What the Duke Desires (22 page)

Lillian looked over at him. He was staring straight ahead, lost in a haze as they slowly made their way back to the carriage and then the place he had called home all his life.

“Simon, do you want to talk about this?” she asked softly.

That brought him to a halt. He looked down at her, then back over his shoulder at the cottage. Only the roof was visible now, for they had crested the low hill. In a few more steps it would be entirely gone, almost as if it didn’t exist.

Except that it did and it was time to deal with that fact, at last.

“Simon,” he repeated, then he laughed, though the sound was humorless and tired. “Simon is
his
name. Should I even be called that?”

She lifted his hand to her heart and held it there, aching for his pain and realizing from bitter experience that there was nothing she could do to take it away. Nothing but support him, hear him,
love
him.

“Yes, you should.
Simon
, the circumstances that brought you to this place, this family, this life were not of your making. They weren’t your fault. You cannot blame yourself for what was done to you…or what happened to him.”

“I took his life!” he burst out, shaking off her hand and pacing away restlessly. His tone was so raw that it brought tears to her eyes for what seemed the hundredth time that day.

“No,” she insisted, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him around to look at her. “You were
given
his life. And it is a gift. Moreover, you have lived that life with honor and dignity. You have represented him and his name and all he should have been because he couldn’t do that himself. I’m sure if he understood the circumstances, he would be pleased. He would love you for all you’ve done and who you are.”

He seemed to ponder that for a long time, then he let out a long, heavy sigh.

“He does seem content here,” he whispered.

She nodded, thinking of the happy home that had been built for the child, and she could think of him as nothing else but a child, despite his tall stature and heavyset build. The longer they stayed, the more this man-child Simon had told them about the fun he had and how much he loved his mama’s visits and how he even had a dog to play with.

“He is happy, Simon. Your brother may be more…
simple
than others around him, but it’s clear he has a great capacity for love. His housekeeper and nurse adore him, he evidently has a strong bond with your mother, and now…” She reached up to touch his face. “He has you. And me.”

Simon nodded, but she saw the sparkle of tears in his eyes. “Yes, he does, indeed. And I intend to come here, to see him, whenever I can. When I arrived, I wasn’t sure what I would find, what I would feel.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“But the moment I saw him…” He trailed off, and suddenly his smile became warm and genuine. “I loved him. I knew I could never let anyone hurt him. I would do
anything
to prevent that. Anything.”

Lillian flinched ever so slightly. There was so much passion in his words. If he ever knew that her purpose when she first came here was to do just that, to uncover the kind of secret she now knew and then spread it to every corner of the
ton
, consequences be damned…

Well, he wouldn’t be reaching for her hand again, that was for certain. He would despise her. He would rightly see her as a threat to his brother, a threat to his own future.

He threaded his fingers through hers, and her worries faded at his touch.

“There are more brothers, you know,” Simon said finally. “I found the evidence of it in the same hiding hole where my father put the information about me. Mine was the only actual name listed, but there is a solicitor named there who took care of at least one of the payouts to the mother of another of his sons.”

Lillian shook her head in disgust at what Simon’s father had caused. Now Simon would have to tidy up all the messes the duke had left behind out of selfishness and greed.

“How many?” she asked softly.

He shrugged. “Two others. At least that’s how many were detailed here at this estate. But my father had more estates all over the countryside, who knows what he hid in those places.”

The carriage was in the distance now and both of them hesitated. It seemed he had the same feeling as she did, not ready to return to the estate, not ready to face the consequences of what they had discovered and experienced today.

“I want to find them, Lillian,” he said, turning to face her. “Everything I’ve ever known is a lie, but there is a true family out there for me. Fractured, but real. I deserve to know them and they deserve to know the truth.”

Her brow wrinkled. There was so much potential for pain in Simon’s plan. “Even if the truth hurts them? You have no idea who those men could be.”

He considered that for a moment, but then he nodded. “Everyone deserves to know who they are, even if it hurts. No one deserves a life of lies.”

Lillian shut her eyes briefly. Once they married, would that be what she doomed him to, another life filled with lies because he didn’t yet know the truth of her family’s link to his father?

But that wasn’t a problem for this moment. Simon needed her, and she was determined to help in the best way she could. Reaching up, she cupped his cheeks and drew him down to her. Pressing her mouth to his, she kissed him. She felt the tension leave his shoulders as his arms came around her and the kiss deepened to a much more pleasurable one.

When they parted, she smiled at him. “You’re right, Simon. Everyone deserves the truth. And we will find your brothers. When we return to London, we go directly to this solicitor and get the names of the other sons.”

