Chapter 22
“Your Grace, shall I bring fresh tea?”
Mary shook her head without looking at Harding.
The butler hovered in the parlor doorway, patient and unsurprised, clearly accustomed to the hours this household kept.
“That will be all, Harding. Go to bed.”
“I would prefer to wait up, Your Grace. In case His Grace—”
“No, thank you, Harding. Please, go to bed.”
Harding bowed and withdrew. Mary stood at the parlor window with her arms crossed and her reflection staring back at her from the dark glass.
Half past two. Evander had been gone since late morning. No note. No message through Godfrey. No word at all, just an empty place at the dinner table and Mrs. Cahill’s careful report that His Grace had left with his friend Quentin and had not indicated when he would return.
She had fed Tommy at ten. Rocked him to sleep at eleven. Come downstairs at midnight and paced the parlor like a caged animal ever since, wearing a path between the window and the fireplace that the carpet would remember in the morning.
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked past the quarter hour. Mary pressed her forehead against the cold glass and watched the empty street below.
A cat crossed the pavement. A lamp flickered in a window across the square. Nothing else moved.
She heard the carriage before she saw it. The rattle of wheels on cobblestones, the jingle of harness, growing louder and then slowing. Mary’s fingers tightened on her arms.
The carriage stopped outside Blackholm House. A door opened. Footsteps on the gravel.
Two sets of footsteps.
Mary turned from the window. Voices in the entrance hall. Evander’s, low and clipped. And another voice, quieter than the others, that stopped the breath in her lungs.
She knew that voice. She had heard it once at her father’s house, during the betrothal dinner, charming Lord Langham over roast pheasant.
Could it be?
At last, Evander appeared in the parlor doorway. His coat was dusty, his cravat loosened, and the exhaustion on his face told her he had been traveling for hours.
Behind him, half-hidden in the corridor, stood a man Mary had last seen over six months ago.
Richard Brightshaw was thinner than she remembered.
His hair was longer, his jaw unshaven, and the boyish ease she recalled from the betrothal dinner was gone.
He looked at Mary with an expression that held no surprise, only resignation, as though he had rehearsed this moment a hundred times and knew exactly how it would unfold.
Mary crossed the parlor in four strides and slapped him across the face.
The sound cracked through the entrance hall. Richard’s head turned with the force of it. His cheek reddened. He did not raise a hand. He did not step back.
“That was deserved,” he said.
“That was the least of what you deserve.” Mary’s voice shook.
Her hand stung, and her body trembled, and the rage she had carried for months, the rage she had buried beneath duty and the careful work of holding this household together, rose up and spilled over.
“You abandoned your responsibility. You let my sister vanish without a word, and you sat in hiding while the rest of us bore the weight of your cowardice. Your son is upstairs in a crib, Lord Richard. He is two months old, and he has never seen his father’s face. ”
Richard absorbed every word without flinching.
His eyes met hers, steady and sorrowful, and his voice was calm when he spoke.
“Your anger is deserved, Lady Mary. Every word of it. But I am asking you and Evander to give me a chance to explain. I owe you that much. In fact, I owe you more than that.”
Mary’s fists clenched at her sides. She looked at Evander, who stood in the doorway with his arms folded and an expression she could not read. He gave her a small nod.
“The study,” Evander said. “Now.”
“I will not waste your time with excuses.”
Richard sat in the chair opposite Evander’s desk, his hands clasped between his knees. Mary stood near the bookshelf with her arms crossed. Evander leaned against the desk, his presence filling the room the way it always did, calm and watchful.
“I wish Charlotte were here,” Richard continued.
“What I am about to say concerns her, and she deserves to tell her own part of this story. But you have waited long enough, and I will not ask you to wait any longer.” He looked at Mary.
“I did not want to marry your sister, Lady Mary. That is where this begins. The betrothal was arranged by our families, and neither Charlotte nor I had any say in it. I care for her. I like her. But I am not in love with her; I never was. And she was never in love with me.”
“That did not give you the right to—”
“Please.” Richard held up a hand. “Let me finish. Then you may say whatever you wish, and I will accept every word. All of it.”
