“What is it, Tessa?” He joked to cover his own growing unease. “Did you pay some gypsy woman in the Village to put a curse on me?”
“Johnnie, please don’t,” she said hoarsely. “It’s about the night Mama died.”
That was one night Zeke could hardly bear to remember, let alone talk about. He let go of his sister’s hand.
“Tessa, if you are going to heap old recriminations on my head, I wish for once you would spare me. I did try to get there sooner that night. I honestly did.”
“I know that,” she said in a small voice. “I guess I always realized that, but I was so upset for Mama. She needed so badly to talk to you before she died. She said if she didn’t last until you came, she trusted me to tell you?—”
“It’s all right, Tessa,” Zeke broke in, dreading that his sister might begin sobbing all over again, out in the middle of the sidewalk. And damn it all. He could feel his own eyes starting to smart. “Even though I didn’t deserve it, I knew how loving, how forgiving Sadie could be. I can guess what she wanted to tell me.”
“No, I don’t think you can. You see she knew who your real family was.”
Tessa’s halting confession was so far from what he’d expected, her words slammed into his gut with the weight of a powerful fist.
“What?”
Tessa bit down upon her quivering lip. “I think Mama must have always known. She said the people at the orphanage told her when she adopted you.”
Zeke was stunned to silence. Sadie had known all along who his real parents were and never told him? Sadie, the one person in all the world he had trusted ever to be honest, straightforward, had kept such a thing secret from him? Feelings of betrayal cut through him.
Tessa stole a nervous glance up at him. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything? Aren’t you going to ask who?—”
“I’d rather know why. Damn it, Tessa. Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Mama was afraid of losing you. Your real family was wealthy and powerful. All the things you ever wanted. If you had known, you would have gone running off to them.”
“To seek out people that let me be dumped in a trash can?” Zeke raked his hand back through his hair, in a gesture fraught with anger and bitterness. He thought that nothing could hurt more than the realization Sadie had lied to him, but something did—that she had apparently believed him capable of turning his back on all her loving kindness, seeking to belong to some cold-hearted bastards simply because they were rich. His pain was the more acute because of his fear that at some point in the shallowness of his youth, Sadie might have been right.
“And after Mama died,” Tessa concluded in a voice half-guilty, half-defiant, “I never told you any of this—just out of spite.”
“So tell me now. What’s the name of these marvelous beings Sadie thought I would be so eager to desert you all for? The Astors? The Vanderbilts?”
“No, a family named Markham. They had this son named Stephen.” Tessa faltered when Zeke stared at her.
“Have you ever heard of them? I believe it was the maiden name of that friend of yours, Mrs. Van something.”
“I know who the Markhams are,” Zeke said. His ears had been filled with enough gossip about the family, even from Mrs. Van H. herself. But Zeke could not credit that it had anything to do with him.
“Do you mean to stand there and tell me that Stephen Markham was my father?”
Tessa nodded unhappily.
“That’s crazy. From what Mrs. Van H. has told me about her brother, half the unwanted brats in New York could lay claim to being sired by him. What makes you so sure he was my father?”
“Because Mama said so. She even tried to find out more, who your mother was. She went to visit that Mrs. Van Hallsburg.”
Zeke flinched. Another leveler. He hadn’t been floored so many times since the last time he had put on gloves and stepped into the ring. “Sadie did? When?”
“A long time ago. I’m not sure. Mrs. Van Hallsburg admitted the part about her brother. She said your mother was some sort of an actress, but she wouldn’t tell Mama more than that.”
Zeke seized Tessa by the shoulders in a hard grasp. “You mean that Mrs. Van H. knew that I was her brother’s son?”
“I guess so.”
This was worse than madness. This was a nightmare. Images of Cynthia Van Hallsburg seared his mind, how she had behaved in his study that day, the blaze of unsettling passion in her eyes, her kiss. He could still imagine the brassy taste of it on his lips. He felt like he was going to be sick.
“None of this makes any sense.” He gave Tessa a brusque shake. “Go on. Tell me the rest of it.”
