Page 50

“I shall marry and go away, and never speak to you again!” Her voice choked.

“Lydia.” He moved to a chair from which he could take her hand. “I find it hard to believe that you are so deeply worried about my countess. My wife is my wife, after all. You will marry and live in another household.”

“You don’t understand!” The words burst out of her chest, and she dashed away a tear.

Giles was starting to have a very bad feeling. His sister was shaking visibly, and her eyes were bleak rather than enraged, glazed with tears. He tightened his grip on her hand. “Help me to understand.”

“Mother told me.” A sob struggled free, and she broke off. Giles fished out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “I ha-have no father,” Lydia said, blotting her eyes. “My mother, our mother, was no better than a whore.”

Bloody hell.

“Even if she made some unconventional choices, Mother deserved our respect,” Giles said, thinking frantically about the best way to respond.

“She was forced to marry our father because she was carrying you,” Lydia spat.

“I believe that may have been the case.”

“That wouldn’t be terrible, but she told me that the child might have been Father’s—or some other man’s! Doesn’t . . . ? Don’t you feel . . . ?”

She broke off again.

“I’ve never been much good at expressing feelings, Lydia. What do you feel?”

“I don’t have a family,” Lydia said brokenly. “I have a name, but it’s a fraud. You have a title, but that may be a fraud as well. Our father was a thief, and our mother . . . Well, it hardly matters, does it? I did ask her, in case you’re wondering, whether she stayed true to your father. She didn’t. She refused to tell me the name of my father, and merely said that you might be our father’s son. Or not, but either way you and I are only related through our mother.”

“I am aware.”

“Likely, they were footmen or grooms. We don’t even look alike,” Lydia said, starting to sob. “You’re my only relative, and we’re both frauds. All the time, in the seminary, I kept waiting for one of the girls to reveal it. Every minute I was wound as tightly as . . . as piano wire, waiting for the truth to come out.”

“No one knows, Lydia,” Giles said gently. He got up and fetched a glass of water from the sideboard. “I am not a fraud, because I was born within the bounds of a legal marriage, as were you. I do not doubt that I am the person intended to carry the title I was born to.”

“Good for you,” Lydia said bitterly. “I don’t feel like that.”

Giles handed over the glass of water, and she drank some, hiccupping.

“If you marry Lady Yasmin,” she said in a scratchy voice, “you’re marrying a woman just like Mother. Your children will likely be as fraudulent as we are. You’ll never know if they’re really yours.”

“That is unjust and unfair,” Giles said.

“Oh, really?” She looked at him over the rim of the glass, her eyes drenched and miserable. “Do you think your bride-to-be is a virgin? Because I don’t think so.”

“That is none of your business,” Giles stated in his sternest voice.

“She’s no better than she should be,” Lydia retorted. “Everyone talked about it, when you left without a chaperone and didn’t come back. They said you’d gone off to shake the sheets.”

“I hope you did not join in this spiteful gossip?” Giles said, his voice hoarse with outrage.

His sister met his eyes. “Tell me that you weren’t enjoying her favors, and I’ll happily inform all the gossips that they are mistaken.”

Giles never lied. His lips tightened.

Lydia’s chin jutted forward. “Her children will be my nieces and nephews. I’ll watch them, knowing that someday they will have to go through the same hell I went through. Do you know why I was such a dunce my first Season? Because I was terrified that someone—such as those girls from school—would notice that you and I don’t look alike and figure out why. Neither of us resembles our supposed father.”

Giles pushed away the question of Yasmin’s virtue. His sister needed his attention. He took Lydia’s hand again. “I’m so sorry that you were unhappy and unable to confide in me.”

“I kept waiting for you to tell me about our parentage.” More tears poured down her cheeks.

“I hoped you would never learn the truth,” Giles admitted. “That was a mistake.” He dropped her hand and wrapped an arm around his sister’s narrow shoulders, guilt piercing him at the fragility of her shaking body.