Page 56 of His Forgotten Bride
Her breath broke on a sob as her eyes closed against the force of his fury.
“How many times?” he insisted. “And never once did you think to mention that you werealreadymy wife?”
“Of course I thought about it,” she said, her voice quavering on the words. “But…”
Good God, he wanted to throw things. Break a few priceless bits of china until he’d spent the wrath that burned in his muscles, stretched his patience thin. He settled for slapping his palm on the surface of his dresser, the report of flesh on wood jarring in the taut silence.
“I was afraid!” she said at last, galvanized by the sound. “I was so afraid. I have no proof, no evidence.” She took a steadying breath and risked a step closer. “I was afraid you’d think me an opportunist, preying on your affliction.”
It was impossible to say how hemighthave reacted to such a revelation, as she’d not given him the opportunity. But it stung to think that she might’ve been correct. That there was every possibility he would not have reacted favorably.
“Because there is no proof of our marriage, I didn’t know if marrying again might have constituted fraud. Whether Matthew’s legitimacy might have been called into question.” She swiped at her eyes, then splayed out her fingers in entreaty. “I had hoped you would remember,” she offered. “But you didn’t. There were a…a few occasions when I thought you might.” She gave a helpless sort of shrug. “But you didn’t, and I…I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Itrustedin you, and you lied to me.” He gave a macabre laugh, flat and dull. “I trusted you,” he reiterated. “I told you everything.” Everything he’d spent years of his life concealing he had placed into her hands, trusting that she would guard his secrets. What a fool he’d been.
Her lips trembled, and she pressed them together. “I didn’t know,” she said. “When I came to work here, I didn’t know anything at all. It was clear that you did not remember me, but I thought it was because you had never cared for me at all. That I had meant so little to you that you had forgotten me entirely.”
“But you learned better, did you not? And you held in your hands, in your clear andwholemind, whatIcould not recall. Everything that was of any importance to me, and you withheld it.” His hands clenched reflexively. “You dangledmyson before me, and you withheldhim. You let memournyou.” All of that pain, all of his suffering—for nothing. Only because Claire had deliberately kept him in the dark. Only because she had unilaterally decided what was and was not for him to know.
“I didn’t know it was me,” she whispered. “I didn’t, not until—”
He thrust out his arm, sweeping everything from the surface of his dresser. “Goddamn you,get out.” His fingers had tangled in a discarded cravat that his valet had yet to retrieve, and he wrenched the fabric off, casting it aside. “I don’t want more lies, more excuses. I only want you to leave.”
She felt blindly for the doorknob, her eyes riveted to him as if she suspected he might strike if she took her eyes off of him. At last she clasped it in her fingers, jerking the door open. But she paused, one foot out into the hallway, and stared at him in mute appeal, her dark eyes fixed upon his face, stricken and tragic.
He hardened himself against them, and felt himself falling straight back into that pattern of careless cruelty that had become second nature to him over the years. “You can continue to be Mrs. Hotchkiss if it so pleases you,” he said ruthlessly. “After all, there is no proof otherwise, is there?”
Shamed, she turned her face away at last and quit the room, closing the door silently behind her as she fled.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Over the days that followed, Gabriel became aware that he had caused a rift between Claire and Matthew. The boy had latched onto him to the exclusion of all else, and while Gabriel was thrilled that Matthew had taken to him so readily, it soon became clear that the boy was not unaware of his thinly-veiled antipathy toward his mother.
Unexpectedly, Matthew’s defection from Claire produced an unwelcome surge of guilt. Claire now had no one within the household who was in the least sympathetic to her. Even the staff, from whom she had wrested no small amount of respect early on in her employment, were becoming derelict in their duties.
And he—he had created their mistaken impression. Because he paid their wages, they were willing to overlook the fact that he fostered whom they assumed to be his bastard son within his household. But Claire they held to more exacting standards. They had placed her in a station somewhere between whore and courtesan, and treated her accordingly.
His household, all too recently harmonious, had fallen once more into chaos. And he didn’t know what to do about it. To interfere would be like admitting defeat, a sign that he had forgiven Claire her deception. To allow it to continue unchecked could be just as damaging. Matthew’s legitimacy—or rather, the perceptionofit—might hang in the balance.
To spite the mother would be to punish the child, to deprive his heir, his firstborn son, of everything that was his by right of birth.
He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Claire sweep by, a bundle of linens cradled in her arms, no doubt on her way to pack them away in a closet somewhere. She was careful to move quietly, to avert her gaze as if she had not seen him, and he responded in kind. If by chance they encountered one another, she was the first to change course, studiously avoiding him at every opportunity.
She did not bring him his tea any longer, nor did she have a hand in the baking of the gingerbread. And blast her, it tastedwrong.
She had become like a ghost in his house. Everywhere there was evidence of her, like the echo of a word hanging on the wind, and yet she remained elusive. It grated at his nerves to see the twitch of her skirts as she left a room he had entered, as ifshewere the injured party. It frayed his already short patience still further to recall her wounded face, the desperation in her voice when she had confronted him in his bedroom.
He had recovered no new memories, but her broken expression followed him into sleep each night.
On that unpleasant thought, he shoved himself out of his chair. “Bradshaw,” he bellowed. “Have the carriage brought around. I’m going out.” With Matthew at his lessons and Claire attending to her duties, such as they were, anywhereelse was preferable. Anywhere at all.
∞∞∞
He could have gone to his club, in which he had not set foot in months. He could have taken a moment to thumb through any one of the myriad invitations that had accumulated on a disused corner of his desk and selected a likely-looking luncheon engagement from among them. But the fact remained that the closest thing in the world he had to a friend at present was Westwood, and he was loath to humor the man by appearing, uninvited, at his door.
The arse would probably laugh himself silly over such an occurrence.
Instead of prevailing upon any number of people who likely would only have admitted him out of obligation, he found himself heading toward Spitalfields.
