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Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Engagement ball?” Thomas said out loud, when his tongue caught up with the raging sea of emotions crashing through his chest.
He had not expected that. Who could Lady Evelina possibly be getting engaged to? Had Thomas met him before? Why hadn’t Lady Evelina said something, or written to him?
He had his answer to that, of course. He had accused her father of murder. Their relationship was over, and she owed him nothing.
Yet…Lady Evelina had expressed so much discomfort and frustration over the Season, and being forced into courtship with men she had no interest in.
If nothing else, Thomas was almost certain this engagement was not one Lady Evelina had chosen out of her own agency.
“Yes, engagement ball,” Mother continued, still sounding cross. The words went in one of Thomas’ ears and out the other, as the world continued to spin around him. “I thought you meant to court her? What went so wrong between you that she is marrying someone else so quickly? Or was she already taken from the beginning, and you attempted to steal her for yourself?”
This last bit landed hard. His emotions triumphantly swallowing every last bit of his self-restraint and good sense, Thomas blurted out, “Given your own past actions, accusing me of improper courtship is nothing short of hypocrisy.”
Mother’s breath caught.
Silence, thick and smothering, consumed the room.
“What do you mean by that?” Mother said at last. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, and her face had taken on the pallor of a ghost.
“Forgive me,” Thomas said hastily, averting his eyes. “I spoke out of turn.”
“You cannot just throw something like that out there and expect me to pretend I didn’t hear it,” Mother said. Thomas wasn’t looking at her now, but he could hear the tears building in her voice. The sound of it nearly killed him; he hadn’t heard Mother cry since…since a time he could not even remember.
Thomas swallowed. He tried to resign himself to this awkward new reality; that he was caught. He had blurted out the information, a servant to his emotions as always, no matter what he had learned about strategy and thinking before speaking.
There was no going back now.
“I found a box of letters,” Thomas admitted, still looking at his desk rather than directly at Mother. The small print of the paperwork he’d been going over looked more jumbled than ever. “Between you and some…some man.” He couldn’t say the name; he refused to. Instead, he took a deep breath and pressed forward, intent on getting it all out in the open at once, now that there was no other option. “It…was implied that the man was Gerard’s real father.”
Mother was silent for a long time.
“How long have you known this?” she asked at last. Then, more hesitantly, “Have you told Gerard?”
“No,” said Thomas immediately.
“Good.” The relief in Mother’s voice was palpable. “Please, for my sake, see that you don’t. He’s always worked so hard on the family’s behalf, and taken such pride in being my late husband’s son. It would kill him to know the truth.”
“Gerard can handle a great deal more than you would think,” Thomas said, thinking of the stoic way Gerard had born the suspicions of Father’s murder alone in the months following the event.
“I know Gerard is strong,” Mother agreed. “But with your Father now gone, and unable to reassure him…I just do not see any reason to make him feel as though he does not belong.”
Thomas, to his horror, imagined the look on Gerard’s face upon learning the truth. Denial followed by confusion and anger. Landing, at last, in a state of permanent, irreconcilable sadness. Father wouldn’t have been around to reassure him. And what would Father have even said, anyway?
“Did Father know?” Thomas asked out loud. “He must have, for me to have found the letters here in his study.”
At last, he looked up to meet his mother’s eyes. She was sitting up straighter than ever. Her eyes shone with tears, but her head was held high; a focused, desperate grasp at maintaining some sense of pride.
“He did,” she said stiffly. “He…reacted poorly, at first. Yelling. Calling me awful things. Even threatening to cut Gerard off.”
Thomas’ stomach dropped. “He wouldn’t have.”
“No,” Mother agreed, shaking her head vigorously. “It was all bluster in that first moment, when he discovered the box of letters I kept hidden away in my dresser. Saying cruel things that he didn’t really mean because he was hurt. The very next day, he came to me and apologized. For speaking so rashly, and for declaring Gerard as anything but his very own.” A fond, distant smile appeared on her face. “Your Father was a very good man, Thomas. The sort of man who saw ‘family’ as a status that was earned, rather than one a person was born into. Of course, he saw Gerard as his son, no matter the circumstances of his birth.”
“You loved Father,” Thomas said, not even sure himself whether it was intended as a statement or a question.
Mother lifted her eyes from her lap, suddenly fierce. “Yes. Never doubt that for a second, Thomas.”