“After we wed, of course,” Simon said with the first smile in a while that hadn’t contained a healthy dose of pain. “And with you by my side, I’m certain we will do whatever we decide is best.”

They joined hands again and made for the carriage. As the driver opened the door with a quiet acknowledgment, Simon helped her in. She settled back against the comfortable leather seat and sighed. It had been a trying day, and what she wanted more than anything was a hot bath and a long nap.

Except when Simon got in, she could see that wasn’t what was on his mind. His earlier smile had vanished and he was grim again.

“What is it?” she asked, reaching across the carriage seat to cover his knee with her hand. “You’re thinking of something troubling, I can tell.”

“It has been a trying day,” he said softly. “But there is one thing I have left to do.”

Lillian looked at him for a long moment. She understood. There was one person left alive in this world who had perpetrated this lie, one person who could answer at least some of Simon’s questions.

“You wish to confront your mother,” she whispered.

“My mother.” He said the word slowly, as if it felt foreign on his tongue. “Do you know I have dreamed of the real woman who was my mother all my life? I never knew it was her, but now it seems so obvious that my dream specter was her.”

She frowned. “And now you could find her.” His face twisted, and in that moment she saw the bitter truth. “Oh, Simon. Is she…”

He nodded. “This morning I went into my father’s office. I found a notation in a ledger about her. Apparently she died four years after he took me. She’s gone. I shall never know her.”

Lillian squeezed her eyes shut as pain washed over her. She missed her mother terribly, but she had good and happy memories to sustain her. Simon…Simon had nothing but questions.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugged. “I suppose in part it was too raw. And there was so much more to think about coming here to find…
him
. My brother. I didn’t want to pass along one more sorrow for you to bear.”

She shook her head. His justifications were so like her own. To protect him, she kept the truth from him. To protect her, he did the same.

“At any rate, it seems the duchess is all I have left.” He cleared his throat, and she could tell he wished to move away from the painful topic, at least for a while. “And it is high time we handled this for once and for all.” He touched the hand still resting against his leg. “Will you be at my side as I do that?”

Lillian drew back, surprised at his request.

“Is this not a private matter between the two of you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “You are to be my wife, and unfortunately you will inherit a world of problems and issues along with that title.”

“But she hates me, Simon. With me in the room, she might not tell you anything,” she said with a shiver as she thought of the duchess’s glares and nasty comments over the short time of their acquaintance.

Simon folded his arms, and in his expression was every inch the lordly duke. A man not to be trifled with. And born into it or raised into it, she had to admit the look was quite intimidating.

“She can rot with her opinions of you after all she’s done.” Then his anger was gone. “And I’d like you to be there.”

At that, Lillian shoved aside her misgivings and nodded. “Then I shall be at your side, Simon. For whatever you need.”

“Are you going to speak your purpose, Simon, or just stand there gaping at me?” she asked, not even bothering to spare him a glance.

He moved farther into the room with Lillian at his side. There was no use dancing around the topic, especially as his mother…no, the
duchess
…seemed peevish.

“You didn’t come to tea earlier this afternoon,” she snapped before he could speak. “I was forced to entertain Miss Mayhew’s guests alone.”

She shot Lillian a glare that spoke volumes about how beneath her that task had been, how beneath her
Lillian
was. Her superior attitude erased Simon’s hesitation in an instant.

He arched a brow. “I was out for a visit, Your Grace.”

“A visit to whom?” she snapped as she tossed her book on the side table and glared in his direction, though he noticed she didn’t actually meet his eyes. “I wasn’t informed. You might have had the courtesy to—”

“I made a trek out to that little cottage that stands in the middle of Flicket Orchard,” he said, keeping his tone utterly cool.

His mother’s head jerked higher as she staggered from the chair and stepped away from him. “What?”

“You heard me,” he said, keeping his tone low and measured. “And I think you know very well what I saw there.”

All the color left her cheeks, and her hands shook like fall leaves. He had never seen her like this before, so frail and frightened. So human.

“You saw him?” she asked, and her voice was almost nonexistent. She shot a glance over his shoulder at Lillian. “
She
saw him?”

He nodded wordlessly.

“What did you do?” his mother practically screeched as she came toward him in a few long steps. Her hands were raised like useless weapons and her eyes were wide and wild. “What did you do to my baby?”

Simon’s mouth dropped open in shock at her reaction, and he stared at the woman he had called his mother for his entire life. For the first time, he felt her desperation, her fear, and the pain that seemed to throb in the room around them like a broken heartbeat. How could he not have noticed those things before?

