How the Scoundrel Seduces (25 page)

Milosh spat an oath. “That’s a lie. Drina would never have been so unconscionable as to
sell
a child of her blood. She might have behaved foolishly by sharing Hucker’s bed, but that . . .” He shook his head.

Tristan stared balefully at his friend. “And you’re sure it was Hucker and not some other fellow who got Drina with child? Because we considered the possibility that the culprit was actually Zoe’s adoptive father, who might have made Drina his mistress.”

Hope sprang in her heart. She would vastly prefer that Papa be her true father, infidelity or no, rather than that . . . that awful beast Hucker. Especially after hearing what he’d done to Lisette and Tristan and Dom. “Yes, perhaps your sister took up with my father, whom she met . . .”

Where could they have met? As she had told Tristan, it was unlikely that Drina and Papa would have crossed paths in Highthorpe, given the villagers’ dislike of Gypsies.

“I’m sorry,
chai,
” Milosh said matter-of-factly, “but Hucker is definitely your father. Your grandfather caught Drina in the arse’s bed. And after she was cast out, she went to live in an abandoned hunting cottage at Rathmoor Park, where she and Hucker would meet. I
did not know she was with child when we left the estate to winter in York, but I’m not surprised to hear that she was.”

“And I never knew anything about this?” Tristan exclaimed.

“They kept their union secret because of George.”

“George!” Tristan said in a hollow voice. “When was this again?”

“Do you remember the summer when George finished Eton and your father wanted to travel to Italy, so he put George in charge of the estate?”

Tristan’s face grew gray. “I remember. George was a petty tyrant, stalking around giving orders.”

Milosh nodded. “He would have cast my people off the land if your father had not given explicit instructions that we were to be allowed to stay. Even so, the situation with Drina and Hucker put a bad taste in our
rom baro
’s mouth, so he made the decision for us to go on to York. The last time I saw Drina, she said that Hucker meant to marry her.”

His voice hardened. “But the next summer when we camped there again and I went looking for her, Hucker said she had left him.” Milosh scowled. “I knew that was a lie. She was in love with him. And if I’d realized that she’d borne a child by him, I would have known for certain she hadn’t left him by choice.”

Tristan got a faraway look in his eyes. “So that’s why, when I stole the horse, you warned me about Hucker’s lies. It had nothing to do with George at all. It was Hucker you didn’t trust.”

“I don’t trust either of them, and I daresay you don’t, either,” Milosh said. “But yes, it was mostly Hucker I was thinking of. I knew Drina would never have left the man unless he forced her to.”

“That’s why she was found beaten on the road my parents traveled!” Zoe blurted out. “Once she bore me, Hucker must have made her leave, and she was heading to York in hopes that your family would take her back.”

A thunderous expression spread over Milosh’s features. “Beaten? That arse
beat
my sister?” He rose from the ground, his eyes gone dreadfully cold. “I will murder him. I will string him up by his cowardly neck, and I will—”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Tristan jumped to his feet. “If you go accusing Hucker after twenty-one years gone, he’ll want to know how you learned about what happened to Drina. He’ll be suspicious of why you’re only coming after him now, when you already knew that she left.”

“I’ll tell him that Drina told me,” Milosh said sullenly.

“Then he’ll expect you to produce her. He’ll want to know where she’s been. He’ll start asking questions about his child, damn it, and when you can’t answer, he’ll start trying to find out who you’ve been talking to.”

Tristan’s eyes blazed at Milosh. “I’ve been asking all over the Romany camps about Drina, with Zoe at my side. All it would take is one person connecting Drina
and Zoe to me . . . No, he mustn’t know about Zoe. He can’t. He would go right to George with it, and you know what that would mean for her.”

Zoe’s heart thundered in her ears. Oh, Lord, a man like Hucker . . . If he
ever
learned who she was, that she wasn’t the true heir to the title and the estate, he would blackmail Papa, blackmail
her
 . . .

“Tristan’s right—you can’t tell him about me.” She struggled to her feet. “You mustn’t.”

Milosh crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t ignore my sister’s beating, either! Where is she? What happened to her?”

“We don’t know, damn it!” Tristan cried. “And that’s precisely why you can’t rush off half-cocked. Zoe heard secondhand, from her adoptive mother’s sister, the tale of how she ended up with her adoptive parents. Her adoptive father has so far refused to even confirm that any of it happened. For all we know, one of them invented the part about the beating.”

“For all we know,” Milosh countered, “Hucker could have
forced
Drina to sell her babe to a
gadjo
couple. Or sold the babe himself. Only Hucker knows what really happened.” He balled his hands into fists. “And I mean to make him tell me, if I have to thrash it out of him!”

“Look here,” Tristan said, his tone coaxing, “twenty-one years have already passed, so it won’t hurt you to wait a bit longer for your answers. Now that we have some facts, we can confront Zoe’s adoptive father and find out the truth from his perspective. No point in
going to Hucker until we learn more from the man.”

“Fine.” Milosh clapped a hat on his head. “Let’s go talk to him.”

Panic seized Zoe, and she cast a pleading glance at Tristan.

But he was already shaking his head. “Not yet. We have to break it to him gently. He doesn’t even know his daughter has been looking for her parents. This will take finesse—”

“Something
you’ve
never possessed,” Milosh snapped.

Tristan stiffened. “I’m not the boy you once knew. Give me credit for having learned a few things in the years since we ran about Rathmoor Park.” When Milosh continued to scowl at him, Tristan added, “If you go blundering into this, my friend, you might destroy several lives in the process. Not just Zoe’s, but her father’s and her aunt’s . . .”

