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He raised his eyes to look at her. The face was the same, yet it was like looking at a stranger. Fury and hurt and an aching sense of betrayal burst into renewed flame within him, embers in a gaping hole of aching blackness that threatened to swallow everything and leave him a shell.
The words escaped almost without any conscious thought on his part. “Get out.”
Nora reeled, eyes widening in pain and shock as the heat in her eyes faltered. “What?”
“Leave. Leave my service and my home.” Sharp words continued to well up and rip themselves free from the painful morass of emotion within him. “Physicians in the middle of the night are not the only ones not minded to have care of a maid with a bastard child.”
She flinched as if he had slapped her rather than the other way around. “How could you…?”
“Say such? And why should I not? A babe needs a lover to create, and why, if you were never even willing to disclose the truth of the one, should I believe you ever got rid of the other?”
“I... it is not like that!”
“And how would I know the truth of it? How could I ever trust a wife who had taken a lover and attempted to come to me with his child in tow? Why should I believe you ever left the child’s father behind?” A bitter laugh cut its way free. “You’re like to have the father waiting in the wings while you play your games with me.”
From the stricken expression on her face, he thought for a moment that she might burst into tears.
Then her expression hardened. She drew herself up in the familiar manner she’d used to scold him from their first encounter. Her eyes glittered brightly with a mix of unshed tears and anger as she faced him.
“I suppose a man such as yourself, who has a different lover every week, must think such things of all others. But know this, Your Grace, and know it well. I will die before I take to my bed or my life a man of such broken and wretched character as you or the father of my daughter. I’ve no desire for men like you—men who seduce innocent girls in London manors and balls in Bath, then refuse to take responsibility for what they have done. It is men like you who ruin the lives of women, men like you who take the innocence of the ladies of Society and maids of the working class and leave them nothing save ruin and shame in the wake of your pleasures.”
The last word emerged in a cracked utterance. Then Nora whirled and vanished through the door, and he heard the quick clatter of her footsteps fading down the hall.
It was only as the last sound of her retreat died away that he realized he was still holding the letter she had handed to him.
He read it. Read it again.
So few sentences. And yet, they had crumbled his world as surely as his father’s passing two years ago.
No lover. Ralph had been wrong after all. And yet the truth was almost worse.
A child. A child by another man, a man she had not wed. A bastard child, a testament to the lie of the honor and morality he had thought she possessed, which he had thought was the core of her refusal.
The truth of it felt like a brand upon his soul. He reached blindly for the brandy glass, tossing back the liquid within before he threw the glass from him and watched it shatter on the wall.
With faltering steps, he slapped the letter onto the nearest surface and fled the room, seeking his quarters for just long enough to put on a riding jacket before he thundered down the stairs and out the drive, and from there into the streets.
He needed the solace and safety of the club. And something much, much stronger than brandy.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Nora fled from the Bedford estate with tears stinging in her eyes and her throat aching. She had hoped... she had hoped…
She had thought Arthur had enough trust for her to listen to her words.
She had hoped his heart was big enough to find a space for Lydia.
She had hoped he was different from the man who had seduced her in Bath four years ago.
She had hoped…
It did not matter what she had hoped. He had rejected her. Sent her away without even a situation to supply money for food and rent. Without even a letter of recommendation so that she might find new employment.
Not that she could have done so in any case. Not with his proposal and the events following all over the scandal sheets. She would be lucky if she were not laughed out of town.
The cottage came into sight, and she hastened toward it, reaching the door and opening it with a barely contained sob of mingled relief and grief.
Scarlett was sitting at the table, with Lydia sleeping still in the bed. She looked up as Nora entered, then leaped to her feet and rushed forward. “Nora, love, what is the matter?”