Before he could answer, Lillian came forward. “Your Grace, you should know Simon better than that. All he and your son did was talk. He would never harm or confuse that boy. I don’t think he could.”

The duchess blinked as if Lillian’s admonishment was sinking in. Slowly, the terror in her stare faded. After a few long moments she grasped for the chair she had evacuated when he told her he saw his brother and sank back into its cushions with a shuddering sigh.

“No, perhaps you wouldn’t,” she breathed.

Simon stared at her. She seemed so small, so weak now. As if the air and hatred had been let out of her, leaving only a shell of her former self. He almost pitied her.

“I deserve to know the truth,” he said softly.

She looked up at him, her hands shaking as she fussed with the hem of her sleeve restlessly. “Yes, I suppose you do. And it seems it’s too late to keep the truth from you at any rate.”

Simon motioned for Lillian, and she took a place beside him on the settee across from his mother. The dowager stared at her, but she seemed too exhausted to have her usual disdain for his future bride.

“Is
she
going to stay for this?” she asked.

Simon squeezed Lillian’s fingers as he nodded. “She is my future wife. She deserves to hear this as much as I do, I think. To know exactly what she is entering into.”

If his mother had an argument, for once she kept it to herself. Instead, she let out a long sigh and murmured, “Very well.”

“Tell me,” he said softly. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”

She nodded. “The family was beside the lake for a picnic. Your sister was eight and your brother had just turned two. He loved the water, and we used to spend many a day there in the sun while he played around the edge of the lake.”

Simon couldn’t help a small smile. He had always loved the water as well, despite being kept from it by his parents.

The dowager continued, but her voice had begun to tremble. “Your father and I had been arguing. I had just discovered he had another child,
you
, born a few months before Simon. Our latest exchange on the subject grew heated, so we went just up the hill so the children wouldn’t hear our voices. And that was when
it
happened.”

Simon tensed and Lillian squeezed his hand in reassurance. “He fell in.”

The duchess nodded, but didn’t continue for a few long moments as she struggled to compose herself.

“It took a moment for anyone to notice,” she finally whispered. “When she saw him floating there, Naomi began screaming, which alerted us. She waded into the water, trying to pull him out. But she was so small and he was too heavy for her. By the time we got down to the edge of the lake, he wasn’t breathing. Your father managed to revive him, but it was instantly recognizable that he was terribly injured.”

Simon shook his head. “You brought in doctors?”

“The best in the countryside, one after another, for weeks. But they all said the same thing. My child had been…” Her breath caught on the edge of a sob. “…
damaged
, broken beyond repair. They told us he would likely never fully recover in mind, even if he survived in body.”

Lillian let out a shiver beside him, but remained quiet, her gaze fully fixed on his mother. Simon knew what she was thinking of, for he couldn’t put it out of his mind, either. He was thinking of his brother, a child trapped in a man’s body, incapable of taking care of himself, incapable of fully living any kind of life outside of the small one he had been provided in the hidden cottage.

“Some of the doctors told us to have him put away, locked up in an asylum. They told us to have another child.” His mother laughed but it was empty. “But I couldn’t. My son’s birth was a terrible one, I nearly died. We had tried for children again since him, but never successfully. It was clear we couldn’t have another baby, so I wasn’t able to provide your father with an heir.”

“But why not just let the others in the family know?” Simon asked. “My uncle Charles would have made a fine duke, and my cousin Andrew is as good a man as any I’ve ever known.”

His mother rolled her eyes. “I would have done, but your father insisted we keep what had happened a secret.”

“But why?” Simon insisted.

She shook her head. “He was the duke and, by God, his son would be, too. It didn’t matter to him that he was thwarting birthright or law, he wanted
his
blood to carry on his title, and he was willing to lie and cheat to ensure that would happen. We argued, but I was too weak and devastated to put up much of a fight. Afterward, your father disappeared for a few days and when he returned…”

She trailed off, and Lillian lifted her hand to cover her mouth. “He brought Simon…
this
Simon, back with him to replace your son.”

His mother’s eyes grew sharp as she glared at Lillian. “Yes.” Her voice cracked and was filled with the bitterness of years of lies and heartbreak. “He brought this
boy
into my home, this child with my son’s eyes and hair, and told me I would have to behave as if he were my Simon. That if we waited a few months no one would be the wiser, children changed so fast and the two boys looked somewhat alike.”

“I’m so sorry, Your Grace,” Lillian whispered.

Simon saw she wanted to reach for his mother, to comfort her, although the dowager had never been kind to Lillian. As if his mother sensed that, too, she turned away slightly.

