Chapter 26 #2
Panic. Roman felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He pictured his mother, exhausted and terrified, looking at a child with white hair and pale eyes, seeing nothing but a threat to her social standing.
"No one was allowed into the room," Earnest continued. "The physician left an hour later. He did not speak to anyone. He looked pale, as if he had seen a ghost. For three days, the house was entirely locked down. We were told the child was sick. We were told not to ask questions."
"And my father?" Roman asked, his voice tight.
"The late duke came down to the servants’ hall on the third evening," Earnest said.
He brought his gaze back to Roman's face.
"He stood at the head of the long wooden table.
He looked older than I had ever seen him.
He told the senior staff that the child was fragile.
He said she had been sent to a family in the country for her health, where the air was better.
He looked at every single one of us, right in the eye, and he told us that no one was to speak of the child again.
Not to the village, not to the guests, and not to each other. "
Roman felt a bitter taste rise in the back of his throat. Sent to the country for her health. It was a clean, polite lie.
"I kept that instruction for thirty years, Your Grace," Earnest said quietly.
Roman looked at the man who had poured his wine, managed his household, and guarded his family's reputation for three decades. "Why did you never say anything when the basket arrived? You opened the front door. You saw the baby on the steps."
"I saw the shawl," Earnest corrected him softly. "I remembered the crest. I was the one who packed the duchess' trunks thirty years ago. I knew the wool. When I saw it wrapped around that little girl, I knew exactly what had returned to Langley."
"Then why did you keep silent?" Roman demanded, his frustration bleeding into his tone. "You watched me struggle. You watched my mother try to send the child to an orphanage. You stood in the drawing room while Daphne Vane spun lies about Thelma. Why did you not speak?"
Earnest did not flinch. He met Roman's gaze with a calm, unflinching dignity.
"Because I waited for the duchess to speak first. It was her child, Your Grace.
It was her secret. It was her burden to confess, not mine.
A servant does not strip a mother of her sins.
I believed she would eventually find the courage to tell you the truth. "
Roman closed his eyes for a brief moment. He could not fault the man for his loyalty, misguided as it might have been. The rigid rules of their world demanded such silence.
"I am glad someone finally told me," Roman said, opening his eyes. His voice lacked any anger now. It was simply tired. "Thank you, Earnest. For your honesty."
Earnest offered another deep bow. "Will there be anything else, Your Grace?"
"No. That will be all."
Earnest picked up the silver tray and continued down the hall, his footsteps fading into the vast quiet of the house. Roman stood alone for a long time before he finally turned and continued on down the corridor.
That afternoon, Roman unlocked the heavy oak doors of the east study. It had been his father’s private sanctuary. He rarely went in there. The room still smelled faintly of the late duke's pipe tobacco and the sharp, dry scent of old leather bindings.
He walked behind the massive mahogany desk and sat in the heavy leather chair. He took the ring of brass keys from his pocket. He needed to understand. He needed to see the mechanics of the lie for himself.
He spent two hours going through the drawers. He found old estate ledgers, correspondence with members of Parliament, and maps of the northern boundaries. He found the accounting books that Orson had already audited.
Finally, he unlocked the lowest drawer on the right side.
It was deep, filled with old, bound journals.
Roman pulled them out, stacking them on the green blotter.
When the drawer appeared empty, he ran his hand along the bottom panel.
He felt a slight ridge near the back corner.
He pressed his fingers against it, pushing downward and sliding the wood forward.
A false bottom shifted with a quiet scrape.
Beneath it lay a small, hollow compartment. Inside the compartment rested a single, folded piece of thick parchment. It was unsealed.
Roman picked it up. His heart executed a heavy, painful thud against his ribs. The outside of the folded paper bore two words, written in his father’s distinctive, sprawling script.
To Roman.
He placed the letter on the desk. He stared at it for a long minute. His father had been dead for nearly a year. The man had faded away in his bed, his mind consumed by illness, his final days a blur of silence and pain.
