Chapter Eighteen #2
Adrian gaze moved again to the man’s eyes—yes, a deep, cornflower blue—before moving on to the man’s nose and then to the cleft in his chin.
The same cleft Emily had.
Adrian had just turned twenty-eight. Emily was about to turn eighteen. The babe, had it lived, would have been—he calculated—twenty-four.
The man standing in front of him was clearly of the right age.
He reached out to steady himself. Vane caught his arm.
Adrian’s skin, where Vane had grabbed him, burst into flame. Good God. He’d never had the mite infested, spider-scuttling sensation in his arm before.
He pried himself from Vane’s grasp.
“Lord Redver?”
Several people were speaking to Adrian, but only Eliza’s voice penetrated the haze. She sounded worried.
“Miss Wainwright. Eliza. I—”
His mouth hung open. Nothing came out.
“Lord Redver?” Miss Wainwright repeated, taking a step in his direction. “Adrian.”
He blinked.
She was leaning toward him, hand outstretched. But he couldn’t touch her. He’d make her dirty.
He jerked away.
Where the devil had that thought come from?
“I-I apologize.” He gripped his arm and stumbled past her. “I-I must go.”
Once on the landing, he dashed down the front stairs two at a time. It was early to be headed for the Lyon’s Den.
He didn’t care.
There was only one place he could find answers. One person alive who he was certain had been his mother’s confidant.
Bessie would see him…whether she wanted to or not.
Adrian found Bessie sitting behind her desk, ostensibly reviewing papers. Her face, as always, obscured by a veil, remained lowered.
“Redver.” Bessie greeted as he entered her office. “What a surprise. I distinctly remember you insisting you weren’t ever going to return to my humble establishment.”
“I wasn’t.”
Even now, being here felt wrong.
Less than a fortnight had passed and yet he felt like an entirely different man. And the man he’d become intended to demand answers.
“What changed your mind?” she asked.
“Today I learned my mother corresponded with a friend. A friend besides you.”
Bessie said nothing.
“You told me you were her only correspondent.”
She set her quill into the holder and looked up. “I told you she posted packets to me. As far as I am aware, they were the only packets she risked sending. A packet, as you know, can contain multiple letters.”
“Well?” He folded his arms. “Did they?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Each packet contained four letters.”
“Four?”
“Yes, four. One addressed to me. Another to you—as you know because I tried to give them to you when your mother intended them to be delivered—when you turned twenty-four.”
“And?” he prompted.
“And two more. One to your sister, which I was to keep—and I have—until Emily turns eighteen. And a final one to…another lady.”
“What lady?”
“If your mother wished you to know about her, she would have written of it in her letters to you. They both took a risk, keeping up a clandestine correspondence. But, as I understand, they were childhood friends. As close as sisters. I will say no more. Her instructions to me were quite clear. I was not to discuss her other correspondent with anyone, ever—which would include you. Although, I imagine she might have explained in her letters to you.”
He ran his hand down over his face. “But I told you to burn the letters she sent to me. If you don’t tell me about this mysterious lady to whom she wrote, who will?”
“Your mother?” she suggested.
He steadied himself by grasping the top of the chair in front of him “You kept them?”
“Of course. They are addressed to you. They are not mine to burn.”
“And what if something had happened to you and they had fallen in the wrong hands?”
“They would not have fallen into the wrong hands. Even if something happened to me, I have a trusted executor.”
Well—he uttered a nasty oath—here he was, again circling back to a past forever nipping like a hellhound at his heels. Nothing he’d tried had freed him. Not changing households. Not war. Not passion. And certainly not distraction.
He stared at the painting hung on the wall behind the Black Widow’s desk, feeling very much as if he’d already lived this moment.
He had, he suddenly realized.
His fear, his desperation—they were an echo of the same emotions that had been roiling his brain the night he’d met with the Blackbird.
The night everything had spun out of control.
Yet another coincidence?
There’d been far too many for his comfort.
His gaze moved to Bessie. He wanted to ask her about his suspicions. Instinctively, he knew she held the answer. But he couldn’t form the words.
He’d spent a lifetime hating his father. A lifetime grieving the death of a child who he now suspected had not died. He ran his hand through his hair, trying to make sense of his memories.
