Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“My father?”
Giovanni stared at the Duke of Grafton, feeling as if the entire world was tilting away from him. He had to clutch the edge of the bench just to keep his equilibrium.
“Yes,” Grafton nodded slowly. “That’s right. I know it is a lot to absorb.”
“A lot!” Giovanni laughed, his voice a sharp bark of fury, and Grafton raised his eyebrows.
“Do you have any questions?” Grafton asked.
Giovanni opened his mouth and closed it quickly. He was overwhelmed with questions. His mind was nothing but questions. He didn’t know where to begin or how to ask everything that was rolling around in his mind. Don’t panic, he told himself carefully. You don’t know if it’s true yet.
“I do,” Giovanni swallowed heavily, trying to fight back a wave of nauseous confusion. “You say that you are my father.”
“I am,” Grafton said, “but I could understand if you would be suspicious.”
“Yes,” Giovanni nodded, smiling tightly. “I have not had the most… charmed existence. I have made enemies who might wish me harm.”
“I would never wish you any harm,” Grafton said softly. “Never, Giovanni.”
His tone was so loving and tender that it touched Giovanni’s heart, but he couldn’t let himself feel that. He didn’t trust this man. He couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he knew more.
“Can you prove you are my father?” Giovanni asked curtly. “Is there a birth certificate?”
“No,” Grafton winced sadly. “My father did not see the need since your mother had died, and he was hardly going to put my name upon it.”
“Then what do you have?” Giovanni said bluntly. Hearing Grafton talk about his mother was painful. He could sense the love there, and it was so confusing for him. Could he really believe that a man he only just met truly loved his mother? That perhaps he could also love him, too?
“This,” Grafton slowly pulled out a stack of yellowed letters tied together with red ribbon. They had clearly been carefully and lovingly kept for many years. Hesitant, Grafton handed them over to Giovanni, as though they were his most precious possession.
“What are they?” Giovanni looked at the spidery handwriting with a jolt of recognition.
They were in his mother’s hand. One of the only things he had of his mother was a small, Italian storybook in which she had written her own name on the front cover.
When he had left the Grafton house in Italy, he had always kept it close to his person, hidden under his clothes as he escaped the workhouse and survived on the streets.
He felt as if her handwriting was scrawled on his heart. He could recognize it anywhere.
“From my mother?”
“They are love letters,” Grafton said softly. “When my father separated us, Evelina found a way to send letters to me.”
Evelina. Hearing someone else say his mother’s name was strange and lovely.
He had never heard it on someone else’s lips.
Even in the few short years that he had still lived in Grafton house in Italy, he had never heard it.
Everyone referred to her simply as his mother.
It was as if the old duke had commanded her name never spoken.
“She wrote to you so often,” Giovanni’s fingers ran over the lettering, as if he was trying to feel his mother's spirit in the loops and curls of her handwriting. “She must have loved you.”
He stared at the words on the paper, written in easy, familiar Italian. His mother was not very literate, not as literate as Giovanni had become under Silas’s tutelage, but her sentences rang true with love and sweetness.
I think of you often and pray for you daily… I hope our boy shall have your eyes...
Reading those particular words, Giovanni glanced up at Grafton. His eyes were not like Giovanni’s. They were a pale, Saxon blue.
“You have her eyes,” Grafton said, smiling as if he could read Giovanni’s mind. “I hoped you would. Evelina’s eyes were so beautiful, dark and hazel. Just like yours. You have her ears, too.”
Giovanni swallowed back tears. He had never known what parts of him belonged to his mother and which to his father.
Giovanni suddenly craved to know everything.
Did he have her hair, her nose? He already saw some of himself in the bone structure of Grafton’s face.
He wondered if this was how everyone felt with their parents—did they see themselves reflected daily? It was bizarre.
“She really loved you,” Giovanni said wonderingly, stroking the letters tenderly.
He saw Grafton’s name, he saw how his mother had called him “My Thaddeus,” and how his mother had signed herself, “Your dearest love, Evelina.” Grafton could only be telling the truth.
The man had loved his mother, Giovanni believed that.
The next step was for Giovanni to believe that the duke was his father.
