Ravenshaw’s jaw worked. Andrew stepped closer, near enough now that the other man could no longer pretend this was merely unpleasant conversation.
“You will not approach my wife. You will not speak her name. You will not seek out the child. You will not send messages through servants, friends, clergy, or fools. If I hear so much as a whisper connecting either of you to my household again, I will not content myself with society’s judgment. I will ruin you in every way available to me.”
Lady Ravenshaw pressed a shaking hand to the back of a chair.
Her husband’s eyes had gone hard. “You speak boldly for a man hiding another man’s bastard beneath his roof.”
Andrew moved before Ravenshaw could take another breath. He did not strike him, although he wanted to. Instead, he seized the front of Carrington’s coat and drove him back one step. It wasn’t enough to brawl, but enough to make the truth of violence enter the room. Ravenshaw’s shoulder struck the edge of the mantle. Lady Ravenshaw gasped.
Andrew’s voice was very quiet. “That child is under my protection. Speak of her with disrespect again, and I will forget we are gentlemen.”
Ravenshaw’s face had gone pale beneath the anger. Andrew released him with visible disgust and stepped back.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Lady Ravenshaw whispered. “We will go.”
Ravenshaw turned on her. “Caroline.”
“We will go,” she repeated, and this time her voice did not tremble. “Daniel, we have no choice.”
Andrew looked at her. “You will leave within the week.”
She nodded once. Ravenshaw said nothing, but his silence was no longer denial. It was calculation. Andrew recognized it and despised it.
“And remember,” Andrew pointed out.
Both of them looked at him.
“If I ever see either of you again, if you cross my path, my wife’s path, or the child’s, you will discover how little mercy remains in me.”
He folded the letter and placed it back inside his coat. Lady Ravenshaw’s eyes followed the movement as though watching a blade disappear into a sheath.
Andrew turned toward the door. The butler appeared almost at once when summoned, his face carefully blank, though Andrew wondered how much he had heard and how long he had waited outside.
Enough, perhaps. Servants always knew the truth before society did.
At the threshold, Andrew paused and looked back. Ravenshaw was standing by the mantel. His mask had cracked at last. Lady Ravenshaw had sunk into the chair behind her, with one hand pressed to her brow.
They looked small. Andrew felt no pity.
“Begin packing,” he snarled.
Then he left them to the ruins they had made.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“You asked for the truth.”
Frances’s pen stopped halfway through that sentence, which was spoken by the one person she couldn’t imagine hearing in that house again.
For one wild instant, she thought she had imagined the voice. She had been sitting alone in her chamber for nearly an hour, with the fire burning low, the curtains drawn against the grey London afternoon and her notebook open before her as though ink could mend what silence had broken. The house had been so still that the scratch of her pen had seemed impertinent.
Then the door stood open and Andrew was standing upon the threshold. And in his arms was the baby.
Frances rose so quickly that her chair scraped sharply against the floor. “Andrew.”
He looked as though he had travelled without stopping. His coat was damp at the shoulders, his fair hair disordered by wind, his cravat no longer obedient to any civilized arrangement. The baby slept against him, bundled in a soft white blanket. Frances’s heart lurched so painfully that for a moment, she forgot to breathe.
“You asked for the truth,” he repeated, stepping into the room. “I can finally give it to you.”
