was now in the difficult position of maintaining discretion, for her sake, or telling her brother exactly the reason for his suspicion Jennifer Brown was now in London.
She straightened her shoulders before rising to her feet. “Daniel—”
“This is not necessary, Thea,” Blackmoor told her huskily.
“I believe it is.” She returned his gaze before turning back to her brother. “Blackmoor and I have…formed an acquaintance of late,” she informed him. “I believe he may now suspect that my accident was not an accident at all.”
“An acquaintance…?” Daniel repeated as he frowned first at her and then narrowed his gaze at Blackmoor.
“We have been lovers,” Julian revealed briskly.
Thea’s cheeks blazed with color as her brother’s eyes widened in shock.
Because Daniel could not believe his sister capable of such behavior?
Or because he could not imagine her and Blackmoor together?
No doubt a little of both, she accepted.
They were an unlikely pairing, she so plain and prim, Blackmoor so aristocratically handsome he could have any woman he wished, in or out of society.
“Well.” Daniel visibly collected himself. “I… This is—”
“Let us not allow that to cloud the issue, Latham.” Julian’s voice was terse. “It is of no significance, in any case, since Thea and I are no longer lovers.”
His disparaging tone came as a slap in the face to Thea. A timely reminder that Blackmoor was finished with her, once and for all.
Much as Julian appreciated Thea’s sacrifice in confessing all to her brother, he also hated the way her cheeks now paled at his dismissal of their relationship. Because it was a deliberate dismissal. His way of protecting her from what he suspected to be Jennifer’s vengeful feelings towards him. The husband she loved was dead, her life was once again in ruins, and she no longer had any reason to hold back in regard to the hatred she had developed for Julian. What better way to punish him than to deprive him of the woman he—
The woman he what?
Julian had deliberately not looked too deeply into his feelings for Thea these past few days. He would not do so now either. “With only days before the wedding, I believed it important that you know the truth, Latham. So that you can be vigilant in your protection of…your family.” He did not so much as glance in Thea’s direction as he continued. “I would also deem it a favor to me if you do not reproach Thea in any way in regard to our brief…liaison. It was entirely and singularly my fault that it happened.”
The other man raised dark brows. “Are you saying you forced my sister into accepting your attentions?”
“I—”
“No!” Thea protested vehemently over his reply. “There was no force involved on either side, Daniel,” she stated. “It was nothing more than a brief and mutual attraction that has now run its course.”
“Nothing more than a brief and mutual attraction…”
It had been a damned sight more than that to Julian. Much more. Just being in the same room with Thea was enough to make his heart race and his cock rise to attention, the latter a response he dare not act upon again while Jennifer stalked the shadows intent on harming those he cared about.
Even if Thea were to allow him to do so.
Which he knew she would not.
He had been coldly and deliberately cruel to her after they made love in his study. Dismissed her as if she were nothing more to him than a cheap whore he had brought home for the evening. One he had now tired of.
Her dislike of him now was the price he had to pay for protecting her from further harm at Jennifer’s hands.
Damn it, he would protect her, if it was the last thing he did.
And if Jennifer had her way, it might be exactly that…
“I must say, Thea, you do not have the look of the radiant aunt of the groom,” Lady Sally Derwent remarked with her usual forthright manner.
Perhaps Thea did not look radiant b
ecause she was not.
These past two days, since Blackmoor’s visit to Latham House in order to confess all to her brother as well as to her, had taken a terrible toll on her already frayed nerves.
As requested, Daniel had not questioned or reproached her for her affair with Blackmoor once the other man had departed that day. But that did not mean those questions had not been in her brother’s eyes every time he looked at her since.
She had also been summoned to Blackmoor House yesterday, Amelia having sent a note requesting her presence, due to a last-minute panic concerning the veil. Thank goodness Blackmoor had been away from home at the time. Perhaps still searching for the woman who had been his wife and yet not?
Whatever the reason for his absence, it in no way detracted from Thea’s inner turmoil in returning to the scene of her utter humiliation.
