Page 174 of Courting the Wrong Duke

When Edmund lifted his head again, tears stood openly in his eyes. He looked at William with an expression Rosalind could not understand, grief and fear tangled together with something that looked almost like guilt.

“You should not be here.”

William stopped several feet from the bars. “I rather think I should.”

“No.” Edmund shook his head. “You do not understand.”

Rosalind looked from her father to William, suddenly aware that something had changed. Only moments ago she had been consumed by the simple miracle of finding him alive. Now the dread that had followed them all the way from London was creeping back in.

William set the lamp down. “Then explain it to me.”

For a long moment, Edmund merely looked at him. Rosalind had never seen her father struggle so visibly with words, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter.

“There is something you must know.”

William’s expression tightened.

Edmund drew a slow breath, still holding Rosalind’s hand through the bars. “It concerns Algernon.”

The name settled heavily into the silence between them.

“What about him?” William asked.

Edmund closed his eyes briefly, and Rosalind tightened her fingers around his, bracing herself for whatever came next.

“Your father told me something many years ago that he had concealed from everyone.” Edmund paused, his attention fixed upon William. “Algernon was not the duchess’s son.”

For a moment, Rosalind was certain she had misunderstood him.

William appeared to think the same. He stared at Edmund without speaking, his expression strangely blank.

“Your father had an affair with a young woman employed in the household,” Edmund continued carefully. “A maid. She bore him a son, and that child was Algernon.”

“That is impossible.” William shook his head slowly. “My mother gave birth to him.”

“She presented him as hers. I do not know every detail of how it was arranged, only what your father eventually confided in me. The truth was concealed from the beginning, and Algernon was raised as his legitimate heir.”

Rosalind watched William struggle to absorb it. Only days ago, he had discovered that the childhood he remembered was not the childhood his brother had endured. Now Edmund was asking him to reconsider something even more fundamental, to somehow fit this impossible truth into a family history he had believed he understood.

“Why would my mother agree to such a thing?”

“I do not know,” Edmund admitted. “Your father never told me, and I never asked. By the time he confided in me, it had been done for decades. For most of those years, I believe he intended the secret to die with him.”

William’s gaze sharpened. “But something changed.”

“Yes. Toward the end of his life, your father began to question what he had done. Algernon’s temper frightened him. There were incidents he would not fully describe to me, but he had begun to wonder whether allowing Algernon to inherit everything had been another wrong he was leaving behind for others to bear.”

“My father was considering exposing him?”

“Not publicly, so far as I knew. But he was considering telling you the truth.”

William looked almost ill. “Why me?”

“Because the truth about Algernon’s birth concerned your future as much as his. Your father believed you had a right to know what he had done and what it might mean for your place in the family.”

Rosalind’s heart ached at the bewilderment on William’s face. She wanted to reach for him, but her father’s fingers remained wrapped around hers through the bars, and she could not bring herself to surrender the contact she had spent weeks fearing she might never have again.

“There was another problem,” Edmund said. “Algernon overheard us.”