Page 116 of Deceiving an Earl
“Do I need to worry that he will…hurt Philip in any way?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to know. Maybe in the future I will ask, and you will tell me, but for now this is enough.”
In the future? His heart soared that she was thinking of them in the future.
“Very well,” he said. “Speaking of the future…”
She turned her head away, but he thought he saw a slight smile curve her lips.
“Or rather the past and the future,” he said. “We need to discuss Philip.”
She burrowed farther into her blanket. Even though it wasn’t that cold it seemed she’d not been able to get warm since awakening from her sleep.
“Is he my son?”
Long moments passed, and Oliver realized that he was holding his breath, waiting for final confirmation. In his head Philip was his son. In his heart Philip was his son. He just needed confirmation.
Ellen looked out over the garden, her chin tucked into the folds of her blanket. “I regret so many things,” she said softly. “It about killed me that I didn’t meet you that night we were to run away.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“All of my life I was raised with the knowledge that I was to make a good match and, while you would someday be an earl, it still wasn’t good enough for them. And the thought of… The thought of disobeying them terrified me. More than walking away from you. I thought of the wedding my mother had planned, the wedding breakfast that they had paid for, and the gown that we had picked out. But mostly I thought of their expressions when they realized that I had run away and what their friends would say about them. And I couldn’t do it.” A lone tear leaked out of her eye, and she rubbed it on the blanket.
“Knowing you were waiting for me, knowing that I was breaking your heart, was nearly unbearable.”
His throat had grown thick with emotion, and he found he couldn’t say anything. Finally, after all these years he was getting the answers that he had longed for.
“And so I married Arthur, and eventually the pain of forsaking you lessened, and I convinced myself that I had done the right thing. Arthur was kind and gentle, if a little inattentive. And then I found out I was with child and I had convinced myself the baby was Arthur’s. I simply told myself that there was no other option but for the child to be his.”
She paused, wiped another tear. This was the most she’d spoken since awakening, and he could tell it was taking a toll on her. And still she had not answered his question.
“When did you know for sure?” he asked.
She drew in a deep breath as if she needed courage. “Philip loved to play in Arthur’s study while he was working. When he was about a year and a half I walked in on the two of them. Arthur was at his desk, Philip was playing on the floor. The sun hit his blond curls and highlighted his profile, and all I could see was a younger version of you. It was then that I knew I was the keeper of a terrible secret no one could ever know.”
Oliver covered her hand with his. She was so frail right now that she was nearly skin and bones.
“I-if I told,” she said. “Philip would lose the title. Arthur would be crushed, because he so loved his son. And you… I didn’t know what would happen to you or how you would react. I loved all of you too much to tell.”
Oliver absorbed the information, taking himself back to that time in his life, putting himself in Ellen’s shoes.
“Are you angry?” she asked softly, finally looking at him.
“No.” Curiously, he wasn’t angry. “You did what you thought best at the time.”
“I want you to know that Philip was very much loved by Fieldhurst. His father held him when he was just minutes old. Arthur walked the floor with him at night when no one else could get him to stop crying. He loved Philip like his own son, because he believed him to be his son.”
Oliver felt an intense jealousy of Fieldhurst that he had been there for that, and he felt an intense sadness that he had missed it all.
“You could have told me,” he said.
“What would you have done, knowing that Philip was your son, being raised by another man? Would you have been able to move on with your life? Marry? Have other children?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But that was my choice to make. And it’s not like I ever did move on and marry and have children.”
“Because of me?”
