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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Cheryl Anne Porter
Praise for Cheryl Anne Porter
Copyright
To Donna Pierson, fan and friend extraordinaire.
CHAPTER 1
Wetherington’s Point, August 1875
The Midlands, England’s heartland
“I am with child.” The four words, Victoria knew, damned her. Like hangmen’s nooses draped over a gallows, they hung suspended in the air between her and her visibly stunned husband. Tears of shame pricked Victoria’s eyes and belied the defiant set of her chin. She—the young Duchess of Moreland, Her Grace Victoria Sofia Redmond Whitfield, a reluctant newlywed wife from Savannah, Georgia—stood ramrod straight in front of the duke, an Englishman little more than a stranger to her.
He—John Spencer Whitfield, the tenth Duke of Moreland—sat enthroned on a sky-blue silk-upholstered chair in the staggeringly grand south parlor on the first floor of his impressive ancestral country estate. He glared at her, as unyielding as if he’d been cut from the same marble that paved the floor. The look on his face plainly told her he would have been happier to learn of an outbreak of cholera in his household than he was with her news. “I should be elated by this … revelation,” he said, “but of course I am not.”
“No, Your Grace, I didn’t suppose you would be.” When his granite countenance became too much for her, Victoria shifted her gaze mere inches to his right, to a vase of flowers on the table next to him. She could hardly blame him for being angry, if angry was a strong enough word for what he might be feeling. Whatever the emotion was, he had every right to it, she knew that—just as she knew that her news could not have come at a worse moment for them as a couple.
It was so unfair. Just as they were finding some common ground together, a way to be content, if not happy. And then … this. Without a doubt, something between them had died with her announcement. She had actually felt it. Had it been hope for their future? Perhaps. Trust? Certainly gone. Respect? Gone, also.
Victoria chanced a quick glance, under cover of her lashes, at her husband. With jet-black hair and smoldering eyes to match, he was certainly handsome and possessed the wonderfully fit physique of a man of athletic pursuits. But beyond his physical attributes—and they were many—he also owned qualities of personality she respected … but from afar. He was a man of his word. Responsible. Honest. He was stern and patrician, yes, but that was his heritage and his upbringing. Even so, she wished he would smile more. Laugh more. She was never sure if he was happy, or if such a thing mattered to him.
How was it, then, that she always seemed to want more from him, or of him, than he could or would give her? Confusing her was the realization that she couldn’t even say why she hungered for this elusive something from him. She didn’t love him. But what did she really know of love? She knew of seduction and betrayal. But not love. She knew also of guilt and remorse, both of which urged her to run to him now and throw her arms around his neck and tell him how very, very sorry she was. But she and he did not have the sort of relationship where such a gesture could heal, much less be wanted. But even had they, he’d hardly welcome that from her at this moment. And maybe never, after this.
Again she tore her gaze from his, casting it over to the French doors, which were thrown open to capture the sweet-scented breeze blowing in from the formal gardens with their neat rows of shrubs and exuberantly blooming flowers. With birds singing their encouragement, with bees and butterflies flitting industriously from one nectar-laden flower to the next, the August afternoon spilled in through the open doors and beckoned to Victoria’s senses.
“Are you contemplating fleeing, Victoria?”
Though she started at the deep, rumbling timbre of her husband’s voice, she managed to reply evenly. “No, Your Grace. Should I be?”
“That would be most unwise,” he said quietly and with complete authority.
Swallowing hard, twisting her lace hanky into knots, Victoria feared she would be burned to a cinder by the blazing contempt directed her way from him. He slowly arched an eyebrow, reminding her of a dark angel. Handsome. Dangerous. Unknowable. Irresistible. “You’re certain, then? You are with child?”
To hear her shame spoken aloud by him weighed Victoria down with guilt. Though she felt as if a slab of limestone had fallen on her and was crushing her, she exerted an intense effort of will and found the strength to respond. “Yes, I am. I’m … certain I’m with child.”
He had every right to ask, Whose child? But all he said was: “I see.”
The duke, this man to whom she had been quickly wed, following a scandal in Savannah, soberly studied her with those intent black eyes of his, which seemed to bore deep into her secret shame. “How long have you known this, Victoria?”
She knew why he asked. He meant had she known of her delicate condition before their marriage? “I’ve only just realized it, Your Grace.”
“My name is Spencer.”
“I recall.”
“I am your husband.”
“I recall that as well, Your Grace.”
He exhaled a breath laden with exasperation. “And so you will call me Spencer when we are alone.”
“Yes, Your Gra—I beg your pardon. Spencer.” She had trouble thinking of him by his Christian name. He was such a very formal person … and a daunting one. Victoria didn’t mind admitting that his title, though she also now owned a similar one, intimidated her as well. She half feared he could, by law, have her beheaded or locked away in a tower, should she displease him in any way. And certainly, this bit of news had not pleased him.