It had also dawned on her that the dance she had to take with Blackmoor at the wedding, and which had been his original reason for calling upon her that day six weeks ago, now loomed ominously in her very near future.
Was Blackmoor dreading it as much as she was?
Of course he was. How could it be otherwise, when he now despised both her and the desire that had burned so brightly between them and then been as quickly extinguished? On his part, at least.
“Perhaps she is not completely recovered from her accident?” Mrs. Felicity Randall put in kindly, the three ladies having once again decided to call upon Thea together.
“You should have heeded our advice and taken Blackmoor as your lover,” Lady Rachel Shaw put in dryly. “There is nothing like a lover for putting color in your cheeks and a sparkle in your eyes.”
“And you would know because…?” Sally eyed her knowingly.
“I would know.” Rachel gave an acknowledging inclination of her head but added nothing further to the statement. “What on earth happened with Blackmoor?” She turned her attention back to Thea. “I felt sure there was a relationship developing there.”
Thea gave what she hoped was a dismissive laugh. “Blackmoor and I? Please! As if!”
“Protesting too much, do you think?” Rachel prompted Sally conversationally.
“Perhaps,” the other woman drawled. “Thea, dear—”
“His Grace, the Duke of Blackmoor, my lady,” Cross announced with resignation at the same time as Blackmoor, his appearance as dark and somber as ever, stepped into Thea’s private parlor.
Really, had this arrogant duke abandoned all manners where she was concerned? Damningly so, when she had just finished telling her friends there had not been, nor was there now, any relationship between herself and Blackmoor.
Her three friends, all made of sterner stuff than the dozen or so ladies Blackmoor had last routed from her home, instead gazed at him with varying degrees of curiosity and speculation.
“Ladies.” He gave an acknowledging nod of their presence.
Instead, it was left to Thea to slowly rise to her feet and give each of her friends a pointed glance to signify it was time they departed. Sally merely raised mocking brows. Rachel was too busy ogling the duke to notice anything else.
Only Felicity gathered up her parasol and bonnet in preparation for leaving. “Come along, ladies, I still have time to go to the milliners before returning home. Now,” she added, showing a rarely seen steeliness, when Rachel seemed set to argue. “Thea dear.” She turned to kiss her warmly on the cheek. “Your Grace.” She curtseyed to Blackmoor, her hand tucked into the crook of Sally’s arm as she pulled the other woman from the room.
“Thea.” Rachel followed them out slowly. “Your Grace.” She still only had eyes for Blackmoor as she sidled past him.
“That was extremely rude of you.” Thea frowned her displeasure as Blackmoor closed the door almost before Rachel’s daintily booted foot had crossed the threshold.
He eyed her impatiently. “I needed to speak with you alone.”
As if that was excuse for any amount of rudeness on his part. “Those three ladies are my closest friends.”
“Then I will apologize to them when next we meet.” Blackmoor put his hat and cane down on a chair before crossing the room to stand in front of her. “As I have come here today to apologize to you,” he added huskily.
Thea took a step away before moving to stand with her back to the window, totally unnerved by his close proximity. “Apologize to me for what?” she prompted coolly.
Julian knew he deserved Thea’s unyielding attitude. Indeed, he had deliberately caused, and then nurtured it. He just hadn’t considered how unhappy it would make him feel to have Thea look at him with such scorn. To still be able to feel that scorn when they were apart, even though he lived several miles away.
He gave a shake of his head. “I placed you in a difficult position when I called the other day. I realized afterwards I should have taken steps to warn you of the content of the conversation before speaking with your brother.”
She gave a shrug of her shoulders, very pale and regal in a peach gown . “An apology is unnecessary when such behavior is what one knows to expect from the Duke of Blackmoor. At least one can never claim to be disappointed in your unremitting arrogance,” she added dismissively.
Julian gave a pained wince, knowing he wholly deserved her condemnation. “Nevertheless, I still offer you my apology. I trust there have been no repercussions from Latham in regards to the…personal revelations I made about the two of us that day?”