He’d heard his father order the midwife to leave the baby in the dark cold, hadn’t he?
And he’d snuck into the birthing room, wanting to hide the baby from its uncaring parents, but the bundle had been heavy, too heavy for a mere six-year-old to carry. He’d sunk to the floor and held it on his lap, trying to rock it, listening for its cry.
But it was too quiet. And when he pulled the blanket away from its face, he saw not the pink skin of a newborn, but a terrifying shade of blue. He’d lain the body back in the cradle, rushed back to his own bedchamber, and hid under his blankets, his thighs itching something awful.
He’d been too late.
In the present, he rubbed both hands against his burning, aching, dirty thighs.
How could that baby have survived? How?
He’d never felt safe again. He’d never again trusted in anyone’s care. In fact, his skin had crawled every time he looked at his father. As for his mother?
Well, she had carried on as if she’d lost nothing.
Looking back, however, she’d become even more reckless. Her affairs more public. The occasional, inexplicable reconciliation with his father—the last of which had resulted in Emily—ever more volatile.
The behavior of both his parents had mortified him.
“You don’t know what I know about my parents,” he said.
“You’d be surprised what I know,” Bessie answered evenly.
He narrowed his eyes. Bessie always thought she knew everything. Well, she did not.
“She let him kill her child.” He unburdened himself for the first time in his life. “Her baby, but not his.”
Bessie did not look shocked. “Did she?”
He hit the back of the chair with the base of his palm. “I held the babe.”
“I know,” she answered.
On impulse, he repeatedly clicked his signet ring against the wood. “What do you mean?”
“I was there.”
He frowned. “Were you the midwife?”
She shook her head. “No. But I knew the midwife. Your mother had arranged for me to take the child to his father, in the event she bore a male. Your father had told her what he intended. She didn’t want to take any chances.”
Click. Click. Click.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Adrian, read the letters. These are secrets that are not mine to reveal.”
“What could be worse than a dead child?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “But, as you now know, the child did not die.”
She stood up, rounded the desk and placed a hand on his shoulder. Her heavy hand was warm, centering, but he couldn’t trust her. He couldn’t trust anything.
Not even his own memory.
He turned away.
She withdrew to the far side of the room and opened a cabinet. Metal sounded against metal as she worked her way through the multiple iron plates and straps securing the safe setting on an inside shelf.
When she returned, she placed a small box on the table in front of him. She removed a key—one of many—from her chatelaine.
“Take the box upstairs, Adrian. And read the letters.”
Several hours later, Adrian leaned back against the headboard, his mother’s letters spread out across the bed in stacks. He wasn’t exactly sure how long he’d been reading, but he’d been pouring over the script he remembered so well long enough for his eyes to burn.
Or perhaps the dry sting was only threatened tears.
Adrian’s mother had written him twice a month, every month, from the year she’d settled abroad—1804—until the month before she died three years ago. Taken together, they served as both a diary of her exile and as an account of her reemergence into another life, another world.
The letters were written, not from a mother to an adolescent son—he’d been fourteen when she’d disappeared from his life—but from a mother to her adult son, one old enough to understand the difficult decisions she’d been forced to make.
Not contacting him prior to his majority had been her way of protecting him from his father’s wrath and Society’s censure.
When his mother had reached Switzerland, she’d married the child’s father under an assumed name. Mr. Vane had known the truth about his parents for years.
Vane probably thought Adrian had known has well—which would explain the overtures of friendship Adrian had spurned.
If he hadn’t been so angry, so certain his mother had been complicit in the murder of a child, he might have had the chance to see her again before she’d died. He might have even already developed a rapport with his half-brother.
Mr. Jonathan Vane.
A knock sounded on the door. Even though he ignored the plea for entry, Bessie pushed her way in.
“Well?” she asked.
He snorted. “Well.”
“I told you the child didn’t die.”
“No,” Adrian replied. “You arranged to have him taken to his father.”
“And after it became clear that your father had no intention of relinquishing Emily, I arranged a match between Caroline and your father, with your mother’s blessing.”
He’d always wondered why a young woman like Caroline would have married a man like his father—a divorced, disgraced, and generally miserable human being.
