Chapter Twelve
Lord Mathieson lived off Grosvenor Square, a five-minute walk from Park Lane. Aurelia would’ve crawled there if it meant that she could confront the man who had forsaken her—as well as her mother—but the Duke of Brantingham insisted that they go in the landau together.
It felt right to have him with her. If nothing else, she was grateful to have a friend. He held her hand as the carriage’s wheels clattered over the cobblestones, and Aurelia knew that His Grace was deeply, emotionally involved in the drama of her life.
Last night, they had kissed while seated upon these very same squabs. She knew the feel of his lips against hers, the taste of his tongue, the softness of his skin. He was attracted to her. He wanted her, but dukes did not marry illegitimate women.
Even if Lord Mathieson was her father, the man refused to claim her.
He’d cast her mother out and had brought shame upon society, which did not easily forgive such betrayals.
Like electric candles banishing the shadows that had remained so carefully hidden by gaslight and gilding, he’d illuminated the rot within the upper class.
The Duke of Brantingham would never align his beloved noble family with such tainted blood. Margie, Fannie, and Perry would suffer from their connection. It was why the Duke’s late mother had banished Lord Mathieson from her presence, for he was a blackguard, a coward, and a pathetically weak man.
They still did not know who was behind the false engagement scheme, and Aurelia shuddered to suspect that it too had been a part of Lord Mathieson’s plan. With every secret she uncovered, she drew further and further from the one man she did want in her life—Selwyn Charlton.
“How can I help you, Miss Goldsworthy?” he asked as they passed through Mayfair. They would not have much time to form a plan. “What do you want me to do?”
More than anything, she wanted him to love her, but that was far too much to expect.
“Do you think I’ll be safe meeting Lord Mathieson alone? I am the daughter he never wanted, a painful reminder of the past. Surely, he hates me…but would he hurt me?”
His Grace contemplated that fact for a moment before answering, “I don’t imagine he means you any physical harm. If he kept an eye on your progress in life, he must’ve suspected that you would turn up someday.”
Was it a coincidence that Lord Mathieson had stalked the outskirts of the Victoria Embankment on that very night Aurelia and the Charltons had gone to see the switching on?
She dreaded to contemplate whether he’d been lurking in the background of her existence all along, pulling strings and pushing buttons.
They reached Grosvenor Square, which teemed with traffic.
Carriages and carts circled the garden, and pedestrians strolled along the pavements.
Servants and shopkeepers cleaned windows, swept stairs, and hung wreaths upon doors.
Much like the rest of London, lampposts were looped with greenery, and spear-tipped railings were swagged with garland.
Almost every facade stood decorated in reds, greens, and golds to usher in the festive season, for Christmas Eve was almost upon them.
A plodding poulterer’s wagon made a delivery of turkey and geese, stopping every few houses to distribute a bird.
The Duke’s landau waited in the street for a space at the kerb.
Aurelia watched the hustle and bustle from the window at his side, still clutching his large, warm hand and desperately clinging to the memory of his words from the night before.
‘Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.’
After a moment of shouting, the delivery wagon moved on, allowing the ducal landau to drive onward.
They stopped before a large, brick-fronted terraced house.
Compared to Brantingham House, Lord Mathieson’s residence was modest and unassuming, though she knew that his address was coveted among smart families in town.
The Duke’s coachman swung down to deploy the carriage steps, and then opened the door for her.
She turned to His Grace, asking, “Will you wait for me? No matter how long it takes, will you wait for me?” She searched his eyes as a frigid wind whipped around her, pulling at her petticoats and lashing her stocking-clad legs.
“I know I must do this myself—I will do it—but I don’t want to be alone.
I’ll feel braver knowing you have my back. ”
He squeezed her fingers, holding her hand as though he wished for nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and crush her to his chest. “I’m here for you, Aurelia. There is nothing to fear.”
Trusting his word, she quit the carriage.
Such a fine conveyance drew attention even in Grosvenor Square.
Doubtless, many observers recognized the Duke of Brantingham’s crest emblazoned on the lacquered door panel.
Aurelia made certain to hold her head high as she crossed the pavements and ascended to the threshold of Lord Mathieson’s townhouse.
She did not duck or cower. She would not back down from the greatest challenge of her life.
Aurelia rang the doorbell of Mathieson House, and—glancing back to find His Grace waiting, as promised, by the kerbstone—gave the footman her name as she followed him inside.
Her call had been expected. At the servant’s direction, she climbed a set of broad, oaken stairs to the upper floor.
Artwork and framed etchings lined the brocaded walls, but the house felt chilly, dark, and oppressive.
She imagined her mother fleeing down these very stairs, and wondered what manner of horrors awaited her above.
She found Lord Mathieson in the drawing room, standing before a bank of glazed windows. He had watched her approach, and no doubt had witnessed her heartfelt exchange with the Duke.
Aurelia stepped across the carpeted expanse. She kept a large leather sofa between them and braced her hands on the back. “You know me.” It wasn’t a question but an accusation. “You know who I am and what I am to you.”
The gentleman standing across from her nodded.
“You are the spawn of a coachman born to my wife.” He was a tall, thin man with dark whiskers and a high, peaked hairline.
His eyes narrowed as he raked his gaze from the top of her head down to her skirt hems. His lip curled at the sigh of her.
“I suppose Brantingham has told you everything.”
“Only the bare facts,” she answered, keeping her voice steady despite her pulse leaping in her throat. “I have come to hear the rest from you.”
He gestured to the sofa. “Will you sit, Aurelia?”
She would not bend before him. She endeavored to remain on guard. “I shall stand.”
“Very well,” said Lord Mathieson, folding his hands behind his back.
He took a few steps toward her on the carpet.
