Page 52 of His Forgotten Bride
Shoving himself away from the counter, away from his father, Gabriel stalked to the terrace door and wrenched it open. He knew that his father had followed him out of the door, but could not bring himself to care.
Claire, still some distance away, started at the sound of his footfalls on the stone path, her head jerking up. What might have began as a sort of smile withered into fear, and her face drained of color. She scrambled out of her seat with all alacrity, her movements jerky and unrefined. She braced one hand on the back of her chair and pressed the other to her chest, frozen in place.
And he knew it was true. Every bit of it was true. It was there in her face, as she stared in mute horror at him, at his father. No construct of his father’s aging memory, no cruel practical joke—just a truth that had been dangled before his eyes for months now, half-concealed in the certainty that he, with his own damaged memory, would not recognize it.
“You lied to me.” It sounded so insignificant, such a trivial accusation, hardly encompassing the depths of her betrayal.
Her breath whistled through her teeth, the tense lines of her face sharp and defined. But she whispered, “Yes.” The single word hardly reached his ears on the back of the wind, so softly did she speak it.
“With every breath, you lied!” This time the words were a roar, incandescent with fury. They startled a flock of redwings from a nearby tree, and Claire flinched from the sound.
It attracted another sort of audience as well. A moment later, Matthew’s head came into view from beyond a yew hedge, and he skittered toward the terrace. His hair was tousled, his chin tucked into his muffler, and he looked so small and dear that it fairly broke Gabriel’s heart.
Conscious, in a child’s capacity, of the confrontation on the terrace, Matthew inquired, “Mama?” And then, turning to face Gabriel, “Sir?”
“The child,” he heard his father choke out behind him. “Therewasa child.”
The child who looked nothing like Claire, and everything like him. The boy whose childhood affliction mirrored his own. Whose life he had missed years of already. Matthew, who was not just his housekeeper’s child, but who had been, from the very moment of his birth, Earl of Arden. Claire’s son—andhis.
His son, who called himsirinstead ofPapa.
In the whole of his life he had never experienced anything that came close to this white hot rage. If only a quarter of his wrath showed on his face, then Claire was right to be terrified.
Through bloodless lips Claire said, “Matthew. Please go inside now.”
“I will take him inside.” His voice snapped with command, daring her to countermand him now—now that heknewhe had every bit as much a right to his child as she had. “I will take him,” he repeated. “And you, madam—you may go to the devil.”
∞∞∞
Claire wilted into her chair, watching Gabriel walk away, his hand settled on Matthew’s shoulder possessively. The wind whisked around her, feeling almost balmy. She was so, so much colder. Her nerveless fingers fell into her lap uselessly.
I will take him, he had said, and her heart had given a terrible beat and broken into a thousand stinging shards. It had taken only seconds for Gabriel to revert once more to the cold, uncaring man he had been when first she had arrived here, and she had known with only a single look at his face that he had remembered nothing of her, nothing ofthem.
She had never expected to find herself revealed in this way, never expected to have to confront that terrible accusation in his eyes.
She should have told him herself, admitted to their mutual history, shared her own memories with him. Perhaps he would not have believed her. Perhaps he would have denounced her as an opportunistic schemer. But perhaps hewouldhave trusted in her, and then she would never have had to contend with his condemnation, with the roiling fury she had seen naked on his face.
I will take him, he had said, and she believed him.
For so many years she had denied him his son. For weeks he had lived alongside Matthew without knowing the truth of it, fostering a relationship with their son while always deferring to her wishes. Now that he knew the truth, it would not happen again.
And there would be no recourse for her, nothing she could do to stop it. If he claimed Matthew as his own child, no court in England would gainsay him. He could, if he so chose, take custody of Matthew and tossherout into the streets. Without proof of their marriage, she had no power.
Everything she had feared had come to pass. And it felt so much worse than she could possibly have imagined. She had thought she had lived through the worst already, seven years ago, but no—thiswas the worst. This terrible, gut-wrenching certainty that she would lose Matthew to the care of his bitter, vengeful father…it was going to destroy her.
And the duke—he had looked at her with that same sneering disapproval of years past. As if she were something to be crushed beneath the heel of his boot, a shameful secret to be concealed at all costs. As if she, like Eve in the garden, had offered the apple of temptation and lured Gabriel from the path of righteousness straight into sin.
What would Matthew become in the care of two such men? What damage would their influence wreak upon her precious boy? Would he grow to be so cold and hard, so untrusting?
She touched her cheek and felt the slick tracks of tears she hadn’t been aware of shedding, and scrubbed them away with her sleeve. Oh, it was so easy to fall back into that same old pattern of despair and hopelessness. So easy to watch as others—more powerful, more influential—ran roughshod over her life.
So difficult to gather up the pieces in her hands once they had gone. To cobble them back together into some semblance of order, restructuring herself around the ruins of them.
The sense of history repeating crashed around her—only this time, it wasn’t thedukewho had wrought such destruction upon her life. This time, the blame was her own.
∞∞∞
The duke sniffed disdainfully as he glanced around the nursery, his eyes taking in the shelves full of books, the toys strewn about. “You’ve grown soft, son,” he said. “You’ve letthat womantake advantage of you.”
