The Duke of Morewether’s Secret Page 14

  “What do you want?” To his credit, nothing about Christian was inviting. Not his tone. Certainly not his mien.

  Almost as if rehearsed, another blond head appeared in the doorway. This one belonged to a child, the very image of the actress. “Mother?” Veronica snapped her fingers, and the girl entered the room to stand next to her. In the child’s face, their matching sky-blue eyes were enormous as she peered around the room in interest.

  “I have a new patron, darling.” Veronica said the endearment to Christian with practiced ease.

  His jaw flinched. “I have no idea what that has to do with me.”

  “He has a lack of appreciation for children underfoot.” Veronica put her hand on her child’s head. “Even for one as lovely as Lucy.”

  Thea heard murmuring behind her and turned to find Harrington and Francesca in a whispered argument. Lord Dalton face spelled out how uncomfortable the entire situation was for everyone else in the room. Her mother-in-law was ghostly white. For one brief second, Thea forgot her own horror and considered whether the Dowager would swoon. Anna steadfastly gripped Thea’s hand, her face the mask of a princess warrior.

  “What do you want?” Christian asked again. His fists were balled at his sides.

  “We’re leaving for the Continent, isn’t that lovely?” Veronica smiled broadly, aiming her attention at Thea. She must know her broad grin only served to make her more beautiful. Thea fought back the urge to be intimidated and squared her shoulders.

  Christian’s eyes narrowed and Veronica must have realized her scene was running long. “Philippe refuses to allow Lucy. Surely you understand. A ten-year-old accompanying such a trip is not — how do they say in French — tres romantique.”

  “Speak plainly,” Christian threatened.

  Thea sensed the next line was coming. Her stomach clenched in anticipation. Still, no matter how much she denied it, the words left Veronica’s lips anyway.

  “There’s nowhere else for your daughter. I’m leaving her here. With you. Her father.”

  Thea did hear the crash of the dowager’s swoon then. The butler leapt into action even as the room erupted in noise.

  “Bloody hell.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Did she say —?”

  “Mama!”

  “The hell you are.”

  Thea simply stood there. Mute. Everything she’d known about Christian Belling, the Duke of Morewether, was true. He’d somehow managed to pull the wool over her eyes, but her husband was every bit as much the wolf as her father had been. Actually, it was worse. Her husband was a lying, hypocritical bully. He refused to meet her gaze, refused to look at her to see the hurt and betrayal.

  In two quick strides he had Veronica by her upper arm and was dragging her from the room. Thea watched them go with no intention of following them. Confusion ruled behind her and she ignored it, too. Instead she watched the little girl. Lucy, her mother had called her.

  The child remained in the same place as if rooted. Her hands hung at her sides. She twisted slightly from side to side, a slow, idle dance that revealed her discomfort. Wide eyes took in the rumpus. Francesca and Thomas were in an argument, although Thea could not make out the words. The Duchess had been transferred to the settee, and the butler and Dalton were reviving her. Anna still clung to her hand, babbling, her words running together.

  “I didn’t know. Thea, I’m so sorry. I’d never even heard a rumor. I don’t know what to do.”

  Still, the girl stood there. Finally her eyes met Thea’s, and she gave a tentative, closed-lip smile.

  Thea extricated her hand from Anna’s overwrought grip. “Are you all right?” she asked the child as she moved to stand in front of her.

  Blonde head nodding, the girl answered with a shrug. “I’m used to it.”

  Thea nodded because she didn’t know what else to do. The dowager opened her eyes, but that didn’t slow Lord Dalton’s fanning of her face. He glanced up and gave Thea a look of intense sympathy that almost brought her to tears. She swallowed hard and looked back to Lucy. “Have you ever been here before? To Lord Morewether’s house?”

  “You mean my father? No. I’ve never met him before.”

  How was this possible? What kind of mother deposits her child on a doorstep and leaves? She knew exactly what kind of callous man didn’t care about his children, but wasn’t a mother supposed to be different?

