Page 85 of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris
The familiar pain in his brother’s voice, the hollowness in his eyes, all but broke Evan.
“Everyone fathered bairns in the colonies,” the duke cried, as if the injustice was Apollo’s recriminations and not his own actions. “Why do I have to see my legacy ruined over it?”
“Because he is your son!” Evan roared, utterly done. “If all the children the Scots and the English have fathered and abandoned in the places they’ve gone to ransack arrived here to hold them accountable for their mischief, our population would probably double overnight.” Evan spat the rest, uncaring if anyone still left at the ball heard him—hoping they would and that this farce could end, finally. “You are sickening, always so self-important when you’re nothing but a common thief.”
“How dare you?” his father blustered, but now there was real fear in his voice.
“How dare I what? Tell the truth? That we went to war with the English to fight for our land and our humanity, then we took to the seas and forgot it all. That we became monsters ourselves. All for the sake of this,” he said and gestured to the gilded moldings on the ceiling, the treasures that had been bought with money not a single one of the masters of this house had ever worked for. “To continue to sit in opulent rooms with marble fireplaces and denounce mentions of money because they’re much too vulgar for polite conversation. After we sold our souls for it!” His chest heaved from his words, and he felt light-headed with rage and repulsion, as his father looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“You have so much to say about our dastardly ways. And yet here you are in your finery, having come from your townhome on Queen Street. You are no better than any of us, Evanston, and don’t pretend that you are. That monstrosity, as you call it, is your legacy too.”
“It is, and I cannot change it, but Icanchoose a different path. I will stand up with my brother against you, Father. I will see you held accountable for this.” Blood pounded in his temples, but Evan felt like he could take a full breath of air for the first time in his life.
“We will be outcasts. No one with an ounce of standing will ever look our way again,” his father accused, eyes filled with abhorrence. “You have ruined us, destroyed our family’s good name.”
“You and I have very different notions of what constitutes a good name.”
“You bloody fool.” There was almost a note of incomprehension in his father’s voice.
“Enough,” Apollo bellowed from the dark corner he’d retreated to as Evan and his father rowed. His brother’s expression was cold, deadly. There was not a trace of his usual sarcastic humor, or even the placidness from before. This was a man bent on revenge, on destruction. Menace rolled off him, and it was entirely directed toward their father.
For once, the man seemed to heed the threat coming his way.
His brother stopped so that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Evan and leaned in, finger pointed at the duke, who in the last ten minutes seemed to have aged a century.
“I have spent the last twenty years planning every detail of how I would take everything from you. To humiliate you, sully your name.Iwill replace you.”
His father roared with fury, but Apollo’s booming voice shut him up. “You took my life, and now Iownyours.”
“What do you mean?” the duke asked in a small, terrified voice. Apollo’s grin was chilling.
“We own every debt you accrued, happily, recklessly buying baubles for yourself.”
“You can’t do this. I am a duke.” Their father gaped at them like a landed fish.
“And I am your heir, Father,” Apollo declared. “Tomorrow evening, you will come to meet us, and you will sign a statement to be read in the House of Lords, explaining that you had been unaware your firstborn had survived. That you fully recognize me as the heir apparent, and that from now on my brother and I will manage the holdings of the dukedom.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“This is not a request,” Evan shouted. “You have bankrupted this duchy, and it will take money to fix it. The lands and the tenants are in a desperate state. We are not asking you, we areorderingyou. That is how things will transpire from now on. We give the orders, you obey them, or you will be destitute. You are a puppet now, which should suit you fine,” he said with a dismissive flick of his hand. “It’s how you’ve always lived, after all, as if the world is your theater.” Evan’s gut twisted as his father looked on with the expression of a child who could not understand what he was being told.
This kingdom,this country, had waged war and destruction far and wide to keep grown men in this infantilized delusion.
“If it’s the last thing I do,” his father warned, “I will destroyeverythingyou love.” Something about the older man’s tone, the unhinged wretchedness in his voice, gave Evan pause. There was nothing more dangerous than an entitled man with nothing to lose.
“And what do you love, Your Grace?” Apollo asked, and Evan braced for the final blow they’d wield at their father tonight. “Your duchess? The one you descend further and further in debt to keep in jewels and House of Worth gowns?”
Impossibly the duke’s face paled further. “What have you done to my wife?” the duke asked weakly.
Apollo’s grin was a blade, ready to draw blood. “Nothing but offer her some options,” Apollo said simply, “which she eagerly took.” His brother made a show of pulling out his pocket watch.
“Where is she?” the duke asked shakily, standing up from the chair he’d collapsed in and walking to the door, flinging it open. “My wife,” he bellowed, as if expecting Charlotte to materialize by command. Apollo clicked his tongue regretfully, his gaze on the duke’s pathetic display.
“I’m afraid they may not be able to fetch her for you. If I’m not mistaken, the duchess should be on her way to the Continent with her lover by now.”
It took a moment for Apollo’s words to take effect, but Evan saw the precise instant his father understood. This time, he saw genuine pain in the older man’s face.
Charlotte’s betrayal had struck him to the heart.
