AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nodded. “She was the daughter of a landed gentleman my father was in business with in a town not far from the country estate. She believed another when he told her he would stay. He did not.”
“She was not the first to believe pretty words. Nor will she be the last,” Adelaide said.
“My father—he loved her enough for both of them. He made the box for her when I was born,” he explained quietly, wanting her to understand. “So she could keep his promise safe. So she would always remember he’d take care of us.” He paused. “We should have destroyed it. But...”
She shook her head. “I would never be rid of it. It’s too beautiful.”
“The last I have of them, together.” He went quiet for a moment, memories crashing over him. And then, “I do not know who my father is. He could have been anyone.”
“Do you wish you did?”
He had considered the possibility before, of course. “Over the years, there have been more than a few times when I’ve wondered if I could find him. What I would say to him if I did.”
“And?”
He shook his head. “I had a father, and I would trade every question I have for the man who sired me for five more minutes with the man who raised me.” He paused. “I should like to know I made him proud.” He’d never said such a thing to anyone before, not even to Jack. But for some reason, it came easily with Adelaide.
Perhaps because he wished to make her proud, too.
“You did,” she said without hesitation. Without doubt.“You made him so very proud before he died, I’m sure of it. And now . . . if he could see you as the world does . . . as I do . . .” She smiled. “His boy. His family. Not born of blood,” she said. “Born of love. Of care.”
“I’m not the only one with a family like that,” he agreed. “Yours as well. In these past few days, I’ve seen the kinds of friends you collect. The Duchess, Miss O’Tiernen, Gwen. Lucia.”
She nodded. “I am very lucky to have made a family of friends in the years since I left the South Bank. And still...”
He waited for her to finish, knowing not to push. Finally, she looked down at the letter in her hands—the one in which his father changed a destiny. “This—she was his sun.”
As Adelaide might be to Henry.
As she was, already.
Like that, he understood. He saw his father’s life with perfect clarity. Saw, too, how his mother had blessed him. Blessed them all.
How he, too, might be blessed. “What a gift she gave him,” he said. “A family to love. To be proud of.”
Adelaide nodded. “And the gift he gave to you. His love. His support.” She pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
Let me give you the same.
They looked at each other for a long time, and he would have given anything to hear her thoughts before she finally said, “No wonder you are such a man. So vocal in Parliament. Using every bit of your voice to speak for children who have not been so lucky.”
“I think any decent person with sense and a shred of humanity would do as I have done if they saw the conditions in which these children live.”
She shook her head. “Plenty see it and say nothing. Do nothing.”
He cleared the lump in his throat, the relief that someone finally understood. “My mother would have beencast out. From her family. From her community. And me with her. We could just as easily have found ourselves in a workhouse than in an ancestral home. I could have just as easily not have become a duke.” A pause. Then, “And there is the fact that I am not a duke. Not really.”
“What does that even mean? Not really? You’ve the name and the title, the letters of patent.”
“And another letter. One that tells the truth. That though I was born to married parents, I am not my father’s son.”
Thunder flashed in her eyes. “Bollocks.” She raised the letter. “Trust me, as someone who spent a childhood with a father who thought of me as nothing but money in the coffers, the idea of a father claiming his children with such certainty, with such...devotion...Henry—what could be more legitimate?”
Her enormous brown eyes were on him, full of urgent concern. “This man—he loved you unconditionally. And your mother as well. What a glorious truth to hold close.”
“When he told me—” he began, then stopped, the memory of that day coming on a flood of shame. “I was furious.” She stilled, watching him without judgment, and he pressed on. “I was fourteen, and home from school. An absolute monster. Entitled and full of bluster and certain that I knew everything there was to know about the world.”
“An aristocratic man in the making,” she said with a gentle tease.
