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“Hmm? What?” His expression opened when he caught an eyeful of my likely frazzled appearance. “Ces, is everything all right? Christ, the baby—”
“The baby’s fine,” I assured him. “Sofia’s fine. We’re all fine. But Xavi,listen. I couldn’t sleep, so I read Henry’s journals, and you’re not going to believe—”
“You didn’t sleep?” He pushed himself up to sitting and shoved his deliciously dark and slightly overgrown hair out of his face. “Ces, you’re pregnant. You need your sleep, you and the baby both—”
“I’ll nap later.” I waved away his comment. “Xavi, just listen. I found out that—”
“No,youlisten,” he insisted. “You have to take care of yourself, babe. You can’t just stay up all night and shout at me and forget about—”
“Xavi!” Unable to think of anything else, I scrambled onto his lap, grabbed his face, and kissed him to make him shut up.
It worked.
“Are you listening now?” I asked a few minutes later as I nuzzled my nose to his.
Blearily, he nuzzled me back and then nodded his head. “Yeah. All right.”
“Good,” I said before delivering another kiss. “Because I need you to hear me when I tell you that you are not Rupert Parker’s son. You’re Henry’s.”
His blue eyes were suddenly so wide I honestly thought I might fall into them. “What?”
I stroked his cheek, willing him to listen, hoping to God he would hear this for the blessing it really was. “They lied to you, Xavi. Henry Parker is your real father.”
THIRTY-TWO
“So let me see if I’ve got it,” Xavier said in a stunned voice nearly an hour later, after I’d recounted what I’d discovered and read the most important passages aloud to him. “Mum had a thing for Rupert, but Henry had a thing for her. She slept with Henry to make Rupert jealous. Didn’t work, but she got knocked up. Then Henry took her back to her family, who kicked her out all over again because of the shame. So he offers to marry her, and desperate and alone, she agrees. Right?”
I nodded where I sat back on my pillows after spending the last hour going through the journals and recounting the tale I’d just read. “Right.”
Xavier blew out a long, overwhelmed breath and continued.
“Then they return, and she feels she’s made a mistake, but he won’t give her a divorce becauseheloves her? So she leaves Kendal, refusing to be held down by a man she can’t love who wants to control her. She’d rather be free and poor than trapped.” Xavier shook his head. “Christ. Stubborn, wasn’t she?”
“Seems like a family trait,” I replied, earning a cheeky half-grin in response.
I took the humor as a good sign. If Xavier was managing even part of a smile, the news wasn’t completely bowling him over.
“It’s just so odd,” he said. “I grew up thinking it was him. Rupert, I mean. All my life, he was the one I thought sent the money, even if I never saw him.”
“Did your mother ever actually say that Rupert was your dad?” I honestly wondered how he’d gotten that impression. Or if it had just been wishful thinking on Masumi’s part, given her feelings for the man.
He frowned, thinking back. “I—I think so. We’d see him on TV every now and then, right? Or maybe in the papers. He was a peer, a major leader in the country. And when she’d see him, she’d nod and tell me that was my father.”
I frowned. “Was there…is there any possibility that Henry was in the pictures too? He was the steward, Rupert’s right-hand man, so…”
Xavier gulped. By the look on his face, I gathered the answer was yes.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would Rupert agree to fool everyone into thinking he was my dad and that he had actually married my mum? What was in it for him?” He frowned. “Obviously, something changed when Mum died. That’s when Rupert showed up and acknowledged me as his. And then, a few years after that, the marriage certificate was found.
I poked him in the shoulder. “I’m not done with the story. But here, listen to this.”
Masumi’s memorial service next week. I shan’t go—I won’t be able to hide the absolute desolation. Everyone would know. They’d know it all. Especially the main point of going, which is to give the boy a foothold in this world.
It surprises me that Rupert would be willing to do it. Granted, I didn’t give him a choice. Honestly, if he didn’t want me to find him shagging the new viscount two months before his daughter was born and after rumors about them had already ruined Rupert’s chances with the Harwood heiress, they shouldn’t have chosen my horse’s bloody stall as their rendezvous point.
But the one secret my brother doesn’t want the world to know is that he loves Bernard Douglas more than anything. So it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that he would essentially become a father to protect him.
Even if it’s to ensure that my own son can be the Duke of Kendal one day.