Mary pressed her lips together. The effort of silence cost her, but she held it as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“About six months ago,” Richard said, “Charlotte came to me. She was distraught. She told me she could not go through with the ceremony.” He paused, and his gaze moved to his hands. “Because she was carrying another man’s child.”
The room went very still. Mary felt the words land against her body before her mind caught up to them.
Another man. Not Richard. Another man’s child.
She gripped the edge of the bookshelf, stared at Richard’s face and searched for the lie.
“That is not possible,” she said.
“Charlotte had been… involved with someone before the betrothal was finalized. A man who left London before she discovered the pregnancy. She was terrified. Her belly would begin to show within weeks, and if she walked down the aisle, every person in the church would see. She begged me to help her.”
“Help her by disappearing?”
“By disappearing together. If we both vanished at the same time, the scandal would attach to both our families equally. Everyone would assume what you assumed. What the whole of London assumed.” Richard’s voice was steady, but his hands gripped each other hard enough that his knuckles whitened.
“I hid her in a village with a midwife. I paid for everything. I stayed at a cottage nearby so I could check on her, and when the baby was born, the midwife sent word, and I went to her.”
Mary’s throat burned. She swallowed against it. “And Tommy?”
“Charlotte was in pieces after the birth. She wept for days. She said your father would never accept the child. That he would throw her out. She had no money, no way to support a baby on her own, and the man who fathered the child was gone.” Richard looked at Evander.
“I offered to marry her. To give Tommy a name and a legitimate claim. But Charlotte refused. She still believed her lover would return, and she wanted to wait for him.”
“So you brought the baby here,” Evander said.
“My money was also running out. The midwife’s fees, the cottage, Charlotte’s care.
I could not sustain it. So, I made a decision.
” Richard’s jaw tightened. “I brought Tommy to you, Evander. I left him with my handkerchief and Charlotte’s ring because I knew you would recognize them, and I knew you would care for him. I knew you would not turn him away.”
“You left him in a basket on my doorstep,” Evander responded gravely.
“Because if I had knocked, you would have dragged me inside and demanded answers I could not yet give. Charlotte needed more time. She needed to recuperate from the birth, and she needed to decide what she wanted, and I could not take that from her.” Richard looked at Mary.
“I am sorry. For the secrecy. For the pain it has caused. For the way it has upended your life, and Evander’s, and Tommy’s.
I wanted to help Charlotte. I wanted to give us both a chance at being with the people we love. I handled it badly, and I know that.”
Mary stared at him. The story sat in the air between them, enormous and impossible, and she turned it over, looking for the cracks, the contradictions, the place where it would fall apart and reveal the truth she expected to find beneath it.
“I do not believe you,” she finally said.
Richard gulped, then nodded. “I understand.”
“Charlotte would have told me.” Her voice cracked, her eyes filling with tears. “If she were pregnant, if she were in trouble, she would have come to me. I am her sister. I know her better than anyone alive, and she would not have hidden this from me.”
“She was ashamed, my lady,” Richard replied softly. “And she was protecting the man she loved.”
“Who?” Mary stepped forward, willing the tears away. “Who is Tommy’s father?”
Richard hesitated. His mouth opened, then closed. “I would rather Charlotte tell you herself. It is her story, and the father’s identity is not mine to reveal.”
Mary’s eyes burned. “Where is she, then? Where is my sister?”
Richard gave them the name of the village and the midwife’s address. Evander wrote it down without comment. Mary memorized it, every syllable, and pressed her nails into her palms to stop her hands from shaking.
“I will send someone at first light,” Evander said. “Someone trusted. We will bring her to London.”
“I want to go myself,” Mary said.
“We cannot leave Tommy.”
The words stopped her. She opened her mouth to argue and realized she had no argument. Tommy was upstairs, sleeping, and the thought of leaving him, even for a day, even to bring Charlotte home, pulled at something so deep inside her chest that it ached.
“Then send someone now,” she said. “Tonight. Do not make Charlotte wait another day.”
Evander nodded. He turned to Richard. “You will sleep in the study. No room has been prepared.” His voice hardened. “And Richard? Do not leave this house.”
“No more running,” Richard said. “I promise you that.”