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Lucy blinked at her. “Normally she’d have left me with Jane, but she’s got babies of her own now and there’s not enough room for me to stay with her anymore, even when I offered to help with the little ones.” Lucy shrugged again. “Mother says my father will send me to school or something. I’d like that. I’ve never been to school, but George, the manager at the theater, he taught me to read and do my sums. Mother might have sent me to stay with him, but he died last winter. Lung fever.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you have any babies?”

  “No. I was just married. Today actually.” Was that true? Did that really happen? Was this marriage even legal? Who could she ask about that?

  “I love weddings.” Lucy gave her another smile. She looked amazingly like her mother. She would be a beautiful woman some day.

  “Um hummm.” Thea was fascinated, mortified, unsettled by the girl. Like a carriage accident, her wedding had become a spectacle. Her husband had left with a former lover. Her mother-in-law had fainted. Her best friends were fighting, about what she had no idea, and it seemed everyone was afraid to look at her. Everyone except the child he’d hidden from her. Did they all expect her to crumble?

  She would never give the man the satisfaction of crumbling. Not like her mother did. There would be no scene. She was a strong as the Parthenon. That bit of marble had withstood two thousand years, she could last a bit longer.

  The child was still talking. “… and I said I could assist with the mending but Jane’s husband said no. He’s a nice man, and I guess I understood, but Jane still cried. I didn’t though. Mother doesn’t allow crying.”

  That seemed like excellent advice based on Thea current situation.

  “Do you want to have babies? I can help with those babies, do you think?”

  Thea flinched at the bold question. She looked to Anna for help, but she seemed to have joined Francesca’s argument with Thomas. The Dowager was sipping from a tea cup and didn’t seem to have heard the exchange. Dalton was engaged with the butler. She wasn’t going to get any assistance.

  “I don’t think I’ll be having babies anytime soon,” Thea told Lucy.

  “Jane didn’t think she’d have babies so soon either, but then all of a sudden there were the twins. A boy and a girl. Mary looks like Jane with pretty blonde hair, and Peter looks like Joe. Who do you think your babies will look like? Brown hair like yours or blond like your husband?”

  Thea was having an exquisitely difficult time following this conversation. Who in Zeus’s name were Jane and Mary and Peter and Joe? It seemed like Lucy had told her but she couldn’t remember. Now she was babbling about what her nonexistent children would look like. What blond husband?

  “My husband has black hair.” It seemed like an unnecessary thing to say. What difference did it matter anyway?

  Lucy looked around the room, presumably for her black-haired husband. “Not him?” Lucy pointed at Dalton.

  Thea shook her head. “I married the Duke of Morewether today.” It seemed strange to identify him as Lucy’s father, much less as her husband.

  Lucy’s jaw dropped. “You’re my step-mother?”

  Oh, my word. She was. How had that not occurred to her yet? Thea gave a weak nod.

  Eyeing her with a new sense of assessment, Lucy smiled again. “I like you. You’re pretty and nice. Where are you from? I’m good at accents; everyone at the theater said so. I’ve never heard one like yours before though.”

  “Greece. I’m from an island called Santorini.”

  Lucy repe
ated the name of Thea’s home, trying out the accent. She really was very good at mimicry.

  “Maybe the new school father sends me to will have geography classes, and I can learn about Greece. Do you think they will?”

  This child had a lot of questions, and Thea didn’t think she could answer any more of them. The numbness that had invaded her from the minute the actress had stormed into the room had crept up her feet and legs and was firmly settled in her middle. Now even her brain was fuzzy and she didn’t feel like she was getting any air in her lungs.

  All that talk about fainting …

  She didn’t want to be rude to the child. It certainly wasn’t Lucy’s fault any more than it was Hektor’s, Georgios’s, or Alexios’s fault when they were born bastards to a father who didn’t care about them. Still she couldn’t stand there anymore.

