Regency High Society Vol 5: The Disgraced Marchioness / The Reluctant Escort / The Outrageous Debutante / A Damnable Rogue. Mary NicholsЧитать онлайн книгу.
if neither you nor my son knew. Thomas was more of a father to him than you could ever be.’
The hurt shimmered between them. Her eyes bright with unshed tears. His face ravaged with the deep lines of hard-held emotion. The abyss yawned wide and dangerous between them, impossible to bridge.
‘Don’t concern yourself, my lord.’ Eleanor continued to pour out the anguish and the pain. ‘Tom will never have to know that his father did not choose to acknowledge him, for I know not what reason other than that you doubt my honesty. From this moment,
Tom’s father was Thomas, my husband. How could I have been so mistaken in my judgement? What a terrible mistake I made. And what a fool you must think me.’ She laughed again, a sharp sound without humour that told him more than anything else of the depth of her despair. ‘Go back to New York, Hal. Forget that Tom and I exist. I loved you to the depths of my soul and I gave you everything. I gave you a splendid child. But you are not worthy to be the father of my son. I wish Rosalind well of you.’
She turned her back on him.
Henry strode from the room, her final words, her merciless condemnation ringing in his ears. He thought that they would haunt him forever. He did not see the tears spangling her cheeks, despite all her good intentions. Or read the desolation in her face, not yet hidden behind a mask of hard serenity that would deny to the world that her heart had been ripped to pieces.
How could he have done it? How could he have been so deliberately cruel? So demon-driven, vicious as a wolf attacking its prey. Fear, he admitted. A title he did not want. A way of life that he had no desire for. But a son? The child whom he had held in his arms? He believed her, of course, every word that she had spoken. Her integrity was beyond question and she would not make up such a story. But he had hurt her so much. She would never forgive him, and rightly so. He was no better than Baxendale in his destruction of her life. Worse, in fact, since she had come to trust him and rely on him. And yet he had turned on her, cut her with taunts and vitriolic words. She had every reason to hate him. What the hell did he do now?
And he had a son.
‘Hal…’
‘Not now.’ He strode past Nicholas with savage grace. ‘Come and ride if you wish, but don’t talk to me for a little while. Just don’t ask. I am impossible company. I have just committed the worst sin of my life. I cannot undo the words I have said or the harm I have caused.’
Seeing the ungovernable torment and remorse in his face, Nick let him go, standing to watch as his usually impassive brother flung out of the house. At that moment, nothing would have persuaded him to restrain his brother, to question the reason for his distress. Nothing would have made him go into the room that Hal had just vacated, where Eleanor still remained. If he had needed any confirmation of his suspicions, his convictions even, it had just struck him with all the brutality of a slap to his face. Surely only two people helplessly in love could reduce each other to such devastating unhappiness as he had seen in his brother’s face.
From the window of the morning room, Eleanor also watched with eyes as cold and empty as the hollow places in her heart. Could she blame him? Yes, she could! She had not deserved such condemnation, would never have believed that he would show such harshness towards her. But circumstances had conspired against her, she had kept her secret from Hal, and whatever Edward Baxendale had said to him in the aftermath of their disclosure of his deceit had borne fruit. She had played the game out to the full and must now bear the consequences of her shattered dreams and bruised heart.
But she had told Hal the truth at last. His reaction to it was within his own dominion—and, besides, he would be gone in a few days. Her damaged heart would heal, in a hundred years or so. And whatever she had told Hal in her wretchedness, in the desert of her wasted emotions, she would tell her son about his magnificent father. But never that Hal had rejected him, had rejected them both.
Chapter Eleven
‘Nick. There is a ship sailing next week from Liverpool. I shall take passage on it.’ Henry came to a halt at the bottom of the staircase as his brother was making his way down, dressed with fashionable, if unusual, flamboyance to go out.
‘I supposed you would eventually.’ Nicholas cast his hat and gloves onto the sidetable in the hall and followed Henry into the morning room. ‘But I did not expect you to go so soon.’ He took the offered glass of port. ‘I shall miss you, Hal.’
‘An important business deal has come to fruition—a lucrative contract that we wish to take up to ship raw cotton to the mills here in Lancashire and then return the finished textiles.’ Hal made an obvious excuse. ‘It is best if I am there. Besides, there is nothing to hold me here in London.’ He bared his teeth in something that was not a smile and took a swallow of the port. ‘Forgive me. I did not mean that as it sounded.’
‘So I should hope.’ Nicholas punched his shoulder in mock disgust, thinking that Hal looked as if he had spent a night of torment. No doubt the result of his conversation with Eleanor on the previous morning, the content of which still remained a mystery to him. Both parties had been at dinner, but so scrupulously polite to each other that it had been painfully unnerving to watch and listen. Like the silent shattering of fragile glass. The atmosphere had then glittered with shards of that broken glass, lurking to slice at the unwary—he had been more than glad to escape and join a party of friends at the theatre. What Henry had done he did not know and dare not ask. Eleanor had stalked from the room as soon as the meal had ended, leaving Mrs Stamford to stare with puzzlement from one to the other.
‘So you are leaving me to manage the estate in your absence?’
‘Yes. You will have to work for a living, for the first time in your life.’ Henry put down his glass and took the seat behind his desk. ‘Seriously, Nick. Would you dislike it too much? If so, it is unfair of me to leave you with it.’
‘No. You know me better than that, Hal. There is nothing that I would like more. I have plans. When Tom inherits the estate in the fullness of time it will be a wonder to behold with sound investment. When he is older, I will see that he is up to scratch. He will not live off the estate, giving nothing back, if I have anything to say in the matter.’
Hal’s answering smile was bleak. ‘I know that he is in good hands.’ My son. My son.
‘And I know that you would not want to take it on. For you to have been born the eldest son would have been the worst possible destiny for you.’ Nick grinned in some sympathy. ‘Whereas I enjoy the life as a country squire. I shall not be sorry to leave town.’
Henry’s smile vanished, leaving his face harsh and strained. ‘Hoskins can be relied upon,’ was all he said. He frowned unseeingly out of the window, arms folded before him on the desk. That was the key, of course, to his disastrous confrontation with Eleanor. Nick’s comment that he would not ever want the title, the social hierarchy, the acceptance that the manner in which the world saw him should rest purely on an accident of birth. The idea that all men should have the same opportunities open to them, to construct a future for themselves dependent on their own efforts, suited him far better. And it was that which had pushed him over the edge. The title was legally his after the death of his brother, tying him into a social and class system that he was more than ready to escape. That, coupled with Edward Baxendale’s vicious accusation and Mrs Stamford’s determined and unseemly pleasure at the outcome, had driven him to heap the blame on
Eleanor. As if she were responsible for chaining him to a life that he detested as much as Nick enjoyed.
Not true. Of course it wasn’t true. He knew it in every sinew of his body, heard it in every beat of his heart. And what had he done? He had made her cry! Humiliated her. Questioned her morality and her veracity. He deserved to be flogged. To be damned to the fires of hell.
It had not helped him when last night he had taken himself on an impulse to the baby’s room. An astonished nursemaid had looked up from her seat beside the fireplace where she was