Chapter Twenty-One
Florence’s father bowed his head. “I feared this day would come.”
An ill feeling came over Florence, and she shuddered.
Dear heaven. What was he going to tell her?
Trajan remained beside her and kept firm hold of her hand.
“I prayed it would never come to this,” her father said with such aching, Florence was afraid to hear what promised to be worse than even she had imagined.
She turned to Trajan. “I have to leave.”
“Stay, Florence,” her father pleaded. “You deserve to learn the truth.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She’d wanted this moment to arrive for all of her life, but now that it was upon her, she dreaded it.
What was the adage? Ignorance is bliss. Perhaps it was.
This revelation was going to be ugly and horrible because her mother hated her.
“All right, I’ll stay,” she said with trepidation, as she had never been a coward and knew she needed to face whatever would be revealed. But she felt scared and was shaking.
Trajan wrapped his arm around her. “Go on, Lord Newton.”
Tears streamed down her father’s face as he finally spoke. “What she sees whenever she looks at you is the mirror image of the woman I love…loved. Her cousin.”
Florence paled. “What?”
“No one ever knew. Not even Hermia.”
“I don’t understand.” What was he suggesting? Was the cousin her true mother?
“Claire,” he said, referring to the cousin, “died in childbirth.”
Florence’s head began to spin. Not only was she another woman’s child, but she had killed her mother. The breath rushed out of her. “Giving birth to me?”
Her father’s eyes widened, but he nodded. “Dear heaven, Florence. You are innocent. No child can be at fault for an act of nature. We wanted you so badly, and I have never regretted you. You are my blessing. You’ve kept my Claire alive for me.”
Florence’s head was now in full reel. All these years, she had blamed her mother… No, her father’s wife, for the woman who had just stormed out of the room had never been a mother to her. She now understood why.
Growing up, she had thought of the woman as a monster.
But who was the real monster? Weren’t they all tainted? Hadn’t they all committed a wrong?
What would she have done if Trajan had brought home a child belonging to the woman he loved and insisted she raise it as her own? How would she have responded when having to face this child who resembled her real mother day after painful day? And knowing Trajan loved this other woman above her?
This could have been him and Eden.
Of course, it wasn’t. Eden had chosen another and Trajan had gotten over her.
But what if he hadn’t? What if he was only telling her that he loved her because he could not have Eden?
She was going to be ill.
“Florence, I am not the villain you believe me to be,” her father insisted, although she did not care to hear his attempts to explain.
“Claire was the one I always wanted to marry, but our families refused to allow it. If you and Weymouth are a true love match, perhaps in time you will understand the heartbreak and desolation of two bound hearts being torn apart. Celeste,” he said, referring to the woman he’d married, the one she always thought had been her mother, “never loved me. Not once, not for a moment did she ever care about me. I tried so hard to make our marriage work. I promise you, I did. But she never wanted anything to do with me after she gave me a son. I endured four years of her loathing.”
“Because your heart always belonged to another,” Florence shot back.
He shook his head. “No, she never had it in her to love. Look at how your brother turned out. She obsessed over him. She put him up on a pedestal and worshipped him. She indulged him and protected him. She shunned everyone else. Is this a healthy way to love?”
Florence knew it wasn’t. But it did not make what her father did any more right.
“You were my child, Florence. I was not going to give you away.”
“But what you did to her… She had to see me every day, a constant reminder.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No, she was this way before you ever came along. I would have left her before I ever abandoned you. I hadn’t seen Claire, my one true love, in over four years because I wanted to make our marriage work.
But I could take it no longer and finally gave up.
I began a liaison with Claire, and you were the result of it. ”
“And when she died?” Trajan asked, his own voice racked with pain.
“I brought Florence home and struck a bargain with Celeste. I would never leave her. I would never look outside our marriage. But you were to be ours now, Celeste was to be your mother, and no one would know otherwise. It was easy. Our home at the time was in the countryside, and Claire kept mostly to herself. For all her supposed devotion to our son, Matthew saw little of her. When she did pay attention to him, she spewed her poisonous words in his ear.”
Perhaps she was behaving like a coward, but Florence could not stomach to hear another word and ran out.
She had told Trajan she would wait for him in the barouche, but how could she? Why would he ever want to see her again?
She was the daughter of Claire and her father.
Claire.
She was a child born out of wedlock.
What had she done to Trajan? He was the Duke of Weymouth and had just married the offspring of an unmarried woman and a lord of little account.
She ran down the street, having no idea where she was going, just needing to get away from that suffocating house and all its secrets and lies.
Someone grabbed her by the arm and drew her into his muscled embrace.
Trajan.
“Love, where are you going?”
