Chapter 19
Having come to find out why Lily had insisted on speaking to Giselle privately, Heathbrook heard Lily’s words just as he burst through the door. “What the hell are you talking about?” He marched up to the young woman. “Why would you even speak such a lie to my fiancée?”
A quick glance at Giselle and her shattered expression showed him only too plainly just how unconscionably cruel Lily’s words had been. “She’s lying, sweeting.”
“It’s the truth!” Lily jumped up to face him, looking perplexed. “I thought you knew.”
He jerked his attention back to the damned female he’d once foolishly fancied himself to be in love with. “That Zack is my son? No, I damned well didn’t know! You have to be making that up!”
“I’m not, I swear. Your mother said she told you.
” Lily paused. “Well, she said she was going to tell you, at any rate. I-I assumed she had. Ever since your return, I’ve been terrified you’d say something about it to my husband.
Samuel doesn’t know about us at all, and I don’t want him to know.
I was just about to discuss that with Miss Bernard. ”
He turned to Giselle in a panic. Now she was gazing at him with an unreadable expression. That could not bode well. “Ma chérie, I swear to you this is the first I’m hearing of this.”
“I can tell,” she said. “I have never seen you look so shocked. Besides, you told me once that as far as you knew you had never sired a child, and I think you would have had trouble speaking that monumental a lie.”
“Damned right.” His stomach churning, he turned back to Lily. “You’re going to have to explain this. I mean, I know that you and I . . . But it was only once. And how did my mother get involved with any of it later?”
Lily dropped back into her chair. “I . . . I came to her when I missed my courses the third time.”
“Why didn’t you write and tell me?”
“I didn’t know what it meant until I told Mama about it.
Then, she insisted on going to your mother, and they hatched a plan to protect my reputation.
I mean, you were gone, and they weren’t sure how long it would take to get you back from France.
I would almost certainly have been showing by then.
Besides which, your mother really felt you were too young to marry. ”
“As did my father and your parents, apparently,” he growled.
She conceded that with a sheepish look. “So, they decided that your mother would announce to everyone that she was with child by your father and say that she was going east to stay with her cousin for her lying-in, since your father wasn’t here.
Because my family was so close to yours, she said she was going to take me with her as a companion .
. . to . . . to help me learn some polish, so I could find a good husband in society. ”
“And people believed that nonsense?” he said incredulously.
Lily shrugged. “My parents and yours had been fairly good at hushing up the elopement, so no one had any inkling that you and I knew each other . . . er . . .”
“Intimately?” Giselle suggested.
He glared at her, then turned back to Lily. “Go on.”
“The two of us traveled to Broadstairs—”
“Broadstairs! What cousin was she staying with in . . .” It hit him all at once, and he groaned. “So, that’s why Yates has been fighting so hard for custody. He knows about all the skeletons I didn’t even realize were in my closet.”
“I suppose he does,” Lily said. “But he’s a very nice man. A bit odd perhaps, but he didn’t seem to mind helping with our mothers’ arrangement. And it couldn’t have been easy for him having me and your mother thrust upon him out of the blue like that.”
“You and Mother stayed with him for five months?” he said, still finding the whole story incredible.
“Yes.”
“And you wrote me that letter about Samuel Pritchard while you were there.”
She colored. “Yes.”
“Was it true?” Not that he cared anymore, but it had always pricked his pride that she’d married so quickly after he’d gone. “That you were in love with him?”
“Not really. But I liked him well enough. And if I hadn’t married quickly after Zachary was born and the truth had come out later somehow, there was always a chance I would never get to marry anybody.
Plus, I knew Samuel would take good care of me and never stray like some men do.
” When he scowled at her, she added, “You did have a reputation, you know.”
“I was sixteen when I got that reputation! And I had promised to marry you and be faithful. You could at least have waited for me.”
“For eleven and a half years?”
“I would have done it for you,” he said stoutly. But would he really have? In all those years, he had changed a great deal. Lily hadn’t been his idea of the perfect wife for a long time.
For better or for worse, Giselle now held that position.
“I know you would have,” Lily said, “but . . . well, your parents didn’t approve.
And my parents didn’t wish to go against them.
Besides, you were in France. How could I have known you would inherit and come back and be rich?