  She turned on her heel and strode out the same door Christian had towed Veronica through.

  Home. That’s what she needed. She needed to be home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I don’t want to hear any of your bloody nonsense, Veronica. What in God’s name are you doing here?” Christian was enraged and was making every effort to hold his temper in check. He released his ex-mistress’s arm from his death grip as soon as they crossed the threshold to his study and slammed the double doors.

  Veronica glided across the room like she would a stage, as if she had an adoring audience. “Darling, you needn’t be so severe.” Setting two glasses on the sideboard, she plucked a bottle of scotch and proceeded to pour.

  “Do you not have even an ounce of self-preservation?” Christian clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Who in the bloody hell is that child out there?”

  Turning with dramatic flair, she presented him with a glass. “Aren’t we friends anymore?”

  Eleven years since he’d first seen her, she was still beautiful; he could see exactly what had attracted him from the first. Her skin wasn’t the perfect alabaster it once was, and she wasn’t as thin, either, but she was beautiful. Still, it wasn’t her extraordinary beauty that had him competing with all the rest of the men for her. Veronica was a consummate actress. She could make a spectacular scene out of any occasion. Entering a room was an event, and every eye was drawn to her. He’d had to have her. He had been positive she’d be as sensational in bed as she was out of it.

  “We were never friends.” He snatched both glasses from her and set them back on the side board, the liquid untouched. “Who is that child?”

  With an elegant hand smoothing back her hair, she said, “I’m hurt.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and increased the ferocity of his glare. “There’s no audience here for your performance.”

  She tilted her face to him as if she was inviting a kiss and spread her lips in a seductive smile.

  “Veronica, I swear …”

  “Fine.” Her expression dulled. “Lucy is yours.”

  He didn’t believe her. Not for one minute. “My child is dead.” He said the words with a bluntness that still, even after all these years, set a pang of emotion through him.

  Veronica tossed her head, the flippant gesture only made him more furious. “Actually, she didn’t. I lied to you.”

  She said the words as if they meant nothing. As if she hadn’t told the most heinous lie. “You lied?”

  “You just wouldn’t go away.” She took back her drink and downed it, as if the liquid courage would make her lies acceptable.

  “She was my child. Why wouldn’t I have taken an interest? I offered you a hefty allowance and you wouldn’t take it.”

  She drained her whisky, watching him over the rim of the glass before she spoke. “I couldn’t take your offer of an allowance. Where is the security in that? You could die. She could die. There were too many scenarios where the money could dry up.”

  “I remember,” he said, recalling the vitriolic argument they’d had when he’d made his initial settlement offer. “I also gave you what you asked for. What did you do with all that money?”

  She gave a one shoulder shrug. “Paris is expensive in the spring.”

  He snorted in annoyance. “So I gave you what you asked for and more, and you repay me by letting me believe my daughter is dead? You’re such a bitch.”

  “I couldn’t have you coming around all the time and scaring off my other paramours.”

  He was going to kill her, right here in his study. Harrington and Dalton would have to help him dispose of her body. “You told me she died because you wanted to fuck an earl?”

  Veronica narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re a hypocrite. What kind of relationship did you think you were going to have with your bastard daughter?”

  The only emotion Christian could pluck out of those roiling in his chest was blistering anger. Anything else was too tenuous, too new, too frightening. He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. Instead, he choked back something threatening to break free and ruin his glorious, righteous ferocity. “We’ll never know will we? I never got a chance to make that decision.”

  She tossed her hand and turned from him, striding over to the grouping of furniture, but did not take a seat. “Well, then consider this amends from me to you. I have a new benefactor. He’s good to me, and I love him.” She paused and gave him a hooded look to see if he believed her. “Don’t make fun of me, but Philippe’s the one for me. I’m certain of it.”

  “I fail to see how this affects me.”

  “He doesn’t know about Lucy. I’ve been hiding her from him, but now I’m afraid he’ll throw me over if he knows I have a child.” She paced a slow path in front of the settee. “I’m running out of time. Surely you see that Christian.”

