A small line appeared between her deep-set, altogether too perceptive eyes. She pressed her hands together as if she were a medieval nun at prayer.
“Things have been deteriorating for some time, from what Ralph could tell me. I cannot say how long it’s been since the children had a proper meal. Their nurse left days ago. Yet my brother noticed nothing.”
“The boys would have too much pride to tell him anything was wrong,” Mal said. A new, heavy weight on his chest pressed those snaking tendrils of desire into their proper place. “Ever since their father died…”
He studied the amber liquid in his glass, avoiding her gaze. “I suspect things have been deteriorating at least since then. Sybil would have had nothing but contempt or neglect for them until she saw Hugh’s inheritance as a way to enrich herself. And when she set herself against me, she restricted my access to the house and to them, which is why I had no notion she’d abandoned them to the servants, and the servants had abandoned them as well.”
Mal looked at her in appeal. She couldn’t blame him any more than he blamed himself. He’d gotten so caught up in his own concerns that he neglected to look in on the children he meant to make his wards. Children who shared his blood.
He saw no contempt in her expression, only a look of puzzlement as she studied his features.
“He was your father too,” she observed. “You must feel his loss in some way.”
Mal upended the last of his brandy. “I feel the loss of his attempting to make up for the circumstances of my birth with his money,” he said shortly. “His passing brought a period to a bitter life that in the end descended to madness. It was a relief,if you must know. He was never a happy man. He told me once, in a maudlin fit, that my mother was the only person he ever loved, and when his father forced them apart, his life held no real satisfaction for him thereafter.”
“That is a heavy burden for him to lay upon you,” she said quietly.
Mal stared at the leather surface of the table, marked with small cuts and tobacco stains. Miss Illingworth was alarmingly easy to confide in. No wonder the children had unburdened themselves to her at once, when they came to enlist the aid of her brother and found him not at home.
And why had they not come to Mal? That omission stung more than being left without the funds to support them. Or himself.
She picked up a small portrait that sat on a delicate table placed between two chairs. The face of a hauntingly lovely woman with delicate features and clouds of hair stared distantly from the frame.
Mal stared back. His mother had always been half-angel to him, fragile and luminous from the illness that eventually claimed her life. All the times his father had called him into this study for a raking over about his wild ways and unknown future, Mal had never seen this sketch. He wondered who had done it, and when.
“Was this her?” Amaranthe questioned. “I see a resemblance.”
“Yes, that was my mother. Marguerite.”
She startled and nearly dropped the silver frame. Her fingers were graceful but strong like the rest of her, with ink staining the tips and a streak of gold along her thumb.
“Would she have styled herself Lady Vernay, by any chance?” A light blush touched her cheek as he stared at her. “I cameacross a book once with the name Marguerite, Lady Vernay inscribed in it, and I was curious about her. I am sorry to pry.”
“Where did you find this book?” His voice abraded his ears.
“It was an old manuscript in my—a place I lived for a time. In Cornwall. I don’t know where it is now.” Her eyes fell, but not before he glimpsed the shadow that crossed her expression.
So many things she was hiding from him, but he was caught in the sweep of her eyelashes as she studied the table. Miss Illingworth had the same subtle, ethereal beauty that his mother had possessed. Not the kind of assertive handsomeness that announced itself, or the kind of astonishing beauty that smacked a man across the face. Rather, she was a small, willowy shadow that stepped into a man’s fractured world and, by the time she came into focus, she had somehow, magically, made everything right and calm and beautiful.
“It’s possible your book was hers. She was mad about old things.” Mal took a bracing swig that emptied his glass again. “I suppose my mother might have used the title. She always insisted my father had wed her properly, but of course he would have said anything to win her. No record of a legal marriage, though. My grandfather claimed that my father deceived her, and I’ve never doubted he did.”
Mal debated whether to refresh his glass. The brandy was fuzzing his perceptions, making him think imprudent things about Miss Illingworth. Enchanting, indeed! When she sat across from him as prim and proper as a governess.
He’d best get a grip on these galloping fancies. There was no sylph hidden beneath that drab, worn gown, no passionate heart subdued by the constraints of her station just waiting to be awakened by a kiss.
And if there were, he had no business knowing such things about her. Not when he had so little to offer her in return.
“When my father married Christine, she became Lady Vernay for a short time.” Mal moved his mind back to the matter at hand. “My grandfather didn’t live long after the wedding, from what I understand. It was the aim of his life to ensure his heir married into a family of suitable wealth and station, and he achieved it.”
She set the portrait gently in its place. Mal battled the impulse to take those cool, capable fingers and press them against his aching head.
“And where is your mother now?” Her steady, fathomless gaze rested on him.
“She died when I was young.” Dear Lord, he was becoming sentimental. He pushed the weakness aside. “You are coming to know a great deal about us, Miss Illingworth, and I know very little about you.”
Her eyes crinkled as she smiled widely, and Mal cast about for breath. “We have not even been properly introduced.”
“Malden Grey of Bristol, aspiring to the bar.” He held out his hand.
