The Way to a Duke's Heart: The Truth About the Duke (23 page)

Charlie drew breath in fury, but before he could respond the door opened. The maid had returned, and with her was a dark-haired toddler, who pulled loose of the maid’s hand and ran across the room to Worley. “Papa!” cried the little boy. “Papa!”

All trace of anger and venom left the earl’s face in an instant, and his expression transformed. He now wore a fond smile, his eyes bright with affection. He caught the child up in his arms and embraced him for a moment. “Here I am, Albert! What have you got today?”

“Rocks, Papa.” The boy opened his chubby fist and displayed some pebbles. “From th’ garden.”

“I see.” Worley shot Charlie a defiant look, then bent to set his son down. The little boy wobbled, then sat down hard, his skirts puffing up around him. Worley helped the child back to his feet. “Albert, make your bow to His Grace the Duke of Durham.”

The boy turned round blue eyes to him, then gave a careful bow. He clutched Worley’s hand the whole while.

“Your Grace,” said Worley, with a hard edge to his voice, “this is my son, Albert.”

Charlie gave a slight bow. “How do you do, Albert.”

The boy hid his face. Barely keeping his own expression impassive, Charlie looked to Worley. Now he knew why. “A very handsome child.”

Worley’s jaw twitched. “He is. Go back to the nursery now, son.”

The boy ran to his waiting nurse with only a nervous glance at Charlie, who watched him go. He was glad for the respite. Holy God. The boy was the right age—and Maria’s other children were all daughters. He turned back to Worley when the child had gone, feeling sick to his stomach.

“He is my heir,” said the earl. He put back his shoulders and glared at Charlie. “My only son.”

His mouth was dry. “Is he?” Charlie managed to ask. He wanted to run after the child and inspect his face, to look for any sign of de Lacey features in him. The boy looked like Maria, with her coloring and eyes, not like Worley at all—but nor did Charlie see himself in the child. Was that his child, the product of his night with Maria? Did he have a son he could never claim? “Or is he mine?”

Worley was breathing so hard he shuddered with each exhalation. “He is
mine
,” he said violently. “Whether I sired him or not.”

“Don’t you know?” exclaimed Charlie, suffering some strong emotion of his own. “Did you blackmail my father because of a bloody
possibility
?”

“She told me,” bit out Worley. “She told me he was probably yours. My son—my beloved, only son—not mine but
yours
.” It was the furious wail of a lamed animal. “I didn’t know she’d been with you until she threw the truth in my face during an argument a year ago. And now—to know my son and heir might be a cuckoo in my nest—”

Charlie’s fists were shaking. “Do you mean to cast the boy aside?” he managed to ask. “Or his mother?”

“Never,” Worley snarled. “I will never surrender my son. Under the law he is mine. I pray every night he is mine in truth.” He took a breath and calmed a bit. “As for his mother, she is also mine—my Delilah, my Judith, but mine. I don’t give up what is mine.”

After a moment Charlie jerked his head once; he understood. Worley knew his wife had betrayed him, but there was no way to know beyond a doubt who had fathered her child. Worley loved his son, but was consumed by the doubt. Maria was probably suffering under that doubt, but Worley appeared to want her as well, in some tragic way. They had each trapped themselves; Maria had deceived her husband in hopes of escaping her marriage, but he wanted her too much to set her free. Charlie had been the only one not suffering, and that, Worley could not bear. Gerard had been right, nearly: the only purpose behind the blackmail had been to torment, not all three Durham sons, but Charlie alone. He had been the cause of all of it, because of his reckless infatuation with Maria.

Good God, his father had been utterly right to try to save him from his own foolishness. Without a word he turned to go.

“If I ever hear word of you so much as making a bow to my wife again, or setting foot within a hundred yards of my son, I’ll kill you myself,” Worley added as he reached the door.

Charlie turned his head to look at the earl. Worley’s eyes glittered with hatred, and his voice was ice cold. He meant every word, and Charlie believed him. “I never meant to see your wife again,” he said quietly. “And I never knew your son existed until today.”

“I know I cannot touch you, legally,” said Worley. “But I won’t hesitate to kill you if you cross me again.”

Slowly, Charlie shook his head. “No, I won’t.” He hesitated a moment longer. “Be good to the boy. He bears no blame, either way.”

The earl glared at him. “Get off my property. And don’t speak of my son again.”

Charlie nodded once, and let himself out.

Chapter
20

T
hankfully
the butler was waiting nearby when Charlie stepped into the corridor. He wasn’t
sure he could have found his way out of the house unassisted. He followed the
servant almost blindly, grappling with the new knowledge Worley had flung at
him. Could it be his son?

No. Even if the child had Charlie’s blood in his
veins, he would never be his son; the law gave that to Worley. He had rarely
thought of being a father, and he’d never gotten a woman with child, for just
this reason. He hadn’t been as careful with Tessa, but then . . . he
didn’t recoil in alarm from the thought of Tessa bearing his child. He could
almost see and hear her, in fact, cuddling a green-eyed child in her arms,
patiently explaining how to keep neat and accurate account books. He would have
the cleverest, most capable heir of any duke in England, with Tessa as the
child’s mother. The thought made him smile.