“I recognized you the moment I saw you, though I could never acknowledge you, as you are the natural daughter of a love affair between my late wife and our coachman. You are another man’s daughter. ”
His words contradicted the Duke’s story, and she wasn’t certain who to believe—the man who’d been there for her birth, or the one who wished to protect her.
“After the affair was discovered, your mother was sent to Cheltenham Spa to convalesce. She was clearly unwell and deeply unhappy, and I believed her spirits would improve after taking the waters. I had no idea she’d never come home, but I have tried to make it up to you in my way.”
By seeing her fed and clothed but never loved? By having her educated but never once knowing the supportive embrace of a parent or even a sibling?
“You are my legal father,” she argued, for he had robbed her of everything she ought to have been entitled to as a nobleman’s daughter.
She could’ve had a Season, a dowry, a rich and full life in London.
“Whatever my mother may or may not have done, you cannot prove that I am not your natural child.”
“They were seen together—your mother and her lover—at a posting inn on the Great North Road. There were witnesses to her adultery willing to testify that my wife was away from home in the company of another man.”
“They were traveling! He was her driver!”
“Where was her maid? Or some other female acting as her chaperone?” The answers to those questions were lost to time, twenty years too late to save her now. “They were stopped, thankfully, but your mother returned home in rather a different physical state than when she left it.
“She was with child, and no amount of pleading could convince me of her innocence after so very publicly humiliating me. I sent her to Cheltenham for her confinement, where she succumbed to a hemorrhage soon after bringing you into this world. Yet these facts don’t matter because your birth was never registered.
You weren’t even christened. Both my wife and her child died that day. ”
In the eyes of God and man, she never existed. Aurelia could not even prove that she’d been born, let alone that she was legitimate.
“You’ve tied it all up very tidily, then.”
“No man would blame me for what I’ve done.”
One man did—he sat in his landau, waiting for her to conduct her business, knowing that she could handle it without his help, but willing to support her through the hardship she faced. His Grace despised Lord Mathieson and had pronounced him a cad. He had believed in her mother’s innocence.
The Duke would never have allowed Aurelia to be treated so cruelly. He would not have allowed such an injustice to be perpetrated against her.
“I could be your daughter.” She clutched her hands to her breast and felt her heart tearing from her chest. How could he turn her away?
“I’ve provided for you,” Lord Mathieson argued. “You have wanted for nothing…”
She shook her head, feeling sick. “I want a family. I want a home.”
But the cruelest blow was yet to come. “Then I suggest you bring Brantingham up to scratch.”
How dare he bring that honorable gentleman into their row! “If this is how society treats women—as if they’re disposable—I want no part of it. The Duchess was right to have shunned you, and you should expect the rest of the Charltons to do the same.”
“A small price to pay for a lifetime of peace,” was all he cared to reply. He was so cold, so businesslike, and so very different from the Duke, who cared very deeply and strived to behave honorably in all aspects of his life.
The Duke of Brantingham would never abandon anyone in need.
Aurelia leveled her gaze on the man who’d sired her and laid her proverbial cards onto the table. She took a gamble by asking what she’d already suspected, “Why did you write the Christmas cards, send the birthday gifts? Why did you lead me to believe that I was promised to the Duke?”
“Ah, you are a clever child. His Grace and I share a solicitor, so it wasn’t difficult to get a copy of his signature and handwriting, which is easily forged.
The betrothal ring belonged to your mother, and it only seemed fair that you should have it.
The silver charm, however, was a cheap trinket from a Fleet Street pawnbrokers, unable to be traced back to me.
“The Duchess—God rest her—was a bosom friend of your mother. She would not have turned you out had you turned up on her doorstep. She might’ve even seen the resemblance and taken pity on you.
I never believed cancer would claim the Duchess so quickly when I crafted my scheme for your future.
I’m sorry, Aurelia, I ought to have planned for that. ”
Revulsion wracked her. She nearly doubled over with the pain and felt as if the room were spinning out of her control.
“You would’ve known that the Duchess would never have married me to her son, even if she knew my identity.
As Aurelia Goldsworthy, my lack of parentage is impossible to overcome.
Society wouldn’t countenance such a match between an illegitimate orphan girl and a great, powerful duke.
You set me up for heartache and humiliation.
You showed me everything I ever wanted, and then you snatched it away. ”
Lord Mathieson shook his head. “I underestimated you, Aurelia. I never dreamed that you would travel to town and take up your false position, or that you would eventually be seen on Brantingham’s arm. Imagine my surprise at how far you’ve come!”
He had meddled in her life, but no longer.
Everything she did from this moment on would be of her own strength, her character, her ingenuity.
She would donate her fine clothes to needy families.
She would leave her comfortable suite of rooms overlooking the Parade in Cheltenham and find employment somewhere where no one would know of her secret.
“I intend to give my legacy to women and children who deserve it.”
Lord Mathieson was unfazed. “The money is yours to do with as you please. I mean you no ill will. Now, if there is nothing more to be said, I consider our business concluded. You’ll never again be allowed entrance into this house, and I shall turn my back to you if ever our paths cross.
” His hard, narrow-eyed gaze scoured her once more, leaving her raw and flayed in its wake.
“For what it’s worth, I do wish you well, Aurelia.
It is clear that you are your mother’s child, and your path in life shan’t be easy. ”
She could not recall speaking a word to him in parting. She did not remember leaving the drawing room or descending the stairs. She didn’t see the footman’s face as he held the front door open for her.
Aurelia saw only the Duke of Brantingham seated in his landau. His presence was strong, and steady, and self-controlled. She must’ve called his name—Selwyn!—for he turned to her, seeming to understand her defeat even though she emerged from the house unscathed.
He opened his arms to her, and she buried herself into his embrace.