I thought you might die over there, and by then I would have been too old to marry anybody. ”
“Too old. Like me, you mean,” Giselle said pointedly.
“Exactly,” Lily said, completely oblivious to the insult she gave Giselle.
Oh, for God’s sake, how had he ever convinced himself to elope with this chit? He really had been stupid at sixteen. “Where were Evan and Kit during all this?”
“Here at Longmead. I was told that your parents always went to London for the Season and left the boys at home with their tutor and the servants, anyway.”
“Yes, they did.” That had been before they were old enough to attend Eton. He’d forgotten all about that. He paced in front of the ladies. “So, Evan and Kit don’t know the truth about Zack?”
“Of course not,” Lily said. “Your mother came home with their ‘little brother,’ and they were none the wiser. Still are, as far as I know.”
“And Heath’s father?” Giselle put in. “Did he know the truth?”
“Oh, yes,” Lily said. “Lady Heathbrook wrote to inform him of what she was doing, and he wrote back, giving his approval.”
“Of course he did,” Heathbrook spat. “God forbid he should tell me I had a son.” Then again, his father had tried on his deathbed to tell Heathbrook something but had been too ill to manage it. Could that have been what he’d been trying to say?
“Honestly,” Lily went on, “until you returned in April, I had put that part of my life out of my mind completely. Although I truly did think you already knew. I was only concerned that now that you were marrying, you might wish to claim Zachary as your son publicly. But I don’t want anyone to know I’m his mother.
I have my own children, and my husband wouldn’t—”
Something crashed to the floor in the hall behind Heath. He whirled to see Zack picking up a tin box, his expression haunted.
Oh, bloody hell.
“You are not my mother!” Zack shouted tearfully at Lily. “It’s a lie! My mother is . . . was the Countess of Heathbrook, and my father—” He looked up at Heathbrook, gave a little cry, and ran back down the hall.
“Zack!” Heath bellowed. “Zachary Oakden, come back here!” He glanced at Giselle, not wanting to leave her alone with Lily, but also not wanting to abandon his brother in the lad’s time of need.
Not his brother—his son, for Christ’s sake. He had a son.
“Go,” Giselle said with concern on her face. “I shall be fine.”
That was all the encouragement he needed to run after Zack.
But by the time he reached Zack’s room, the lad had locked the door. “Zack, let me in!” he shouted, pounding on the door.
“Go away!” the boy yelled. “I don’t want to talk to you!”
“I didn’t know about you, lad,” he said through the door. “I swear.”
“I don’t believe you! Go away!”
“I don’t want to go away.” Heathbrook dragged in a heavy breath. “We need to talk.”
“Th-There’s n-nothing to t-talk about,” Zack sputtered.
Then Heathbrook heard what he was almost certain was crying coming from the other side of the door. It tore his heart in two. Even when he’d thought Zack was his brother, he couldn’t have borne the lad’s tears, but now that he knew the boy was his son?
God curse his parents for never telling him!
He laid his head against the door. “Zack, please let me in.”
But all he could hear was sobbing.
Then he felt a soft hand on his back. “Leave him be for now,” Giselle said gently. “It is a lot for a boy to understand at once.”
“He won’t talk to me. I need to make him understand.”
“I know.” She pulled Heathbrook into her arms. “It will be all right, mon chéri. Just give him a chance to take in the truth. I know what it is like to find out that your father is actually someone other than you thought. It is hard to adjust at first, but you adapt to it eventually.”
He stared at her. “Oh, God, sweeting, I didn’t even think about the fact that you’ve been through it yourself. Forgive me for being an idiot.”
“You are not an idiot—you are just not used to being on Monsieur Morris’s side of things. It is rather odd, actually, that both of you found out so suddenly.”
“That’s an understatement.” He clung to her for a minute, then pulled back. “Where’s Lily?”
“Gone. I promised her we would keep her secret, and she decided it might be best if she left.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You mean, you informed her it would be best.”
She stared at him uncertainly. “Would you mind if I had?”
“Not in the least. Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t march out of the house and go back to London once you heard what she had to say.”
“I am not so foolish as all that. Or so heartless. It was painfully obvious that you were taken by surprise every bit as much as Monsieur Morris was.”
The weight lifted from his chest. She understood, and that meant more than she could possibly know.