“Why? Were you thinking to delight Shoreham with a son he never knew? Obviously he did not care, or he would have conducted a search himself.”
“I don’t know why I did it,” she said miserably. “Feelings of guilt for my failing, perhaps. In any event, I wanted to make certain the child, if he or she were ever found, would be properly cared for. Shoreham never knew and I never told him anything of what I was doing. The Bow Street Runner I hired to investigate the matter was reputed to be one of the best. A man by the name of Homer Barrow.”
“I know of him,” Rob said, still holding on to her hands and gently stroking them with his thumbs because this was his nature, always determined to comfort and protect her. “He is very good at what he does.”
“Several months later, he gave me his report.”
“What did he tell you?”
She struggled not to cry again. “He claimed there was a child.”
Rob’s eyes widened in surprise. “And he is certain it was Shoreham’s?”
“Well…”
“What, Fiona? What are you not telling me? Was there a doubt about the paternity?” He began to quietly seethe. He’d always had this way about him, a quiet strength that made one feel secure when confiding in him.
She nodded. “Some questions, yes. Mr. Barrow reported to me that the young lady married a young man shortly after receiving Shoreham’s money. The pair sailed to Boston within a month of the wedding. He found out very little more, for her parents had passed away by the time I engaged Mr. Barrow to investigate. So had the young man’s parents. He could find no siblings or other family members to question, so he sought information from neighbors and friends. Some had heard she had given birth to a child, but that it did not survive past infancy. A girl, one of the neighbors told him.”
“Yet you say Mr. Barrow had doubts? Did he believe her approaching Shoreham was a ruse? That she had duped him into believing the child was his in order to give her funds enough to cross the Atlantic and start a new life with this young man?”
Fiona let out a shaky breath. “He thought it was a possibility, but could not say for certain. He had no proof, only a gut feeling.”
Rob pursed his lips while in thought. “So, after all this, you still remained in doubt.”
“No, Rob. This was confirmation that the fault was mine. The girl came from a respectable family, a local tradesman’s daughter. She was not some transient woman off the streets. Does it not make sense that a father, upon learning of her situation, would quietly find a good man to marry her and take her away in order to avoid scandal?”
“Or perhaps this man was her sweetheart all along and they devised this scheme in order to amass enough funds to start a new life. Did Mr. Barrow dig up information on this young lady’s character? Or that of the young man? What of her family life? Was the father strict? Cruel? Your Bow Street man must have sensed something amiss to claim he had doubts even if he had no hard proof.”
“There was nothing more to dig up,” she replied in anguish. “The family had a good reputation and so did the young lady. But she and the man she married have also died. We will never know the truth now. Are you willing to risk the future of a dukedom on her being a liar? A tradesman is a man with roots to a place and one who holds respect in his village. Does it not seem more likely she was telling Shoreham the truth and her father was desperate to fix the situation before others noticed her waddling around with a belly the size of a house? All the more reason to find her a husband and have them sail away before too many questions were asked, especially if that child was going to arrive early.”
Her heart tightened and she struggled to contain another bout of tears. “I don’t know which is worse, Shoreham’s being duped or that a child he had sired did exist and we will never know what truly happened to the poor thing.”
“No, the worst is Shoreham’s choosing to believe he had fathered a child in order to put the full blame of a childless marriage onyou. That wasn’t fair of him. Do you think he was the sort to ignore a child he was convinced was his?”
Heat shot into her cheeks, for her answer was embarrassing. “Yes. He was good in many ways, always very proper and respectable, but this mistake was something he wished desperately to ignore and forget.”
“And yet he did not ignore it when it served to conveniently place all the fault on you for a childless marriage. I would never do such a cowardly thing to you.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them, then leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips.
She groaned as she felt the warm press of his mouth on hers, wishing she had the strength to pull away. But she never would, not with him. “You must never tell anyone about this, Rob. Please, I need your promise.”
“Upon my oath, this stays between us,” he said sincerely, and kissed her again with more ardor and a measure of protective fierceness.
“Nor should we ever speak of love or hearts or of the hope of forever between us,” she said once her lips were free of his.
He regarded her with surprise. “Are you still belaboring this issue? Thinking to sacrifice our happiness for my supposed good? Based upon what you think Shoreham might have done? Fine, then I’ll raise a glass in toast to one year with you. This is what you’ve agreed to, and I mean to hold you to it. An entire year to spend in your bed, getting on you,inyou, and under you, and into any other position you will allow, only to be kicked outat the end of that time because of your wrongheaded conclusion that you cannot give me the son I need to preserve the Durham title.”
“It isn’t wrongheaded.”
“Yes, it is. Completely and utterly. All the more inane because of what you have just told me about Shoreham. Why are you still placing full blame on yourself?”
“Rob, why won’t you see reason?”
“Why won’tyou?” he shot back.
“He had a child with another woman! Just because Mr. Barrow had a feeling something was not right, does not make it so. The evidence points to Shoreham having had that liaison that led to the birth of a child.Hischild.”
“And this is why you will throw away our happiness? On a maybe that the blame had to be all yours? Or is this the way you really want it? Me in your bed but no commitments. Then forget our year together. I will not fight you on this any longer. I’ll stay through the dinner party, protect you from Lady Cordelia’s barbs, but then I will leave as Bromleigh asked of me.”
