Chapter 6
Six
Madam,
A woman has come forward with a claim that the late Baron Griffith sired twin girls.
Their mother, Margaret Blythe, died in childbirth and the children were raised by their grandmother.
However, her health is currently failing and she is demanding the baron acknowledge the girls as his own.
Miss Blythe had been in the employ of baron’s parents as a maid.
I have been in contact with the housekeeper for the baron’s parents who confirmed the young woman’s employment and that she was turned out when she came to be in a family way.
There is no evidence the baron was informed of their birth or of their mother’s condition.
His parents have denied the children could have been sired by your late husband and have refused to support the girls.
Miss Blythe left their employment seven years ago.
Please advise how you would like me to respond.
Your Ladyship’s obedient servant,
Mr. Joshua Forrester
—A letter from Lady Griffith’s barrister in regard to two bastards sired by her deceased husband, William Griffith, Baron Bredlebane six years prior to their wedding.
Today was the day. Simon shifted in the bed that had been his prison for the past eight weeks.
He would get his cast removed from his leg and truly start his recovery.
He’d been writing Sir Williamson with the War Office several times a week and had yet to hear back from the blasted man.
If Simon had to go to the man’s office and kick down his door, he would do so.
Today. He was tired of this blasted bed, and he was damn-well done being caged.
The doctor had been in to see him every other day since Caillen’s defection.
His only other visitor had been his son, eight-year-old Sébastien.
It had been a necessary bonding time for the two of them.
They’d met at Mont Saint Michel, where they’d been imprisoned together.
Sébastien hadn’t been physically abused, but he had suffered from poor nutrition and neglect, along with witnessing atrocities that would haunt the toughest of soldiers.
During his rescue, Simon had identified Sébastien as his son and refused to leave that hell without him.
Now with Caillen gone, it was Sébastien who had insisted on caring for him once again.
The lack of a valet had allowed his son to sleep in what should have been his valet’s bed for the past month.
Except when the nightmares woke one, or both, in the middle of the night.
In those instances, Sébastien would end up making a pallet on the floor next to his bed.
He’d told his mother and siblings to stay home, and none of his friends even knew he was in Town. Ross had not called upon him, although he knew Ross would not want to miss the birth of his second child the way he had his first. Even that nosy little chit, Robbi, hadn’t been by to spy on him.
If he was honest with himself, which he rarely was, the only void that truly bothered him was Caillen’s absence.
He awoke daily, imagining her voice mixing in with the workers he heard demolishing his fire damaged home.
Each day he’d told himself he was a fool dreaming the impossible.
He needed her to stay away. He just hadn’t expected her to do so without a fight.
He put down the book he had been attempting to read and stared out the window at the cold gray day.
“Flip up her skirts,” Charlotte told him.
“I can’t flip up the skirts on a woman who isn’t here.”
“Thar she blows!”
Simon sighed. “She’s not here, Charlotte.”
“Lady in the house. Lady in the house.”
“Would you please shut up, Charlotte.”
“Aaack!” Charlotte squawked and began flapping her wings as if she wanted to give flight but couldn’t.
“There’s nothing stopping you from flying.”
“Aaaaaaack!” Charlotte took off from her perch and flew around the room several times before landing on the bed next to him.
Simon reached for the apple on his nightstand and took a bite. He slipped the piece out of his mouth and handed it to Charlotte. The bird looked at him as if it were contaminated. “I don’t have a knife. It was supposed to be my apple, not yours.”
Charlotte waddled over to his hand, gingerly took the chunk from his palm, and proceeded to make a mess on his bedding.
“You could at least say, thank you.”
Charlotte shook her head and threw the piece across the room. “Bloody awful.”
Simon took another bite and handed it to the bird who took it without hesitation. “I’m not going to lie. Life seems bloody awful without her here.”
“Lady in the house.”
He rubbed the bird’s head as she ate. “You’re not helping by insisting the lady is here.”
Caillen’s presence had grounded him, but since she’d been gone, he had nightmares, and flashes of memory he damned well wanted to forget. He wanted her back, and he bloody well hated himself for that. It was just too dangerous. Yet it didn’t stop him from dreaming about the woman he’d pushed away.