“She loved you also, Giovanni,” Grafton smiled. “She spoke about how eager she was for our child. She promised she would come to me wherever I was once you were born, and that we would be together. A family.”
A family. Giovanni stared at the older man, trying to understand how strange and different life would have been if she had lived. Oh, if only she had lived!
“Why did she not give me your name?” Giovanni asked, blinking hard. “She loved you so much…”
“Her padre died when she was young. She loved him very much. You are named for him. My father would never let you have our last name of Tabinier, but he allowed you to keep hers. Amante.” Grafton’s eyes were glistening with unshed tears. “But you are also named for me. In your middle names.”
“I am not.” Giovanni shook his head hard. “I have no middle name.”
“That’s not true.” A tiny tear dripped down Grafton’s cheek. “We planned your names before you were born. I have never forgotten them. You are Giovanni Thaddeus Christophe Tabinier Amante. The Marquess of Bath.”
Giovanni felt as if his mind was made of carriage wheels spinning in the mud. The names circled around him; he couldn’t make sense of them, but Grafton's last words resounded as loudly as a gong being struck.
“The Marquess of Bath?” Giovanni stuttered, staring at Grafton.
“Yes,” Grafton took a deep breath. “When your mother died, my father forced me to re-marry. I made a match with an English lady. She was my wife for many years, and though I did not love her, I was content. Yet we never had children.” A bleak look came into Grafton’s eyes.
“I used to think it was a curse of the Lord, for allowing such a terrible thing to happen to my firstborn son.”
“So that means…” Giovanni spoke slowly, unable to pull the pieces of the conversation together in his mind.
“You are my heir, Giovanni,” Grafton said. “You are my legal heir, my only son. When I die, I want you to take your rightful place in the dukedom.”
“You want me to be a duke?” Giovanni repeated hollowly. The words didn’t even sound real to him.
These are someone else’s words, Giovanni thought, dazed. This is someone else’s life.
“The Duke of Grafton. Yes, I do, Giovanni.” Grafton reached out and grasped his hand.
Giovanni saw the tears rolling down his face.
“I have moved heaven and earth to find you. It’s been fifteen years of struggle but it has all been worth it.
In all that time, I have thought of only one thing: bringing you home. ”
Giovanni looked down at Grafton’s hand. At his father’s hand touching his own. He had a sudden, violent memory from when he was a lad—no more than four or five—that shocked him to the core:
Giovanni was tired. He had fallen asleep in his evening broth while eating with the servants, too exhausted from scrubbing floors in the kitchen to keep his eyes open.
As his face hit the tepid liquid, he felt a firm hand on the back of his neck, dragging him by his scruff off his bench and slapping him around the head.
His ears rang and his eyes strained as he looked up into the cruel face of the housekeeper.
“Useless bastard!” She hissed, pushing him out of the back door. “Go and sleep with the horses. You are a disgrace! No one wants you—you shall never amount to anything.”
As Giovanni sat on the park bench, the pain of those memories assaulted him anew.
The feelings of distress and neglect were so appallingly vivid that Giovanni couldn’t speak, swallowing hard to try and push down his tears.
All of that pain could have been avoided.
If only his father had found him. He took a long, shaking breath and stood up, wrenching his hand from Grafton’s grasp.
“I have to go,” he said hoarsely, handing the letters back to Grafton. “I must leave, I am sorry.”
“I know this is a lot to bear, Giovanni,” Grafton looked up at him with pleading desperation in his eyes.
“But I asked you here not only to give you this information but to beg your forgiveness. I know it is much to ask at this moment, but I promise I shall not go away. I shall wait until I earn your forgiveness. Take these.”
The Duke pressed his love letters against Giovanni’s chest.
“Read of our love. You will see that I can only be sincere. Please. Give me a chance, son.”
Giovanni couldn’t speak. He was too close to tears, torn between desperation, anger, sadness—and the slightest bit of hope.
With shaking hands, he slipped the letters into his pocket.
He nodded briefly and walked away from his father, ducking quickly into the gazebo to stand in the darkness and let tears fall down his face.
“Beatrice, it is nearly time for us to depart,” Anna called, rushing into the music room with little Caleb in her arms. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us in the carriage now?”