Page 99 of Deceiving an Earl
“She saw him hit me.”
“And she stopped him?”
“She protested, but it was a weak protest. She’s sending me away. Back to Eton. Told me that I wasn’t to come home over the holidays.” Philip’s voice cracked, and he pressed his lips together.
Oliver wanted to protest, to deny that Ellen would ever say such a thing to her beloved son, but the words were stuck in the back of his throat, and he simply stared at Philip.
“He’s blackmailing her,” Philip said. “Forcing her to marry him and to send me away.”
“I don’t believe that,” Oliver said. He couldn’t believe that Ellen—his Ellen—would allow such a thing.
“That’s what she told me last night before I left the house. That’s why it doesn’t matter where I am. She doesn’t care.”
“Why would she do that?”
Philip looked at him, his good eye glowing with determination and anger. “You don’t know? You haven’t figured it out yet?”
Oliver shook his head, suddenly wary as a deep fear wrapped around him.
“I’m your son,” Philip said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Oliver stilled. It was as if all of the air had been sucked out of the room by the invisible force of Philip’s words.
Philip had started off his announcement with bravado but by the end, when all Oliver could do was stare at him, Philip’s gaze slid away, and he resumed staring at his feet.
All Oliver could think at first was that Ashland had been right. Ashland had tried to tell him, and Oliver had thought Ashland a fool, because his friend didn’t know Ellen as well as Oliver did.
“What did you say?” Oliver finally asked, after long heartbeats of silence.
“I’m your son.” This was mumbled to Philip’s chest, and he couldn’t seem to meet Oliver’s eyes when Oliver desperately wanted to see into the lad’s soul, to see if he was telling the truth.
“She said that? Your mother told you that?”
A bony shoulder came up and hovered around Philip’s ear. “She didn’t deny it.”
But that wasn’t the same as saying it. It wasn’t the same as admitting it.
One would assume, when confronted with such an enormous truth, that one would feel a plethora of emotions, but Oliver couldn’t seem to dredge one emotion—other than shock—from his depths.
“Then how do you know this to be true?” he asked.
Philip glanced at him quickly. “Did you… Did you and my mother…?”
Oliver closed his eyes, lost as to how to proceed. Did he tell the boy the truth of the night that he and Ellen had spent together? Was he too young to hear this? Hell, Oliver didn’t know.
“So it’s true.”
Oliver opened his eyes to find Philip studying him intently.
“It’s true isn’t it?”
Oliver cleared his throat. “It could be true. But I want to hear this from your mother.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Philip. It’s just that…” That what? Did he think the boy was lying? “It’s just that maybe you misinterpreted.”
