AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What a terrible puzzle you’ve crafted for yourself,” Lord Remington said, clucking his tongue. “It’s almost as though your initial lust should have remained. I know if it had, you wouldn’t be so terribly keen to keep myself and Marta apart.”
Yet again, he brought Baldwin to the forefront. Ewan grew desperate, enraged at the thought that he was surrounded with such banal and selfish creatures. He nodded his head as his heart sunk into the very pit of his lower belly. “I suppose I’m quite too drunk to remain here for the night,” Ewan said, grateful that he could still articulate so much. “I cannot say it’s been a pleasure, Lord Remington, but it has been illuminating. That’s for sure.”
Lord Remington lifted his palm to Ewan’s cheek and gave him three light pats. He then turned towards his dear friend the Regent and began an entirely different conversation, one that had nothing to do with propriety or one’s place in society.
Ewan staggered towards Marta, suddenly fearful. Already, several steps in, he hadn’t any real memory of his conversation with Lord Remington. When he reached Marta, Marta asked him, “What on earth were you discussing with Lewis Remington?”
But to this, Ewan had had nothing to do but shrug and say, “I cannot remember.”
Back in the carriage, Marta gripped his hand and spoke lovingly about Baldwin, about the small moments they’d been able to capture throughout the ball—how he’d kissed her behind the ear in the garden, only a few feet from the closest people. Ewan mumbled, “How sweet,” a few times, but generally had little to no care at all for Marta’s predicament. What seemed like only a few moments later, he collapsed in his bed, fully-clothed, knowing only one thing: he was going to be a father, and he had no idea what would come next.
**
Ewan slept in quite late. When he awoke, he heard Malcolm and Walter’s wails outside in the garden. He peered out through his window to find Laura amongst them, moving a bit slower than usual. Tatiana peered out from the side of the garden, her hands on her hips and her face sour. He wondered if she’d had to end things with her lover.
Downstairs, there was a scuttle of activity. Ewan furrowed his brow. Immediately, pangs of hangover pain shot through him. He placed both hands on either side of his ears and turned towards the door. He felt them coming: the footsteps. They seemed to ring through the entire house. A force of nature approached.
Suddenly, there it was: the knock on the door. Ewan wanted to fall on the floor to play dead. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, with as much clarity as he could, “Who is it?” Even in his own ears, his voice sounded strange and foreign and cloudy. He had never been so hungover in his life.
Lord Remington appeared in the crack of the doorway. Ewan marvelled at the fact that this didn’t seem to be such a shock. As Ewan remained in the same clothes he’d worn last night, he considered himself very nearly properly dressed. He shuffled his hands over his wild hair and said, “Lord Remington. What a fine surprise this is!”
Lord Remington looked conspiratorial. He swept through the door and clipped it closed behind himself, giving Ewan a malevolent grin. Ewan’s heart sank. Something was amiss—although he couldn’t fully articulate the how or why.
“Ewan, my boy. You look remarkable. Really, you do.”
Ewan arched his brow. “Whatever do you mean, My Lord?”
He’d never felt so out of touch with his own mind. Sweat billowed up on the back of his neck. He did not, in fact, look remarkable. Why, then, did the Duke wish to announce that he did?
“I imagine I look as though I slept in the clothes I collapsed in,” Ewan returned. “Nothing more than that. A bit of a ragamuffin, in fact.”
“Oh, my boy, that’s nothing when compared to the truth of your existence! You’re going to be a father. A father! The very thought alone might force me to the ground for good.”
Ewan’s heart sank. Was it possible that in his reckless drinking over the previous night, he’d someone blurted the innermost secret of his heart? How was it possible that he could have delivered himself like that, his soul on a platter, to one of the men he hated the most in the world?
“Ah! And here it is. The look I came all the way to the wretched Thompson Estate to see,” Lord Remington continued. “I couldn’t wait to see you comprehend the weight of what you’ve done! Yes, my Ewan … you’ve given me everything of yourself. The very thing that could ruin you. And you know what I’ll do with this, don’t you? What is the one thing on this planet, I want more than anything?”
Ewan’s jaw dropped. There was nothing he could say.
“Please, Ewan. Just guess for me. Guess what I might do with this,” Lord Remington said. He sounded dramatic, giddy. He took a huge step forward and beamed down at Ewan, being a few inches taller than the other man. “I’m going to use it to destroy you--unless, of course, you help me break up Marta and Baldwin. I need your help to unite us, once and for all. Otherwise, you and the handmaid? Your information will be told in every parlour, every ballroom, every alleyway from here to London. You will know nothing but heartache and pain, the kind that comes from pure and unadulterated embarrassment.”
Lord Remington turned towards the door and sauntered away. Just before he disappeared, he spun back and blinked at Ewan, his grin still smeared across his face. “I never could have envisioned a better way for all of this to end,” he said. “But I suppose I shouldn’t think of it as an ending. It’s the start of something beautiful between Marta and me--and it’s the start of something hidden and secret and monstrous in the form of a child for you. We’re both facing the rest of our lives. Almost exciting if you look at it that way.”
The moment Lord Remington disappeared, Ewan collapsed on the bed and pressed his pillow against his mouth. He let out a violent, wild scream, one that rattled his body around. Then, he was quiet.
He’d destroyed himself. And now, he had to decide what to do next.
Ultimately, he had to be just as selfish as Baldwin and Marta.
He had to choose himself and his baby and Laura over everything. He couldn’t drag them through the dirt.
Baldwin and Marta had to fend for themselves, now.