Roman unfolded the paper. The handwriting was shaky, the ink bleeding slightly in places, indicating it had been written near the very end of his father's life, when his hands had begun to fail him.
My son, the letter began.
If you are reading this, I am gone, and I have left you to manage a house built on a terrible cowardice.
There are things you do not know about your mother, and there are things you do not know about me.
I am writing this because my courage fails me in the daylight, and I find I can only confess my sins to a blank page.
After you were born, we had a daughter. Her name is Yvette. She is alive. She lives in Somerset, being raised by a man named Albert Preston. I pay him a substantial sum every quarter to keep her safe and to keep her hidden.
Roman let out a slow, shaky breath. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, reading the words again and again.
Your mother was consumed by a fear I could not break.
When the child was born with white hair and pale eyes, she believed we were ruined.
She believed the society we governed would tear us apart, that they would label the child a monster and our bloodline tainted.
I tried to reason with her. I tried to make her see the child was healthy.
But fear is a poison, Roman. It infected her completely.
I was weak. I chose my wife's sanity over my daughter's life.
I allowed Preston to take her away. I told myself I was doing it to protect the child from a mother who could not look at her without weeping.
I told myself the money would ensure she had a good life.
But money is a poor substitute for a father.
Roman felt a hot, burning pressure behind his eyes. He gripped the edges of the letter, his knuckles turning white.
She is your sister, Roman. You are the duke now. I leave this in your hands. I always intended to tell you the truth to your face. I intended to sit with you in this very room and beg for your forgiveness. But my breath grows short, and my mind clouds more every day. I have run out of time.
Do better than I did. Do not let fear govern your house.
Your father.
Roman lowered the letter to the desk. He sat in the silence of the study, the words echoing in the empty space.
His father had known. His father had carried the guilt of abandoning his own flesh and blood every single day of his life, choosing to pay a ransom for his own cowardice rather than face the judgment of his peers.
He kept her alive in the only way he allowed himself, Roman thought bitterly.
He folded the letter. He did not put it back in the hidden compartment. He stood up, sliding the parchment into the inner pocket of his coat. He left the study, locking the door behind him.
He walked directly to the nursery.
The door was slightly ajar. Roman pushed it open, his footsteps muted by the thick rug.
The room was warm, the fire in the hearth burning cheerfully.
The heavy gloom of the past few days had completely vanished.
Liliana was sitting in the center of the floor, surrounded by wooden blocks.
The terrible, rattling cough had finally broken.
Her cheeks were pink, her gray eyes bright and focused as she aggressively chewed on the corner of a wooden alphabet block.
Thelma was sitting on the floor beside her. She wore a simple gray day dress, her hair pulled back into a loose braid that fell over her shoulder. She was stacking the blocks into a small tower, murmuring quiet words of encouragement every time Liliana tried to knock them down.
She looked up when Roman entered. Her brown eyes softened instantly.
"She is much better today," Thelma said, a genuine smile breaking across her tired face. "She drank an entire cup of warm milk and demanded a biscuit. I think the worst of it has truly passed."
Roman walked into the room. He looked at the baby, feeling a profound, overwhelming surge of gratitude that she was breathing easily. He crouched down, tapping Liliana playfully on the nose. The baby giggled, dropping the block and reaching for his hand.
He let her hold his finger for a moment before he stood back up. He reached into his coat and pulled out the folded letter.
"I was going through my father's private papers in the east study," Roman said, his voice quiet. He held the letter out to her. "I found this hidden in a false bottom of his desk drawer. He wrote it during the last year of his life. He never sent it."
Thelma’s smile faded. She stood up, brushing her skirts smooth, and took the parchment from his hand.
Roman walked to the tall window. He clasped his hands behind his back, staring out at the rolling green hills of the estate while he listened to the soft rustle of the paper unfolding.
He listened to the quiet intake of her breath as she read the first lines.
He listened to the silence that followed.
He did not turn around. He gave her the privacy to process the words of the man who had abandoned her sister.
Minutes passed. The only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire and the dull thud of Liliana dropping wooden blocks onto the rug.