“Gresham . . .”

The faint sound of his name made Charlie stop.
Maria stood at the foot of the stairs, still as beautiful as ever, her face
alight with dawning hope and joy. She pressed one hand to her bosom and wet her
lips. The butler tactfully faded away, to Charlie’s consternation. The last
thing he wanted was to see Maria in any semblance of privacy.

“You came for me,” she whispered. “Finally. Oh,
Gresham . . .”

He held up his hands unsteadily as she rushed
toward him. “No. Maria,
no
.”

She reached for his hands, clasping them despite
his effort to avoid it. “I knew you would come, I knew it—oh, darling, you’ve no
idea how desperately I’ve longed for you these last interminable years
. . .”

“I’ve just seen Worley.”

“Oh—but of course you must!” She stepped closer,
her smile blinding. “He’ll have to file a suit, naturally—it will be dreadful,
but in the end we can be together—oh, Gresham, you are the best of men to endure
it for me!”

He couldn’t bear to let her go on deceiving
herself. He couldn’t stand to hear any more of her wild hopes and plans, so he
moved to end them now, once and for all. “He told me about Albert. I saw the
boy.”

She paused, then laughed lightly, but not before he
caught the flicker of unease in her eyes. “Of course he would. A son and heir!
Nothing else matters to him. Albert is paraded around like a prize-winning
colt.”

“He told me you claimed the boy was mine.”

Her chin quivered at his tone. “I was angry—Worley
knows I don’t mean a word I say in anger. We were quarreling—these things happen
between husbands and wives . . .”

“Maria, is he my child?” His question stopped her
nervous chatter. She regarded him with disappointment, her expressive eyes
shadowed. “Because if you’re not certain beyond all doubt that he is,” Charlie
went on, finally losing some grip on his temper, “how dare you say such a thing
to your husband? How dare you impugn your son’s lineage?”

She shrugged one shoulder. Her mouth twisted.
“Impugn! Nothing can keep Albert from inheriting Worley’s title.”

“That hardly matters to your husband!” He inhaled
deeply to master his anger. “Is it true? Is he my child?”

She hesitated, her expression wary. “I don’t know.
Truly, I don’t.”

Charlie swallowed a string of curses. “How could
you?”

“How could I?” She shook her head, tears glimmering
in those magnificent eyes. “How could I want one moment of happiness, with the
man I had loved for years? How could I crave one night of bliss out of the years
of misery? Can you even ask?”

“How could you risk this? You had to know your
husband wouldn’t look the other way. He says he loves the child now, but who
knows if his feelings will change as the boy grows? And I—” He had to pause for
a moment. “If he is my son, you’ve forever deprived me of him. How could you do
that to all of us?”

Her lip trembled but she put up her chin. “I wasn’t
thinking of that. I was only thinking of how unhappy I was, and how desperately
I longed for you.”

Charlie longed to shake her even as he pitied her.
It was a risk he’d run by going to her bed at all, and he did believe she was
unhappy. But he couldn’t forgive her actions since. Even if he was as much to
blame, even if Worley had earned her scorn, she had forever poisoned her son’s
future. Worley would be eternally on guard for any sign of him in the boy.
Charlie prayed Albert was not his child, for the boy’s own sake. Worley might be
a kind father now, but as the lad grew and became rebellious or independent or
anything other than Worley wanted him to be . . .

“And Albert most likely is Worley’s own child,”
Maria went on as he said nothing. “Worley never spent more than a week away from
my bed before he was born; he was there the very night after you left me. The
more I think of it, the more I think he must be Worley’s. He’s such a strange
child, nothing at all like you. A handful of rocks amuses him for hours.”

“I was wrong to spend that night with you,” he said
quietly. “I wish I hadn’t done it.” Shock flashed over her face, but he felt no
urge to soften his words. For too long he had let his youthful infatuation with
her color his life. “We were both wrong, in fact. You knew Worley wouldn’t look
the other way, and I . . .” He sighed. “I didn’t speak to my father
for more than ten years because of you.”

“You didn’t?” She looked at him, lips parted in
amazement, and he had the feeling she was somehow pleased that she’d had this
much power over him.

“Because I was a dashed fool,” he said bluntly. “A
young idiot, too stupid to see how right my father was to keep us apart.”

“Oh, no!” she burst out hysterically, reaching for
him. “Don’t say that! It was my fault, my mistake—when you said we should run
away, I was a fool to say no! I was too young, too silly, too afraid! But I love
you; all these years, it’s only been you!”