“It was horrible,” she hissed. “To have to pretend my husband’s bastard son was my precious Simon.” Her gaze shifted to him. “To see
you
whole and alive while my boy languished in a broken hell, not even allowed to live in the house with me where I could see him and hold him whenever I wished to do so.”

Simon shook his head, overwhelmed by the cruelty of his father’s actions. He could hardly imagine how horrific that time must have been for his mother.

“That was why you hated me so,” he said without censure, without judgment.

“Yes,” she said, her voice cold as steel, but her strength lasted only a moment.

As soon as the affirmation was from her lips, she sank her head into her hands and began to cry in a way he had never seen or heard before, great wailing sobs that echoed in the room for several hellish moments.

Finally, she pulled herself together and continued, “I did hate you. But I hated myself more. You see, there were moments when I…I loved you. And every time I felt like it was a betrayal. Like I was forgetting my son, allowing him to be replaced as my husband wished him to be. So I pulled away from you, putting as much distance between us as I could.”

He nodded. In some way, this confession was a relief. He had spent so long wondering why she didn’t care. Now that he knew, it helped somehow.

“But why didn’t you just reveal his secret?” he asked. “You could have ended this years ago.”

“Your father never struck me,” his mother said softly. “However, he made it clear that there would be swift and terrible retribution if I ever revealed the truth. I feared the consequences, not just to myself, but to our children. Your father could have had our son committed, or even hurt him if I told anyone what we had done. He could have taken my daughter away and made sure I never saw her again. I’d lost so much already, I wasn’t strong enough to risk more. So I remained silent. I allowed him do as he wished.”

“What about when the duke was dead?” Lillian asked, her voice gentle. “You could have told the secret then with no reprisals.”

“Could I?” his mother asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “You saw my child, Miss Mayhew. He is alive, yes, but completely incompetent. If I told the secret, if I revealed the truth now, so many years later, there would surely be an inquest to determine the facts of the situation. All the parties involved would go before panels and hearings, including my son. There would be tests for his fitness to serve as duke, as well. Do you think he could stand that?”

Simon shook his head as he thought of his brother, so simple. He had been kept in that cottage, isolated and utterly protected for his entire life. Simon couldn’t imagine how he would react to the loud and busy streets of London, let alone being grilled by people whom he had never met before, ones who might not treat him with delicacy and kindness.

“He couldn’t take it,” he said softly. “Worse, there would be ridicule and laughter. Some would treat him like a circus sideshow.”

The dowager nodded, tears streaming down her face. “And for what? Your uncle Charles has been dead for a decade and your cousin Andrew long ago chose the life of a clergyman over the life of a peer. You know as well as I do that he would
hate
being dragged into the light, especially with so many whispers about the circumstances of his taking over.”

Simon considered that. She was correct, of course. Every time he saw his cousin, Andrew made a joke thanking him for taking the worst job in the family. He would wither as duke, losing all his zest for life, not to mention the occupation he had come to adore.

Simon let out a sigh that came from his very soul and whispered, “As much as I hate to continue this farce, I think I must. For the good of everyone involved, most especially my brother.”

The duchess rose up and paced away. Her shoulders slumped forward in relief and defeat combined.

“Good,” she said quietly. “Good.”

Simon hesitated. There was one issue resolved, but he still had questions. Did he dare hope she would tell him what he needed to know?

“What do you know about my life before I came here?” he asked.

She turned to look at him. “Nothing.”

Simon flinched, and she seemed to understand his thoughts.

“I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you that is the truth. I never even knew your real name, your father kept it to himself, insisting I only ever think of you as Simon. I don’t know where you came from.”

Simon nodded. He thought himself a fairly good judge of people and he felt that his mother…the woman he had thought of as his mother…wasn’t lying. Not now, when so much had been revealed already.

He moved toward her slowly, easing out a hand in offering. “My name is Henry Ives, Your Grace.”

She stared at him, stared at his outstretched fingers. Then she took his hand.

“Henry,” she whispered, rolling it on her tongue as if she were trying to understand it. Then she shook her head. “It does not suit you,
Simon
.”

He shut his eyes as she pulled her hand away gently. That was as much acceptance as he was likely to ever garner from this woman. And knowing all he did now, it was enough.

“And what of the others?” he asked, tilting his head to look at her.

She hesitated. “The other bastards?”

He nodded.

“Your father was a busy man,” she all but whispered as she turned away. “Incapable of self-control, whether he was seducing the lowest of servants or the highest of ladies. He thought it a challenge, and I think he secretly loved spreading his seed all about England. I knew of his conquests, I sometimes even knew that they resulted in children, but I knew nothing else. We didn’t exactly talk, if you recall.”