Page 55 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
Adam took Rickard by the lapels and turned so the man was pressed against the wall, standing on his tiptoes. Past the fluttering curtains, they were almost invisible, and Rickard was silent except for his quick, panicked breathing.
Good.
Emmeline would no doubt disapprove, but Adam was determined to get answers once and for all.
“Tell me,” he growled, “what you are doing at my house.”
Rickard’s throat worked, fear wide on his face. “We are brothers,” he blurted out as Adam pressed him more firmly against the wall. “You and I. William and I. I was never his friend but his brother, and yours, too.”
Brother.
The word ripped through Adam like ice, dousing his anger in frost. He released Rickard, stepping back and reassessing. Hansen—that was his family name, but he had never given any true weight to it. There were numerous Hansens littering the countryside, and few were related, if any.
But this man…
Surely it could not be.
“What do you mean, you are my brother?” Adam asked, his voice hoarse. “I have no recollection of you.”
“No, you would not.” Rickard touched his throat and gave the ghost of a smile. “It’s true that no one knows me in London and that you have no recollection of me. I should be plain—we are half-brothers.”
Adam felt as though the world was falling out from underneath his feet. “Half-brothers,” he repeated. “But you are my junior.”
“By approximately four years, from what I can gather,” Rickard said apologetically. “I am seven-and-twenty.”
Yes, in that case, there were only four years between them.
“How can this be?”
“I only discovered it recently myself, and I was searching for…” Rickard trailed off. “It is a long story. Perhaps?—”
“Tell it.”
“Very well.” Rickard cleared his throat. “My mother was born in Edinburgh, and that was where she remained after her coming out. She never traveled to London for the Season, so she never became acquainted with the English ton, but she did meet my father—our father—during a trip he took to Scotland one year. They were married not three months later.”
Married.
“When was this?” Adam demanded, his voice rough.
“Approximately twenty-eight years ago.” Rickard looked at him unblinkingly, a little of his courage restored now that the truth had come out. “After you and your brother were born.”
Adam swallowed back his retort and his instinctive wave of fury. His father had been an unfaithful bastard, everyone knew that, but this was of a different magnitude.
“He married your mother,” he said flatly. “Without disclosing he was already married.”
Rickard’s smile was sad. “She knew, in the end. There was no chance that she couldn’t. But by then, he had passed away, and there was little she could do but protect me from the knowledge that I am a bastard in the eyes of the law.”
“But you found out?”
“When she eventually passed, I found some correspondence between them to that effect. He confessed an element of what he had done, and she accused him of the rest. He was living in England at the time.”
Adam rubbed a hand down his face, staggering back until his back hit the wall. His father had often left for weeks at a time, claiming business. No man ever took his wife on business trips, so his mother had never objected to being left behind.
Had she known?
The fire that had taken her life had happened so suddenly, and over ten years ago now. If this was true, then Rickard would have been barely into his teenage years. A mere child.
They still would have been ‘married’ for almost twenty years.
