Page 138 of The Lyon Returns
Grayson’s face mottled with anger. He directed his voice outdoors. “You might as well come in, Mother, where you can hear better. Besides, you have some explaining to do.Now.”
A moment later, the duchess appeared in the doorway, face pale as moonlight, mouth set in grim lines. She glided in and met Grayson’s eyes. Not Gideon’s though.
“What did you do?” Grayson bit out. “And don’t try denying that you have been listening.”
She moved toward the sitting area, and sat atop the very sofa she had when she brought Gwen here the night he had introduced her to the family. “What I did, I did for you.”
“Whatever you did, you did foryou,” Grayson countered. “How would forcing Gideon to marry Fannie benefit me? Admit it. It was a sick ploy to punish Gideon for your own miserable existence.”
Her dark eyes turned pleading. “Brice came to me. He said she had tricked you into compromising her, and that you were distraught over the event. I had no reason not to believe him.”
“You had every reason,” Grayson spat. “You should have discussed the matter with me.”
“But you’d already told me you did not want to marry her,” sheargued. “If I confronted you, you would have been honor bound to marry her.”
“If you came to me, you would have learned the truth. And, by the by, had I compromised her Iwouldhave been honor bound to marry her.”
She sniffed. “Not if someone else was willing to pay the price for your indiscretion.”
“Someone else as in my brother. So you guilted him into cleaning up my mess, as he had all of my life. Bravo, Mother. You could’ve shared with him that she was pregnant. It was particularly cruel that you did not.”
“I didn’t know.”
Grayson snorted in disbelief.
“I swear it,” she insisted.
“I think she’s telling the truth,” Gideon murmured.
“Why? Why believe anything she says? Frankly, I don’t how you can stand to look at her,” Grayson said, and Gideon noted the sheen of tears on his brother’s lashes. “I can barely stand the sight of her and she’s my mother.”
Gideon reasoned it out for him. “Fannie lost her shine for the duchess once she supposedly tricked you, and she dropped even lower in your mother’s eyes once she became my wife and not yours. And then the evidence of her pregnancy began to show—much too soon for the babe to have been mine. Suddenly the duchess took an interest in her again. I admit, I was taken aback. Nothing about me had ever drawn the duchess’s attentions—aside from…” He shrugged.
“From when she was chastising you, or berating you, or belittling you?”
Or reminding him never to embarrass the duke or Grayson, he added silently.
“So, Mother”—Grayson fixed her with a glare—“thinking she carried my babe, you suddenly grew a heart.”
A sad smile curved the woman’s face. “You cannot know the joy I experienced, imagining holding your baby in my arms. When both mother and child died, all I wanted was to never see Gideon again.”
Suddenly, pieces that hadn’t fit fell into place. “I take it you worked out a plan to achieve your goal?” Gideon asked.
Grayson glanced between him and the duchess.
“I did not. I only made my desires known.”
“Known by whom?” Gideon asked, though he already had the answer.
She lifted her chin. “Brice.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Brice’s name hungin the air like a noxious stench.
He had told the duchess Grayson compromised Fannie, when he never had, and afterward, had stepped in to help her deal with the aftermath of the loss of the babe she assumed was her grandchild. Why do any of it?
The answer was obvious. Brice had compromised Fannie and gotten her with child and, according to a dying woman’s last words, he’d damned well known.He said…let Gideon raise my bastard. Tell him, it was a boy.