A man twice her age.
Adrian had asked her, once. Recently. Caroline had glanced at Emily and said love at first sight. He’d known she was speaking not of his father, but of a motherly feeling toward his sister.
“Does Caroline know?” He swallowed with difficultly. “That Vane is my…”
“Your brother? Yes.”
“How? When?”
Bessie crossed the room and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Caroline knew the whole from the beginning. She has always been wiser than her years. And with a particular skill for…finesse.”
“You mean of managing difficult men.”
“Your father was rather taken.” Bessie shrugged. “Who wouldn’t be gratified by the devoted attention of a creature like Caroline?”
He remembered the way his father had looked at her—like he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
After their marriage, with his father’s “blessing”—a good riddance had been involved—Adrian had taken himself off to the Duke of Harbury’s household.
While he hadn’t resented Caroline, per se, seeing his father happy had been too much.
And though he’d loved and often visited his sister, little Emily had been better off not being exposed to daily fights between him and his father.
“Your mother wanted me to find an exceptional young lady, one both capable of dazzling your father and being a mother to her daughter. I outdid myself—and that’s saying something.
For her part, Caroline would give me reports to send to your mother.
Reports and little things Emily made, like pressed flowers and pencil sketches. Your mother cherished those gifts.”
“How could Caroline take such a risk? My father would have been furious.”
“There was little risk. I sent the letters to your mother, she didn’t.
After your mother died, Vane took up the correspondence with Caroline.
He came back to England to finally meet you…
and Emily. And”—she took a deep breath—“for some other, less altruistic reasons. Or so I suspect. In any case, he intends to stay. he’s purchased an estate.
The estate that once belonged to the Wainwrights. ”
I sent her driving with Mr. Vane almost an hour ago. For the second time.
I am considering another’s offer of marriage.
Eliza—the woman he’d decided he could not live without—was considering an offer from his own half-brother?
He eyed the Black Widow with suspicion. He’d first met Vane here at the Lyon’s Den. Bessie had known everything about his connection to Vane. What did she know about the connection between Vane and Eliza?
Bessie withdrew her hand and sat down opposite him.
He stared at her, stunned. She’d been a presence in his life for six years, ever since she’d contacted him about the letters. He’d no idea how deep the connection ran. He felt as if he were sitting next to a stranger.
“You were so angry as a young man. And then, you went to the Peninsula and came home even more haunted. Even less interested in, as you put it, dredging up the past.”
Naturally. His past was fetid and still as, well—he snorted—bilgewater.
“Is there anything else you aren’t telling me?” he asked.
“I’ve told you everything I know connected to your past.”
“Have you anything to do with the connection between Mr. Vane and Miss Wainwright?”
“I think that’s a question best asked of Miss Wainwright. I have never discussed your secrets with her. And I don’t intend to discuss hers with you.”
Which wasn’t an answer. “Then you should expect me to apply to her for the truth.” He cocked his head. “Does the Blackbird have anything to do with this?”
She hesitated and cocked her head. “Only in so far as I hoped, let’s say, she might wake you up.”
He laughed bitterly. “You used her.”
“Shame, Adrian.” Bessie withdrew her hand. “I would never use anyone. Hers was a unique situation. Like most, she came to me with a need. Unlike others, I asked her, in turn, to aid me with a problem.”
“Me.”
“You.”
He rubbed his palms along his thighs.
While returning from the Peninsula was an ongoing adjustment, the itch had been what had tormented. A childhood condition that had returned…
“When did Vane first appear at the Den?”
“Six months ago.”
As he’d thought…about the same time his skin had been tormenting him. About the same time he’d started prolonging his miserable existence one meeting with the Skylark at a time.
Then, the Blackbird.
Whom he, too, had used.
The Blackbird had been right to preemptively reject him.
He feared Eliza would make the same choice, when he offered.
However, he still intended to offer. If anyone could come to understand his past and be trusted to know and protect his secrets, it was Eliza Wainwright.
But before he unburdened his heart, he needed to unburden his conscience.
“Bessie, I need to see the Blackbird again.”
Bessie hand twitched—a sign of surprise. “I told you she is not interested in you.”
“Please ask.” He took her hand in his. “One last time. For me.”