“Away. What have I done to you?” Her tears flowed uncontrollably. “You’ve married a bas—”
“Don’t you dare say it, Florence! Don’t you dare,” he said with a wealth of anger and frustration, but she knew it was not directed at her.
Still, she felt such a wrenching ache because this was what she had brought to their marriage.
“You are my wife. Do you think I care where or how or to whom you were born? Do you love me?”
She nodded. “With all my heart. Which is—”
“No! That’s all I want to hear. I love you too. You are the one who is first in my heart, and no one will ever replace you.”
“But Eden—”
“Did not love me. Did not choose me. And I got over my infatuation with her the moment I met you. I have been mad, demented, crazy in love with you since first meeting you. And here’s something I vowed never to tell you…”
She looked up at him through her veil of tears. “What weren’t you ever going to tell me?”
“Last year, at the Bromleigh house party…”
“Yes?”
He let out a heavy breath. “I took my binoculars, climbed a tree, and spent an entire night peering at you through your bedroom window.”
“What!”
“Not while you were undressing or anything sick like that. I thought you were a thief attempting to rob the Milbury house, and wanted to see if you had any tools designed to break into people’s homes.
In my heart, I knew it was not possible.
But what if my feelings for you had clouded my judgment?
You ignored me, frustrated me to no end, and yet I could not stop looking at you or thinking about you.
I resolved to stop you and make you reform your wicked ways. ”
“Because you thought I was a thief?”
“You were acting strangely. Do you dare deny it? And how was I to know what you were doing? All I could think of was to save you from a life of crime. And you were so impossibly beautiful. I would have lied to give you an alibi had you turned out to be a thief. Of course, I would have made you give back everything you had stolen.”
Florence found herself laughing and crying at the same time.
“Gad, I should not have told you this. It is deranged, I know. I have never done anything insanely mad like that before. Nor will I ever again. But I was in love with you. My lovely, fake bird watcher who turned out not to be a jewel thief after all.”
He kissed her, and she did not resist.
“But you were a thief of hearts. My heart. You had quite stolen it. Then you crash landed back in my life, and I knew I could not lose you. I love you, Florence. You. Because of your big heart. Your strength and your softness. You could have been born a bird and fallen out of your nest, for all I care. My love for you is without conditions. It is unbreakable. And it is forever.”
She hugged him and cried some more as he led her to their carriage, lifted her in, and climbed in after her.
He wrapped his arms around her as the carriage rolled away from the Newton townhouse. “I’ll be meeting your father tomorrow to discuss this further. He and I alone.”
“And then we need to discuss us and where we go from here. What will your mother think once word is out? Your sister? Your cousins?”
“Are you serious? First of all, word is not getting out. Your father and Celeste are not about to say anything and ruin their social standing. As for my mother, we are talking about a woman who named her children Trajan and Persephone, and loved and supported my father’s eccentric ways. Make no mistake, he was eccentric.”
She could not help herself, and laughed.
“Persephone is going to love you because you make me happy,” he said gently. “My cousins already adore you. They think you are Queen Boudica reincarnated, a dazzling warrior who managed to single-handedly bring down Frampton when England’s Home Office had tried for months and gotten nowhere.”
“But I am nobody.”
He growled. “You are everything to me.”
“You are acting on impulse. We don’t have to resolve anything right away, although we should not take too long to come to an agreement.”
“Florence,” he said sternly, “I am playing my duke card here.”
“What do you mean?”
“The matter is resolved. I order it so by ducal edict. We stay married. We remain deliriously happy being married to each other. There will be no talk of ending this marriage. There will be no talk of separate sleeping arrangements. We are going to share the same bed. We are going to share everything until the moment we take our last breaths.”
She wiped her tears and stared at him.
He cast her the softest smile. “We are going to kiss each other each night before we fall asleep and do whatever else of an amorous nature we are of a mind to do. In the morning, I shall wake to your happy, smiling face. No frowns allowed, even if you are peeved at me.”
“I must still smile?”
“Yes, even if peeved. Do you accept these terms?”
“Need I? Are they not decreed by ducal edict?”
“Yes, but I still want your willing acceptance.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder and let out a shuddering sigh. “You have my willing acceptance and my gratitude. You have my heart for always. I love you beyond measure. But—”
“That’s all I need to hear. Edict, remember? High-handed duke here. Discussion is over.”
“But not our marriage?”
“No. That is unbreakable and unconditional. We stay married.” He arched an eyebrow. “Just how grateful are you?”
“Seriously?” She laughed again. “Very, very grateful. I will show you tonight.”
“You will?”
She nodded. “Better have a libation for your throat.”
“Why?”
“Because I shall have you howling until you are hoarse.”
“Tucker!” he called to their driver with a hearty laugh. “Get us home fast!”