“Because I needed a powerful sleeping draught forhim. To drug him and give myself time to escape with Pierre. I knew if I tried to sneak it in myself, he would catch me. And my plans would come to naught. But if I asked him for it, then he would never suspect my true use for it.”
Flynn’s head was spinning as he tried to recalibrate hisunderstanding of his father, his mother, and the night she fled, leaving him and Edgar alone. Flynn had always suspected that his father knew that he had found the letter about the henbane. Because for years after, Lord Banks had been unnecessarily cruel, favoring Edgar in all things. Flynn rubbed absentmindedly at his side, remembering the time his father had kicked him in the ribs like a dog. Flynn had always chalked it up to the cost of knowing the truth.
Violet rose and took his hands in hers. “My darling boy, your father was a monster. Make no mistake about that. He was a cruel man, rapacious and greedy. The only happy days I ever had in his home were the ones I spent with you. But he was not a murderer.”
Flynn let his arms go limp in his mother’s grasp. “Edgar said the old man had something to tell me. That he wanted to clear his conscience before he died. I had assumed it must be this.”
His mother smiled again. “Oh, I suspect I know what he wanted to tell you.”
Flynn pinched his nose between his fingers and scrunched up his nose. “I’ve already had one life-altering revelation today. I don’t know if I can stand another.”
Violet chuckled. “It’s an awfully good thing you’re an actor, because you’re far too dramatic for any other profession.”
He groaned in response, to which she replied, “Perhaps you should sit down.”
She led him gently to the velvet chair and deposited him in it. She kneeled next to him, the way she had done beside his bed when she tucked him into sleep at night, and she rubbed a soothing pattern over his knee. “I should have told you this years ago, but I thought I was protecting you.” He looked at her expectantly. He had no idea what she could possibly have to confess. “But the truth is, you are not your father’s son. You are the product of myaffair with Pierre. It’s why your father was so cruel to you. He suspected you were not his. Though he could never prove it.”
Flynn was stunned. He was not a Banks. Not a product of a hateful man. “So, he wanted to use his dying breath to disavow me?”
His mother shrugged. “It seems so. But it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t omit you from the will without admitting he was cuckolded. You would think the fact I ran away with Pierre and never returned would pretty demonstrably prove that. But he could not weather the shame of having a bastard born under his roof.”
Flynn’s mind was reeling. All these years he’d spent hating his father, and the man was not even his own flesh and blood. The Banks name, all of it, was not his problem. Even if Harry fired him, Edgar had no leverage to guilt him into returning to England or pouring his funds into that moldering estate. He was, at last, free of the yoke of the aristocracy. He sighed, relief flooding his senses, and he blinked back tears.
“I hope you are not too disappointed,” his mother murmured. “But you are and always have been the product of my joy. That is why I wrote those words for you. To remind you what joy can bring, even amidst pain and great unhappiness.”
He pulled his mother to her feet and into a tight hug. “I am so bloody grateful that I no longer have to think of that terrible man as my father.”
He held her close, trying to convey all the love and respect he had for his mother and her courage through their embrace. He pulled apart, leaving the shoulder of her dress a bit damp with his tears of relief. She cupped his cheeks in her palms and looked up at him with the pure joy and love he remembered from his childhood. As she wiped away the tears still streaming down hisface, she asked, “Now what’s this about choosing joy meaning you should never marry?”
“I thought it was a warning. You never married Pierre.”
She scoffed. “Because I was still legally married to your father, and he refused to grant me a divorce. Now that he’s dead, I plan to marry Pierre as soon as I return to Paris.” She released his face and flashed the enormous engagement ring on her left hand in front of his eyes.
He smiled and kissed his mother on the cheek. “I wish you two nothing but happiness.” She patted him on the back in response, and he realized what an utter fool he had been. Denying himself a companion because he believed it would only spell misery. If only he had figured it out sooner. That joy and love were not mutually exclusive. That, in fact, they were possibly contingent upon each other. Perhaps then it would not have been too late for him and Livvy.
His mother grabbed his hands and squeezed. “When I told you to choose joy, I meant for you to choose love. To choose companionship. To choose a woman who makes you happy. Not a marriage you deemed advantageous to your rank and status.”
“I see that now.”
She looked at him expectantly. “And?”
“And what?”
“This raven-haired beauty. Why are you not banging down her door this minute? Confessing your undying love.”
“I do not have undying love for her,” he retorted, but even he couldn’t finish the thought without realizing what a lie it was. His mother giggled at the look on his face. “Even if I did…love her terribly, she doesn’t want me.”
“So, fix it then.”
Fix it. That was what he had promised Harry he would do, wasn’t it? He didn’t know how. But he did know that moping in his library was not the way to get answers. There was only one option. He needed to pay a visit to Stanley Devlin.
Chapter 28
Flynn pulled his roadster into the steep driveway that led to Stanley Devlin’s Hollywood Hills home.
“Good God, that’s ugly.” Dash whistled in disgust at the Gothic monstrosity that rose up between them. The stone house loomed at the top of a hill with gargoyles atop every pillar.
“All it needs is a drawbridge,” Flynn quipped.