He looked at her gravely. She was still beautiful,
still as vibrant and alluring as she’d been years ago. Standing before him now,
her hands clasped in supplication, her large eyes pleading, she was just as he
had dreamed . . . and he felt nothing. Pity, perhaps, for her bitter
unhappiness, and regret for all the little ways he might have encouraged her
hopes, unwittingly or not. But the wild desperation to have her was gone. For
the first time in his life, Charlie fully appreciated what his father had
feared. His love for Maria—perhaps like Durham’s for Dorothy—was the wild
passion of youth, the giddy defiance of authority, the obsession of first love.
If he had eloped with her a decade ago, he doubted they would have been happy
for a year, even had they had Durham’s blessing.

“You don’t love me,” he said at last. “Don’t lie to
yourself that you do. And I don’t love you. I cannot interfere in your marriage.
I’m not here to take you away. I don’t expect to see you again, in fact.”

“How can you say that?” she cried, tears beginning
to leak from her eyes. “Didn’t you come to see me? I don’t understand!”

“I haven’t come to save you from an unhappy
marriage,” he said. “You wouldn’t be happy anyway. All your desire to run away
with me now is only a wish to escape.”

“Yes! Yes, it is!” She dashed the tears from her
cheeks. “If you had any idea of the hell I’ve endured these ten years—”

“As Countess of Worley?” he asked. “As a celebrated
beauty? As a wealthy lady? Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

She drew in an unsteady breath. “You’re angry at
me—because I didn’t wish to be poor. Neither did you! We were young and foolish
but if only we had waited a bit, thought it over, we should have been happy
enough together to endure it. But it’s not too late for us, it isn’t!”

“It is. It always was.” He shook his head. “Could
you really leave your children? Could you really stand to drag your name through
the mud for a divorce?”

“But as your duchess, none of that would matter,”
she whispered, even though her already pale face grew deathly white at his
query. “People would forget . . .”

“You know they wouldn’t. And you would soon hate me
as much as you hate him.” He made a very formal, deliberate bow. “Good-bye, Lady
Worley.”

“Wait!” She lunged for his arm as he started to
turn. “He’ll kill me! He’s tried to many times already, when he’s angry over
something. I beg you, even if you no longer want me, take me away from here! I
shall die here, Gresham, I know I will, if you leave me!”

Charlie hesitated. Worley was a coldhearted man, no
doubt about it, and his fury at his wife’s infidelity ran deep. He knew he
couldn’t take Maria with him, but neither could he abandon her to cruelty. “If
you ever feel in peril of your life, or in fear for your children’s lives, my
brother Edward will do all in his power to aid you. But it would only make
things worse if you came to me. Worley will forever despise me because of his
doubts about your son. Whatever the truth may be, he’ll kill us both if he
thinks there’s anything between us. For your own sake, Maria—for your son’s
sake—don’t run after me.”

Her grip on him slackened and fell away. For a
moment her face registered such desolate despair he wondered if she truly feared
for her life. “You never loved me, did you?” she whispered, anger touching her
voice for the first time. “If you did, you would never be so callous.”

A faint, sad smile bent his mouth. If she only
knew. Three years ago—even three months ago, perhaps—he would have insisted he
had, once upon a time. But now he knew better. What he felt for her had been a
sort of love—a young man’s reckless, impetuous passion, fueled by frustrated
lust for her and impotent fury at his father, thriving off the very obstacles
that thwarted it. “Once, I did,” he told her softly. “But it was not the sort of
love that can last.”

“How do you know?”

He knew because of Tessa. Because while he’d wanted
Maria, he’d never needed her. She had never challenged him to be a better man,
as Tessa did. She had never made him furious and aroused and amused, all at the
same time, as Tessa could do so effortlessly. She never stood up to him when he
was foolish, or turned to him in a moment of need. If it had been Maria by his
side when it seemed he would lose his title and all its trappings, he was rather
certain she would have abandoned him, not stood by him and declared it made no
difference to her whether he was a duke or a gentleman scholar. She definitely
wouldn’t have told him he would make a good pig farmer.

“Did you ever love me?” he asked instead. “Or was
it only my title and fortune that caught your eye?”

She paused, tilting her head in the coy way he
remembered too well, and it struck him that her look was almost calculating. “I
did love you. You know I did. I still do.”

“Your father asked my father for money.”

She blinked. “Well—perhaps he did—we were rather
poor—”

Charlie shook his head. “Never mind. It doesn’t
matter. Good-bye, Lady Worley. Remember what I said about Edward.”

He went out of the house and took the reins of his
horse. As he swung into the saddle he caught sight of Maria, who had followed
him to the doorway and stood watching with one hand at her lips. He just gave
her a level look before raising his eyes, scanning the rest of the windows,
wondering if Worley watched him go as well. For a moment he thought of the
little boy again, of his innocent blue gaze, and then he closed his mind to it.
There was nothing he could do in any event. Under the law, the boy was Worley’s,
and Maria—the only person who might know the truth—claimed she didn’t know who
had fathered him. He prayed Worley never held that doubt against the boy. He
prayed the boy grew up to look like Worley. And most of all he prayed for
forgiveness.

He turned his horse away and rode off without
looking back.