“And Tristan’s, too.” Zoe laid her hand on her uncle’s arm. “Please, don’t be hasty. Tristan and Mr. Manton run an investigative concern now, and its reputation will be ruined if this situation becomes public and damages me or my family. Indeed, if I’d had any inkling that my natural father might be . . .” She choked back tears. “Please let Tristan guide you in this. I beg you, Uncle Milosh.”

Only after Milosh caught his breath did she realize she’d called him “uncle” for the first time.

His eyes softened, and he covered her hand with his. “You don’t understand, dearie. You are my family now. I must look out for you.”

“I
have
a family, uncle. They’ve taken very good care of me.”

“Then why are you out looking for your Romany mother?”

Excellent question. Tristan had been right about that, too. She should have left well enough alone and hoped that Drina never rose from the past to harm her.

Yet she couldn’t regret it. At least now she knew what sort of life Papa and Mama had saved her from—one where she was the daughter of a man like Hucker. She shuddered.

When she realized Milosh was still awaiting his answer, she said, “It’s hard to explain why I’m looking for her. I . . . er . . .”

“She’s about to be married,” Tristan put in smoothly, “and you know these
gadjos
—even the lowest gentleman won’t want his precious line of inheritance besmirched by Romany blood. So she needed to know if her natural mother would come back to ruin her marriage.”

“Yes, exactly,” Zoe said.

It had sort of been true . . . once. But marrying Jeremy was out of the question now. And not because Hucker was lurking about, ready to destroy her family if he ever learned the truth. That wasn’t the problem.

She cast Tristan a furtive glance. The problem was that the only man she wanted to marry stood next to her.

Never mind that he wouldn’t even consider a marriage to the daughter of his enemy. Or that he had no desire to marry anyone, anyway. Never mind that it was
impossible, that it wouldn’t help her situation, that she still had Winborough to worry about.

The thought of marrying another man while she felt
this
for Tristan seemed horribly wrong. She couldn’t do that to Jeremy. Or to herself.

“So you see,” Tristan said to Milosh, “you can’t go after Hucker just yet. We need some time.”

“How much?” Milosh demanded.

“A few days to get everything in order. Can’t you give us that, for the sake of your niece and her family?”

“You mean the family who stole her from her people?”

“The family who took her in when her natural parents abandoned her,” Tristan said in a hard voice.

Though Milosh flushed, he didn’t protest the assertion. He rubbed his beard, then glanced to her. “Fine. A few days. But if I haven’t heard from you by then, I will go after Hucker.”

“I understand,” Tristan said.

“Thank you, Uncle Milosh.” Zoe stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “You have no idea how that relieves me.”

He nodded curtly. Apparently, pride was as important to the Romany as to English lords.

She slid a glance at Tristan, who stood stiffly by. And to those lords’ illegitimate children, as well.

“We must go,” Tristan told Milosh, “but we’ll return as soon as we can. Tell me where you’re staying during the day, in case I need to reach you.”

Milosh rattled off something in Romany, then nodded at Zoe and switched to English. “Take good care of my niece.”

Tristan squared his shoulders. “I always take good care of my clients.”

The words made her despair. She would always be merely a client to him, especially after this.

And there wasn’t a thing she could do to change that.

16

A
S THEY WALKED
back to the horses, they said nothing, mostly to avoid having people overhear them. That was Zoe’s reason, anyway. She wasn’t sure about Tristan’s. She wasn’t sure about anything regarding Tristan now. Finding out that her father was a man Tristan reviled had to have shaken him up.

Once they were back on the road riding toward Berkeley Square and the crowd thinned out, he finally spoke. “Are you certain you’re all right?”

The unexpectedly solicitous remark made tears burn her eyes once more. “As right as I can be, under the circumstances.”

He nodded, but said nothing more.

They went a long distance in utter silence. It made her want to scream. She ached for his sharp and cynical remarks, his liberal use of “princess” when referring to her. Being relegated to a mere client hurt after they’d been so intimate this afternoon.

Before long, she couldn’t stand it anymore. “I don’t know how we’re going to approach Papa.”

“
We
are not.” He stared ahead at the road, his face set in harsh lines. “It’s time I step out of this. You can speak to your father on your own this evening or wait until tomorrow so that I can report our findings to Dom. Then he and you can approach your father together.”

“No!” It worried her that he wouldn’t look at her. Probably couldn’t
bear
to look at her. “I want
you
to do it.”

“That’s not an option.” His voice held an awful, icy finality. “My brother is used to dealing with men like your father. Dom should handle this.”

“I don’t want Dom!”
I want you.
She caught herself before she could say it.

Because she didn’t want him just for this. She wanted him for everything. But it didn’t matter what she wanted. Aside from the fact that he wouldn’t give her what she wanted, this wasn’t about her and Tristan any longer. It was about finding out the truth of what had happened to her natural mother without setting off her testy uncle. It was about settling her future without ruining anyone’s life.

Or risking pulling George into the matter. Because if that happened, Tristan would almost certainly be hurt. Again. And she couldn’t allow that.

But that didn’t mean she was going to let him run off without finishing this.

She forced herself to sound normal, practical. “
You
are the one who knows the most about Milosh and his
family and Hucker. It has to be you—you have to be there! If not for your wanting to find Milosh, we would never have discovered who I am.”

“You might have preferred that,” he said acidly.

Her throat tightened. Did he mean that
he
would have preferred it? Probably.

Then again, perhaps he was happy to have matters turn out like this. It gave him an excuse to do what he’d wanted to do all along—push her away before she got too close. He wasn’t looking for a wife, a fact he’d made perfectly clear every time he’d disparaged marriage.

And now that she knew him better, she knew he wouldn’t try to seduce her just for the fun of the thing. More was the pity.

“This has to be handled delicately,” he said, the words clipped and impersonal. “I’m not . . . good at that, something which Milosh was only too eager to point out.”