Page 218 of Courting the Wrong Duke

You know about Algernon.

William could still remember the weight of those words.

He had known then that he could no longer accept pieces of the truth. Their family had lived on pieces for too long, each person deciding what someone else ought to know and what could safely remain hidden.

So he had asked his mother for all of it.

And she had finally given it to him.

They had sat together beneath the old tree while she told him how his father had sent her away to one of his estates, keeping her from society long enough for everyone to believe she was confined. Letters had been sent. Visitors discouraged. By the time she returned, the world believed the Duchess of Aldermere had given birth to a healthy son.

Algernon.

In truth, he had been the child of William’s father and one of the maids.

His father had decided before ever speaking to his mother that the child would be acknowledged as hers.

William had asked the question that still made him ashamed whenever he remembered it.

And you agreed to this?

His mother had looked at him for a long moment.

I survived it.

He thought those three words might remain with him for the rest of his life.

The father William remembered had taught him to ride, laughed with him, praised him when he succeeded and occasionally looked the other way when William deserved punishment.

That man had existed.

So had the man who had frightened his wife into obedience and locked his eldest son away at Bryn Hir because a frightened child could not force words from his mouth quickly enough.

His mother had not asked William to choose between them.

I do not want you to hate him, she had said. The father you knew was real too. Edmund changed him in ways I had stopped believing possible. By the time you were old enough to remember him, much of the cruelty had gone.

Not all of it.

No. Not all.

Perhaps that had been the hardest truth of all.

People did not divide themselves neatly into monsters and good men. His father had been both the man William loved and the man Algernon feared.

Understanding one did not erase the other.

William had eventually asked about Algernon too. Not how he came to be acknowledged as her son. William understood that by then.

He wanted to know how she had loved him.

Her answer had nearly broken his heart.

At first, I did not know if I could.

Algernon had been another woman’s child, placed in her arms by the husband who had already taken away her choice in the matter. But then he had opened his eyes.

He had been a baby.