“I suppose,” he was saying, “I should commend you for telling me so promptly. Not many women would have, under these circumstances. They would have kept their secret as long as possible to make their husbands believe the child was his.”
Though her heart knocked against her ribs, Victoria forced the same casual note into her voice that his held. “But the child could very well be yours.”
He nodded. “Or it could not.”
It was like being in the room with a hungry raptor. Victoria heard herself talking on out of nervousness. “I will admit I contemplated not telling you yet, but in the end, I had no wish to make matters worse by delaying this news. I realized you would have known soon enough, anyway.”
“Yes, I suppose I would have done.” He cocked his head at a considering angle and roved his gaze over her person.
Victoria had all she could do not to squirm as he blatantly searched for any discernible physical changes that went along with her condition. She could have told him, had he simply asked, they were nonexistent, really. But he hadn’t asked. Instead, he chose this silent and probing scrutiny of her. If his intent w
as to humiliate her, he was succeeding admirably.
“Given the time frame, Victoria, this certainly complicates matters, to put it mildly.”
“Yes. Complicated on more than one level, Your Grace.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’ll be its mother, the poor little creature. It will surely start screaming the moment it realizes that.”
She couldn’t be certain but she thought she’d almost made him laugh. He quickly rubbed his fingers over his mouth, shifted his position in his chair, and frowned sternly. “Yes, well, you’ll have a nanny and a nurse to help you. But surely you know something about babies. You are, after all, a woman.”
“Oh, no, sir, that has nothing to do with it. No more than your being male causes you to instantly know all about horses. Truly, I don’t know the first thing, except what I’ve observed.”
There was a definite creasing of the skin at the corners of his eyes as he watched her. Was it humor? Did she amuse him? “And what have you observed, Victoria?”
“Mostly that infants are limp little beings who are wet and loud at both ends, Your Grace, and sometimes simultaneously.” She grimaced and shook her head at the horror of it all. “Very daunting.”
He nodded his agreement. “This entire situation is a bit daunting.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Chastened, Victoria lowered her gaze to her shoes, but her thoughts were with the tiny, fragile little life she carried inside her. She was going to have a baby—a helpless mite whose father its mother could not name with any certainty. How could this have happened? But she knew. She saw, in her mind’s eye, herself in Savannah, before her marriage, that night in her bedroom when he’d come in—No. It can’t be his. It just can’t. But it very well could be, and well she … and her husband … knew it.
Unexpectedly, emotion welled up inside Victoria, pushing reticence aside and propelling her a step closer to him. “I swear to you, if I could make this not be true, I would do so. I would. But I cannot, and for that I am so very sorry.”
He slumped in his chair and rubbed tiredly at his forehead. “Of course there are ways we could … solve this dilemma, or make it not true, as you said. But we dare not resort to them.”
Puzzlement brought a frown to Victoria’s face. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do. End the pregnancy. Don’t look so naïve or shocked, Victoria. There are ways. But we cannot consider it because the truth is as you said: The child could be mine. And the dangers involved for you are too great. The end result could be you may not be able to have another, should something go wrong, and that would leave me without an heir. And perhaps a wife, as well.”
Though he’d spoken as if in great pain emotionally, Victoria stared in horror at her husband as realization swept over her. “You mean an … abortion?”
“Yes. Didn’t you?”
“No! Never. I meant I wish I could make what happened to me in Savannah not true. That’s all. I never wished for an end to my baby.” As though physically threatened, she gripped her skirts and moved away from him. “Never. No. I won’t do it.”
He held a hand out to stop her retreat. “No one is asking you to undergo such a thing, Victoria. I simply expounded on what I thought you to be saying.”
She stood her ground, her chin high. “Well, then … good. Because I would never consent to such a thing.”
His black eyes bored into hers. He didn’t have to say it. She knew what he was thinking: She could protest all she wished. Had he insisted, he could have forced her to undergo the hideous procedure. His will, had it been different from hers, would have prevailed. Never in her life had she felt so much like a possession to be treasured or disposed of at the whim of her husband—a man who had taken her to wife and taken her to his bed, as was his right. Despite the heat and the power of her husband’s lovemaking, he’d only been performing his duty with her. That was Victoria’s belief, and he had never given her reason to believe otherwise. He had offered no protestations of love, no endearments, no statement of want or need.
“How long have you had symptoms?”
“Symptoms?”
“For the love of God, woman. Yes, Victoria. Symptoms. I am trying to ascertain, by the length of time you’ve had symptoms, exactly whose child this is.”
His tone of voice, low and angry, could have been hands wrapped around her throat and squeezing hard. Victoria could produce no more than a whisper. “The child I carry is exactly mine, Your Grace.”
