After a moment of shouting, the delivery wagon moved on, allowing the ducal landau to drive onward.They stopped before a large, brick-fronted terraced house.Compared to Brantingham House, Lord Mathieson’s residence was modest and unassuming, though she knew that his address was coveted among smart families in town.
The Duke’s coachman swung down to deploy the carriage steps, and then opened the door for her.
She turned to His Grace, asking, “Will you wait for me?No matter how long it takes, will you wait for me?”She searched his eyes as a frigid wind whipped around her, pulling at her petticoats and lashing her stocking-clad legs.“I know I must do this myself—Iwilldo it—but I don’t want to be alone.I’ll feel braver knowing you have my back.”
He squeezed her fingers, holding her hand as though he wished for nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and crush her to his chest.“I’m here for you, Aurelia.There is nothing to fear.”
Trusting his word, she quit the carriage.Such a fine conveyance drew attention even in Grosvenor Square.Doubtless, many observers recognized the Duke of Brantingham’s crest emblazoned on the lacquered door panel.Aurelia made certain to hold her head high as she crossed the pavements and ascended to the threshold of Lord Mathieson’s townhouse.
She did not duck or cower.She would not back down from the greatest challenge of her life.
Aurelia rang the doorbell of Mathieson House, and—glancing back to find His Grace waiting, as promised, by the kerbstone—gave the footman her name as she followed him inside.
Her call had been expected.At the servant’s direction, she climbed a set of broad, oaken stairs to the upper floor.Artwork and framed etchings lined the brocaded walls, but the house felt chilly, dark, and oppressive.She imagined her mother fleeing down these very stairs, and wondered what manner of horrors awaited her above.
She found Lord Mathieson in the drawing room, standing before a bank of glazed windows.He had watched her approach, and no doubt had witnessed her heartfelt exchange with the Duke.
Aurelia stepped across the carpeted expanse.She kept a large leather sofa between them and braced her hands on the back.“You know me.”It wasn’t a question but an accusation.“You know who I am and what I am to you.”
The gentleman standing across from her nodded.“You are the spawn of a coachman born to my wife.”He was a tall, thin man with dark whiskers and a high, peaked hairline.His eyes narrowed as he raked his gaze from the top of her head down to her skirt hems.His lip curled at the sigh of her.“I suppose Brantingham has told you everything.”
“Only the bare facts,” she answered, keeping her voice steady despite her pulse leaping in her throat.“I have come to hear the rest from you.”
He gestured to the sofa.“Will you sit, Aurelia?”
She would not bend before him.She endeavored to remain on guard.“I shall stand.”
“Very well,” said Lord Mathieson, folding his hands behind his back.He took a few steps toward her on the carpet.“I recognized you the moment I saw you, though I could never acknowledge you, as you are the natural daughter of a love affair between my late wife and our coachman.You are another man’s daughter.”
His words contradicted the Duke’s story, and she wasn’t certain who to believe—the man who’d been there for her birth, or the one who wished to protect her.
“After the affair was discovered, your mother was sent to Cheltenham Spa to convalesce.She was clearly unwell and deeply unhappy, and I believed her spirits would improve after taking the waters.I had no idea she’d never come home, but I have tried to make it up to you in my way.”
By seeing her fed and clothed but never loved?By having her educated but never once knowing the supportive embrace of a parent or even a sibling?
“You are my legal father,” she argued, for he had robbed her of everything she ought to have been entitled to as a nobleman’s daughter.She could’ve had a Season, a dowry, a rich and full life in London.“Whatever my mother may or may not have done, you cannot prove that I am not your natural child.”
“They were seen together—your mother and her lover—at a posting inn on the Great North Road.There were witnesses to her adultery willing to testify thatmy wifewas away from home in the company of another man.”
“They were traveling!He was her driver!”
“Where was her maid?Or some other female acting as her chaperone?”The answers to those questions were lost to time, twenty years too late to save her now.“They were stopped, thankfully, but your mother returned home in rather a different physical state than when she left it.
“She was with child, and no amount of pleading could convince me of her innocence after so very publicly humiliating me.I sent her to Cheltenham for her confinement, where she succumbed to a hemorrhage soon after bringing you into this world.Yet these facts don’t matter because your birth was never registered.You weren’t even christened.Both my wife and her child died that day.”
In the eyes of God and man, she never existed.Aurelia could not even prove that she’d been born, let alone that she was legitimate.
“You’ve tied it all up very tidily, then.”
“No man would blame me for what I’ve done.”
One man did—he sat in his landau, waiting for her to conduct her business, knowing that she could handle it without his help, but willing to support her through the hardship she faced.His Grace despised Lord Mathieson and had pronounced him a cad.He had believed in her mother’s innocence.
The Duke would never have allowed Aurelia to be treated so cruelly.He would not have allowed such an injustice to be perpetrated against her.
“I could be your daughter.”She clutched her hands to her breast and felt her heart tearing from her chest.How could he turn her away?
“I’ve provided for you,” Lord Mathieson argued.“You have wanted for nothing…”