“Why should there be? My brother is an honorable gentleman, and he gave you his word.”
She had no need to say that she didn’t consider him to be in the least honorable or a gentleman, her utter disgust obvious in her tone as well as the haughty angle of her head as she looked down her nose at him.
Julian wanted nothing more than to erase that disgusted look. As he longed to remove the pins from Thea’s hair, and allow those red tresses to fall about her shoulders and cascade down her back almost to her waist. To bury his face in the gentle curve of her throat and breathe her in. To hold her in his arms and kiss her. Nothing more. Just to kiss her and hold her.
His hands clenched at his sides as he stopped himself from doing any of those things. “I have also come to ask a favor of you. Yes, I realize I am the last person who should ever dare ask you for anything ever again,” he acknowledged as she raised her auburn brows. “This is not for me, Thea, but for Amelia.”
“Go on.”
Julian sighed as her gaze became even chillier. “Amelia has informed me that you are all to attend the Wiltons’ masked ball this evening”—damn these infernal masked balls the ton seemed to enjoy so much!—“and we still have not located my—Mrs. Brown. A mask can hide any number of sins, as well as a person’s true identity.” His mouth had thinned at having almost calling Jennifer his wife, something Thea now knew the other woman had never been.
As she now knew the whole sordid story of his “marriage” to Jennifer, the circumstances of Amelia’s birth, and his “wife’s” supposed death. All of them, apart from Amelia, things Julian would much rather forget had ever taken place.
Maybe Latham was right, and if he had been older, more worldly-wise, he would have seen through Jennifer’s ruse, and so never have allowed himself to be manipulated in the way he had. At the time, he had still been suffering from the loss of his beloved older brother, and Jennifer’s news she was carrying his brother’s child had seemed like a godsend. A small piece of Robert returned to him.
It had only been later, following Amelia’s birth, when Jennifer began to spend hours, and then nights away from Blackmoor House, that he had begun to suspect Jennifer was seeing another man. When he confronted her with that suspicion, she had laughed and told him the truth.
How Julian had stopped himself from strangling her that day, he would never know. Perhaps it was the thought of Amelia being left without either of the people she believed to be her parents.
Whatever the reason, Julian had changed that day and become the controlling and con
trolled man he was today. The man everyone knew as the cold and arrogant Duke of Blackmoor.
Except that coldness and arrogance no longer applied when it came to his feelings towards Thea Fitzroy.
Thea made him burn. Made him yearn, long for things he could never have. No respectable lady would ever want to be associated with a man whose past she now knew to be as complicated and sordid as his was.
And above all else, Thea was a lady. Beautiful and compassionate too, her concern always for the benefit of others rather than herself.
He was counting on that unselfish concern now. “Tonight is the last chance for Jennifer to cause harm before the wedding tomorrow. As such, I do not believe it is a good idea for any of you to attend the ball this evening.”
Thea eyed him curiously. “Surely you do not think she will dare to attend the ball herself?”
“I know better than to underestimate her.”
“But she would need an invitation.”
Julian gave a weary sigh. “I have no doubts she will find a way to be there this evening if that is where she wishes to be.”
Thea could see why Blackmoor was making his request they not attend the ball. She could even sympathize with it.
But she had made a pact with herself since the end of their disastrous affair. Had considered the events in her life so far and decided she had been seriously wanting in expressing her own preferences and needs. That she had allowed things to happen in her life rather than make those choices for herself.
She had married Henry because her father had decided she would.
Once widowed, she had moved back to Latham House to live with her brother and George, because Daniel was now the earl and it was what he thought best for her.
Her father and Daniel had both been wrong in those choices, and in future, Thea wished to decide for herself what was or was not best for her. One of the things she intended doing after the wedding tomorrow was to look for a house and servants of her own. Henry had left her quite wealthy, and once removed to her own home, she could live her life as she saw fit and not as her male relatives decided for her.
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