Page 576 of From Rakes to Riches

It was.

Gemma had been present in the foaling box when Bloody Hell had been born.

Her heart threatened to break through her ribs, so hard and fast it banged about.

Lord Ormonde wasn’t speaking of a different Bolton.

“Lord Bolton is the most unpleasant man I’ve ever encountered,” said the duchess, her forkful of potatoes halfway to her mouth. “And that’s saying something, because—” She took her bite, chewed, and swallowed, all in her own time. The room waited. “I was married to the Duke of Acaster,” she finished on a laugh wholly composed of spiky points.

Though she surely shared nothing in common with the duchess—well, the woman did love her horses, Gemma would concede that—Gemma sensed something familiar in this beautiful, closely guarded woman.

She’d endured harm…

From a man.

It was an experience Gemma was particularly attuned to.

Rake flicked a piece of lint off his evening jacket. “He isn’t competition. He hasn’t entered a horse in a race in years.”

“Anyone know why?” asked Lady Artemis.

Gemma felt sick.

All eyes turned toward Lady Beatrix—again. The lady did seem mightily knowledgeable on matters of society and turf gossip. “Strange whisperings about him persist.”

“Like?” prodded Lady Artemis.

“Like he’s gone half mad with grief.”

“Grief?”

“I wasn’t aware the countess was deceased,” said Rake.

He glanced down at Gemma’s hands, which had twisted her napkin into a knot, then lifted to meet her gaze, a question in his eyes.

“Not the countess,” said Lady Beatrix.

It was the way she spoke the words that made the message clear.Not the countess, but a different woman in his life. No one had to say, “Ah,” for thatahto echo off the four walls of this dining room.

“Word has it she was his cook—and there’s more.”

Everyone waited with bated breath until Lady Artemis exclaimed on a huff of frustration, “Out with it, Beatrix.”

“Children.”

Yet anotherahthat didn’t need to be voiced.Children…on the other side of the blanket.

“Children?” scoffed Lord Ormonde. “One is an accident. Two is simply poor management.”

Before Gemma could properly think through her actions, her chair was scraping across the floor, and she was shooting to her feet. She had to leave.

Now.

Before the walls crowded in and suffocated her. Her feet already on the move, she mumbled a few indistinct words and fled the room…

The house…

Through the stables and into her bedroom, all those footsteps a blur as she collapsed back against the closed door, her breath a sharp, ragged rasp in her throat and lungs.

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