“Bloody hell,” Lord Hayes grumbled as he turned away and raked a hand through his dark hair. “
“Mr. Hayes,” Leo said before either Constance or her cousin could lob questions at him. “You are admitting that you paid Martha Seabright to give you her infant son in 1871?”
While adoption itself was not illegal, Leo questioned if the purchase of a child would be.
At his answering nod, Constance let out a sob. She staggered to the settee and dropped onto a cushion, a hand still covering her mouth in disbelief.
“Uncle, how could you?” Lord Hayes said, disgust and horror mingling in his expression.
“All this time, all these years, you’ve lied to us.” Constance’s voice trembled violently. “My God—does George know? Did he find out? Is that why he’s gone?”
They were all valid questions. However, Leo thought it better for Stanley Hayes to start at the beginning. She asked himto do just that while Constance blotted her eyes with a linen handkerchief that Lord Hayes passed to her.
“After Constance was born,” Stanley began, after clearing his throat and adjusting his loose tie, “there were…complications. Doctor Reeves told us that Melanie, my wife, would never be able to conceive again.”
“But that can’t be true,” Constance cut in. “I remember Mama with child. I was ten years old when George was born.”
Stanley nodded, though it seemed to pain him to remember. “Yes, you remember correctly that she was with child. And your mother nearly carried to term. But when she went into labor, it was too early. The babe was stillborn.”
Leo lowered her head, feeling deep sympathy for Melanie Hayes for the loss of a much wanted second child. And for Constance, as tears welled in her eyes once again. Lord Hayes paced toward the hearth, his palm scrubbing his cheek and chin as he shook his head.
“I remember now,” he recalled. “You sent Aunt Melanie to Beechwood for her confinement, and Constance came to stay with us.” The viscount would have been thirteen or fourteen at the time, Leo calculated. “Are you saying she had already lost the child at that point?”
Stanley’s answer was in the guilty bowing of his head. “You cannot have any idea how distraught my wife was. She was delusional with grief, threatening to harm herself.” He squeezed his eyes shut as if the memory still pained him. “She needed time before facing her friends with the truth. I was protecting herandher reputation by sending her away.”
“But that wasn’t the only reason you sent your wife out of the public’s eye,” Leo interjected. “You’d already come up with a way to fix the problem, thanks to your connection to the orphanage. How did you know there was an infant there?”
He peered at her as if she was a bothersome gnat that he’d have liked to silence with a swat of his hand. But he’d already started to confess, and there could be no diverting from the truth now.
“Melanie and I toured the home earlier that month. She was still weeks away from her confinement at that time, and she insisted on accompanying me. She has a bleeding heart, always has, and was the one who convinced me to support the fund in the first place.” He drained his glass and, finished with it, set it on the table that held the three framed photographs. His eyes lingered on the one of George.
“He was so small. So delicate. The nurse said he was malnourished, but Melanie was utterly enchanted with him. She held him for nearly an hour before I finally insisted that we had to move along.”
So, when his wife lost their own baby a month later, Stanley Hayes thought of the one in Twickenham. He must have hurried to conceal that his own child had been stillborn, sent his wife to the country, and then arranged for the adoption.
Leo laid out the supposition for him, and he nodded.
“Melanie understood that this was the only chance we had at having another child,” he said. “Admitting to the adoption was out of the question. George would be ridiculed, and we would be judged. There were also legal ramifications; he might not be entitled to his inheritance. No, the easiest thing was to say he was our son.”
“Your staff must have known the truth,” Leo pointed out. “Both here and in Hampshire.”
“A few did, yes,” he replied. “But they are loyal, Miss Spencer. They all adore my wife. And for that, I rewarded them with my loyalty in return.”
She wondered if that meant an increase in their wages but thought it might be rude to pry. While some of the staff knewthe truth when Mr. and Mrs. Hayes returned to London with a baby, their friends and acquaintances—even their own daughter—were none the wiser. Leo looked at the framed photographs again. It was quite apparent that George looked nothing like the other members of his family. Had he noticed it? Had anyone else?
“Let’s return to the argument you had with your wife on the night of the benefit dinner,” Leo said.
“How is that going to help us find my brother?” Constance demanded, her eyes swollen and shimmering.
“I don’t know yet,” she replied honestly. “However, I do know that lies never help. They only hinder.”
“Constance, let your father answer the bloody questions,” the viscount snapped, though his anger was clearly directed toward Stanley, not his cousin. “I need to know every facet of this scandal if I’m to help mitigate it.”
Constance threw a glowering stare toward him before settling back into the cushions of the settee and sealing her lips tightly.
“What lie was your wife referring to?” Leo asked bluntly.
Mr. Hayes shifted as though he wanted to stand but ended up looking too defeated to do so. “I’d learned Martha Seabright would be at the benefit dinner. I could not risk my wife and her meeting.”