He’d known her sister, Máira, wouldn’t accept his rushed proposal to save her reputation.
Why would she? He’d never planned to marry, and he’d made that very clear through years of debauchery.
He just hoped the man responsible for Máira’s condition had done the right thing by now.
He suspected Elias Drake would, but men were unpredictable when it came to love and parentage.
His own father was a testament to that. Simon had three brothers and three sisters—all bastards being raised by his mother.
It was amazing how many bastards were sired by the good gentlemen of the ton who were too damned cocksure and privileged to give a rat’s arse about what would happen to those unfortunate women and children.
Each one of his siblings had asked about their mothers.
Each one had been told by their father that he didn’t know where they were or how to contact them.
Faith in the unfaithful was difficult at best. Yet, each time his father brought home a new babe from his travels, his mother had loved that child like her own.
She had been dealt a poor hand when she’d been given to his father as a bride while he was a diplomat for the Crown in India.
Her parents had been honoured by a British earl paying court to their daughter.
Perhaps he was being cynical regarding his father, since his mother had never said a word.
His siblings came from different cultural backgrounds and were presented as a gift for his mother upon his father’s return home after a long dignitary visit abroad.
The one time Simon had questioned her about his father’s philandering, she’d replied in a manner that had surprised him.
“I was given the winning hand of a full house. I have no complaints.”
Now he wondered how his mother would feel about Sébastien.
The door slowly began to open as if an apparition was slipping into his room to steal his soul—at half past noon.
“Knock! Knock!” Charlotte screeched and flew over to her perch.
A three-foot-tall blond little towhead appeared in the doorway. Big blue eyes, more vibrant than the azure sea off the coast of Italy, stared at him as a second identical little girl peeked in below the first. They stared at him as if he were an actual ghost.
“Hello,” he said with a stunned smile.
“‘Ello. Are ye dead?” The two girls pushed into his room as if he’d delivered a formal invitation.
By their attire, they appeared to be children of a wealthy tradesman or daughters of a peer.
Yet, despite being dressed most prettily in matching blue gowns and slippers, with ringlets in their hair, their accents were from the streets.
He patted his chest, feeling around to see if he was corporal. “I don’t think I’m dead.”
“Ewww, wook at his finga.” One exclaimed in a heavy Cockney accent to the other as they waltzed over to the side of his bed with all the manners of a street urchin begging for a coin.
He looked down at his pinky finger on his chest that stuck out like a branch coming out of the side of his hand.
“The doctor wanted to lop it off,” he confessed.
“Ye should’ve let him.”
“I’m rather fond of it, even if it is ugly.”
“What’d ye do to it?”
“That’s what happens when you mess with bad characters,” he warned with the solemnity that caution deserved.
“‘Ow do they look, Guv? Did ye put ‘em in the grave?” The girls watched him as if he were a bare-knuckle fighter ready to deliver the story of a knockout punch. He did one better.
When any person of the opposite sex looked to Simon for a story, he’d always delivered one that would please them most. These girls were like Robbi—they wanted blood. “You’d have to ask Davey Jones that question,” he said with a wink.
If it were possible, their eyes became even larger as they leaned in. “Cor,” they said in unison.
He suspected it was a common occurrence.
“Ye mean they be in Davey Jones’s locker?” Letters were dropping off their words in a fashion that would disgust the ladies of the ton. On these two, he found it quite charming.
He nodded solemnly. “A man must do some horrible things to stay alive.”
Their heads bobbed up and down.
“Are ye our father?”
It was his turn to look utterly befuddled. “I beg your pardon?”
“Our mum said our pappa is dead. So, we be wonderin’ if’n ye were ‘im and ye were dead.”
“Aack! Who’s your daddy?” Charlotte’s wings flapped and the girls gasped.
“It’s a parrot!” The girls squealed.
His brow furrowed. “A yellow-naped parrot,” he corrected.
“Can we touch him?”
“Her, and no you may not. Charlotte eats little girl’s fingers for breakfast.”
Charlotte clacked her beak as if she were truly eager to eat their fingers. The girls
screamed and shoved their hands behind their backs. It was a cruel trick to be sure, but it was his way of keeping Charlotte safe from children, not the other way around. Charlotte was only reacting to the word breakfast in the manner he had taught her.