“So you seduced her.” Dylan felt numb, as though he were listening to the story of someone else’s life, not his own.
“I loved her. I tried to comfort her.” Patrick took another drink, then met Dylan’s gaze. “And when you came along, I loved you, too. More than life itself.”
Dylan gave a bitter laugh. “If you loved me, you would have told me the truth. You wouldn’t have sent me to live with the man who hated me, who saw in me a constant reminder of how he’d been cuckolded. He beat me, too, you know. Every time I was within reach.”
Patrick flinched and looked away. “I didn’t know that. Christ, lad. I’m so bloody sorry.”
“I’ve heard enough.” Dylan stood and threw a handful of coins on the bar. Blinded by despair, he made his way through the maze of empty tables and out to the deserted cobblestone street.
Night had already fallen across the sky, but a full moon hung low in the east, dimly illuminating the shadowy landscape. Dylan sagged against a rough wooden post. He blinked to accustom his eyes to the darkness and told himself that it didn’t matter.
So, he was the bastard son of a groom instead of the legitimate son of an earl. What difference could it make, at this late date?
But it did matter.It will matter to Natalia…
He hadn’t even been good enough for her when she believed he was Warren’s son. What would she say when she realized how low she’d actually married?
“Dylan, wait.” Patrick emerged from the pub seconds later, his broad shoulders filling the doorway. “Please, son. There’s so much more I need to say to you.”
Son.
“Don’t. Call. Me. That.” Dylan’s anger ignited, and he enunciated each word with deadly fury. “You weren’t there for me when I needed a father, and I sure as hell don’t need one now.”
“Listen to me,” Patrick insisted. “It killed me to lose Fiona. But when it seemed I had lost you as well, I was sick with grief. I promised God that if He helped me find you, I’d never ask Him for anything else.”
Dylan shook his head. “Then why did you give me up? Why did you give me to the man who killed my mother?”
Patrick drew in a sharp, shocked breath. “Warren killed Fiona? Are you sure, lad?”
“Aye.” Dylan gave a tired nod and started walking, leaving Patrick to follow or not, as he chose. The events of that long-ago night flashed before him like distant lightning.
His mother’s tear-stained face. The earl’s hand, raised to strike. The rain. The sea. The cave. All bright searing glimpses of his haunted past.
“Tell me what you remember,” Patrick demanded, hurrying to keep up. “Please, Dylan. I beg of you. Let me put this nightmare to rest.”
“I will,” Dylan snapped. “But first, I need you to answer the other part of my question.”
Emotionally lacerated by the evening’s revelations, he needed to know why Patrick, who was everything he’d ever dreamed of in a father, had given him up to a monster like Warren.
“I’ll answer anything you want if you’ll stop walking for a bloody minute and turn and face me like a man.” Patrick’s frustrated bellow stopped Dylan in his tracks.
“Face you like a man?” Dylan spun around, grabbed Patrick by the collar, and shoved him up against the crumbling wall of the nearest house. “How dare you say such a thing to me, after what you’ve done?”
Patrick’s eyes filled with anguish, and he did nothing to defend himself. “I know you’re hurting, lad. And I’m sorry for my part in it. But I thought I was doing the right thing. Your mother had such plans for you, and I knew I could never make them come true. I wanted more for you than I could give. It seemed a fitting punishment for my sins to have to live without you.”
Patrick’s words had an unmistakable ring of truth, and Dylan released him. He understood Patrick’s motives, misguided as they may have been.
“All the riches in the world can’t make up for the lack of love,” Dylan told his father.
Patrick let his head fall back against the rough stone wall. “You were loved, lad. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of you and wonder how you fared.”
A small kernel of warmth blossomed in the vicinity of Dylan’s heart, burning away years of pain and disappointment. His choices were simple. He could either hold onto his anger and freeze out this man who was everything he’d always wished his father could be, or he could let the past go and live in the present.
Tentatively, Dylan held out an olive branch. “We’ve lost so many years… But I don’t think it’s too late to start again, do you?”
Tears sprung to Patrick’s eyes, and he pushed away from the wall, embracing Dylan in a bone-shattering hug. “There’s nothing in the world I’d like more, lad.”
Dylan gave a shaky laugh, overwhelmed by emotion as his father awkwardly released him. “I lied when I said I didn’t want a father. I need one more than ever.”
