Page 83 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer
His eyes held no love, nor any other emotions. ‘I have come to fetch my grandson.’
‘Papa?’
‘Stop calling me that. I am no longer that to you.’ As he spoke, the woman carried John towards the drawing-room door. ‘I will have nothing to do with a soiled woman. You are an insult to the Pembroke name.’
Not understanding, Ellen answered, ‘I am your daughter.’
‘Not now. You are a whore and nothing beyond it. You are dead to me. But the child is my heir…’
The truth struck her like a slap. He intended to take John but not her. She rushed after the woman. She was already in the street, about to lift John into the carriage. Ellen reached for her son and snatched him from the woman’s arms. Thank God the woman did not fight her.
With tear-soaked cheeks, she pressed her head to John’s, holding him close and tight, even though he fidgeted because he hated to be coddled. ‘Mama.’
‘Nothing is wrong, my darling, you are safe,’ she whispered to his ear, rocking him in her arms and taking him back into the house.
The woman followed.
Her father stood in the hall.
‘You cannot… I will not let you take him.’ Ellen pressed John’s forehead to her shoulder as he gripped the precious toy horse, and she raised her chin and stiffened her back. If this was a battle she would fight for her son.
‘Would you rather raise him in this house of sin?’
The words pierced Ellen’s heart with a knife thrust.
‘This is not a place for a child,’ he continued. ‘I can, and will, give him a decent life, he will have an education and everything he will need to become a duke. I will protect him from this.’ His hand swung out.
She clung harder to John.
‘Have sense. This woman is a nursemaid, she can feed the child at her breast while I take him back to England, and there he shall have the house and grounds that will one day be his to grow up in.’ His expression hardened. ‘A duke cannot have a mother who has sold her body.’ He spat the words at her. ‘I will not leave him with a whore.’
‘I did not… I am not… Papa. Take me? Do not leave me here. He may go with you if you take me too.’
‘A duke cannot have a whore as his mother.’ He withdrew a folded parchment from an inside pocket of his coat. ‘This document says you have relinquished any right to the boy?—’
‘Why?’
‘You must have nothing more to do with him, else he will be damaged by your sin.’
A crushing emptiness dragged through her, urging her to fall, she would not.
‘Have sense. Think of the child.’
Her palm cradled John’s head, the tears dripping from her chin wetting his hair. He fidgeted and fought to be free. How could she let him go? Yet she knew her father. He would not relent. If he had made up his mind he would not help her, he would not, no matter what she said. Yet he was willing to rescue John.
‘Think of the child…’ ‘A Duke cannot have a mother who has sold her body… in a house of sin.’ ‘I can give him a decent life…’He could.
If she kept John, how would she hide what she had become from him as he grew? She was not even sure he was safe in this house. When he was older, he would at some point discover who she was, and what then? If he remained with her she would have to educate him herself, and she knew very little because her father had not paid for her to be educated.
She held him still. ‘Mama loves you. Mama loves you so much…’
But if she really loved him then she would do the best thing for him, and her father was right – the best thing for John was to let him go.
New tears flooding her eyes, she nodded at her father, unwilling to say the word yes.
The woman came forward, her hands reaching out to take John.
Unable to speak for the pain in her throat, Ellen let her take him.