His dangerously narrowed eyes met her words. “How grand it would be if only that were all that mattered.”
There was nothing she could say. This predicament she found herself in was, by society’s and the church’s dictates, one of her own making, despite the involvement of two men. Victoria lowered her gaze and stared hotly at the lovely rose pattern woven into the thick Aubusson carpet under her feet and thought how unfair it all was.
“Victoria, do me the courtesy of looking at me, please.” It was a quiet command she obeyed, one that showed her an impatient glint in her husband’s eyes. “I asked you how long you’ve been experiencing symptoms. And I mean exactly. To the day.”
“It’s very hard to pin down—”
“Try.”
“I—I am trying, Your Grace. Truly, I am. I do not—”
“I will not tell you again to address me as Spencer.”
Flustered now, Victoria gestured with her hanky. “I’m sorry. I am trying. But, you will forgive me, I find myself hard-pressed, sir, to think of you in intimate terms.”
Clearly offended, he looked down his aristocratic nose at her. “I beg your pardon, madam? We could not be on more intimate terms.”
He meant the bedroom, of course. Victoria felt the flush of embarrassment on her cheeks as she looked away. She wanted so much to tell him that her bed was the only place where he shed more than his clothes, where he allowed her to know anything at all about him. Throughout the course of their days, he behaved as if their nights together had never happened. He treated her like a pretty bird in a gilded cage. She could barely stand it. With that acknowledgment came anger and courage. “Yes, we are intimate,” she said, looking into his eyes, “but not in any way that matters. You care nothing for me.”
Her husband’s grip on his chair’s arms visibly tightened. “Do not presume to tell me what or how I feel, Victoria.”
“But I speak the truth. You care only for the wealth I brought to your coffers when you married me. That, and my tinge of royal Russian blood with which you mean to enrich your bloodlines.”
He slowly sat forward. “And have you, Victoria? Have you enriched my bloodlines with that royal Russian blood? That’s exactly what I’m trying to ascertain here. And since you’re in a mood for truth, madam, tell me: When did you really realize you were with child?”
He was calling her a liar. Outraged, Victoria held her head high. “Only this morning. I have had symptoms for weeks, I admit. But I had no idea what could be the matter with me. Then, earlier, Rosanna brought it to my attention—”
“Who the devil is Rosanna?”
“My lady’s maid.”
“Yes, of course. Rose. Go on.”
It was Rosanna, but Victoria chose not to correct him. “As you wish. I had attributed my tiredness and the bouts of illness, as well as my lack of…” A furious heat worked its way up her cheeks. One simply did not speak of such things, not even with one’s husband—and certainly not in broad daylight and in the parlor.
Spencer waggled a hand at her impatiently. “Yes? Come on, your lack of what?”
“My monthly ills,” she blurted, humiliated beyond belief.
But all her husband did was nod. “Ah. And how many have you missed?”
She wanted both to cry and strike out at him for putting her through this awful interrogation. Had he no sensibilities? “I have missed my second one.”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t clarify anything, does it?” His glare slowly bled into a th
oughtful expression as he cocked his head and considered her. “I begin to believe you truly had no idea. What an appalling situation it is that you well-bred young ladies are told nothing of those things that are most important for you to know.”
He made it sound as if she were stupid somehow. “I don’t know that I agree with your assessment, sir.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It is not required that you do.”
Arrogant man. Victoria gritted her teeth against the urge to respond in kind. Looking for something about him to hate, she roved her gaze over his face—his undeniably strong and ruggedly handsome face, replete with sculpted masculine planes and hollows that boasted a high forehead and cheekbones, an aquiline nose, stubborn jaw, and generous mouth. To her consternation, she found nothing.
“How many weeks have we been married, Victoria?”
He knew. He just wanted her to have to say. “Nearly eight. Which makes it entirely possible that this baby I carry could be yours.”
Although he nodded, he said, “Or it might not be, and nothing but absolute certainty is all that will do.”
“I understand that. But how does one decide absolute certainty, Your Grace? Given that we—you and I—look nothing alike, and the baby could resemble me with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, I don’t see how—”
“Oh, but I do.” His slashing scimitar of a grin would have made a pirate proud. “Every true Whitfield has the same birthmark.”
“Birthmark?” Victoria’s expression crimped into one of puzzlement. “But I’ve never seen…” She mentally, furiously, explored what little bit she’d seen of her husband’s naked body. Though they’d shared passion, he’d always come to her at night when her room was darkened—
“It’s there, Victoria. I have it.”
His knowing smirk irritated her further. “I shall take your word for it, sir.”
“Would that I could take your word so easily, madam. However, I have a sacred duty to the six hundred years of Whitfields who came before me, as well as to those who will follow me, to protect my title and my holdings through untainted bloodlines. So I must know, and without the first measure of doubt, that the male child who bears my name is indeed my son.”
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