  The woman looked like she was going to cry, but he could never be sure if that was in truth or her masterful acting skills at play. His heart had been hardened against her ploys long ago.

  “I’m in the middle of my bloody wedding.” His voice grew with each word until by the end he was roaring.

  Her expression changed instantly into the other woman he’d grown all too familiar with by the end of their affair. “I didn’t know about that. Bad timing.” She gave a dismissive flick of her wrist. “I am leaving. She’s not coming with me. Philippe cannot know about her.”

  Christian threw his hands in the air. “This is ridiculous. Outrageous. You may not leave her here. Not now.”

  Very deliberately she pulled her gloves back on, stretching each finger and smoothing the leather along the seams. “Send her to school or something.”

  “You send her to school.” He roared. “God damn it. God damn it.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Her gloves on, she adjusted the strap of her reticule on her wrist.

  “You’re a horrible woman, a horrible mother.”

  “Probably. This isn’t a role I accepted readily, if you recall, Your Grace,” she said, her tone devoid of feeling.

  “How do I even know she’s mine? How do I know you’re telling the truth now?”

  She gave him a flat stare and pursed her lips. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just look at her. She is your daughter. Do with her what you will.”

  “Apparently you don’t have this poor idiot Philippe unless I go along with this ridiculous scheme. One word from me and this love-of-your-life character bolts like a skittish mare.” He punctuated his point with a flashing wave of his hand

  “Then I tell the entire ton about your off-handed treatment of your get.”

  “Do you think that is going to make you sympathetic in their eyes? You’re a fool, Veronica. Everyone will know exactly what you are, a conniving bitch.”

  The two of them stood toe-to-toe, eyes flashing. Christian recalled how in the old days, this fight would have ended in bed. The thought made his stomach roil.

  “How can you be so bloody cold?” He asked. He knew Veronica was opportunistic, but this was more than even he could have predicted. They were talking about her child, for the love of God.

  “I’m the ice q
ueen, remember.”

  “She’s not staying here.” Christian pointed at the floor with vehemence. He had no idea when he lost control of this argument, if indeed he ever had the upper hand. “I don’t know what you’re going to do with her, but whatever it is, it’s not here.”

  “The new Duchess of Morewether doesn’t want your bastard, either?” Her beautiful face was marred by a sneer.

  Christian made his voice low. “The child is not staying here.” The best way to kill her was to strangle the woman in his study, right here on the imported rug. How he was going to explain it, he had no idea. The woman had already ruined his wedding by her mere presence, and now she thought she was going to dump this child here. Well, she was mistaken.

  “You keep saying that.” His ex-mistress started for the door, her back to him.

  “Stop.” He grabbed her by the elbow. “I’ll give you more money. I’ll have Gibson double the amount.”

  There was a momentary greedy twinkle, but then it was gone. “I don’t need your money anymore. You’ve been replaced.”

  “I’m going to send her to a work house,” he threatened. It was an idle threat, of course. That idea was ludicrous. He didn’t know where Veronica was going to put the child, but no one would have wanted that for their child. Christian wasn’t heartless.

  She had the temerity to look aghast for a moment, but then called his bluff. “Is that what you want the entire ton to know about your bastard? That you put your ten-year-old child in a work house?”

  “I’m leaving for my honeymoon tomorrow. I need more time.”

  “Good night, darling. Give Lucy my best.”

  She swung open the double doors with a theatrical flourish only to expose his entire wedding party in the hall. “Good morning, everyone. Carry on.”

  His mother and sister looked apoplectic.

  Lucy stepped forward with a look of concern on her face. “Mother?”

  “You’ll be fine, Lucy. Behave yourself.” Veronica kissed the child on the top of her blonde head then strode away down the hall, leaving everyone stunned.

  “Where is my wife?” Christian demanded. He was no longer in the mood for any more nonsense.