Celia agreed with a weak nod, then lowered her gaze to their hands. “I promised her I would speak with you before you went home this evening.”
The hesitancy in her voice caused him concern. Was this where she would go back on her word and send him packing again? “Speak to me?” he repeated, carefully controlling his tone.
“In the library.” She eased her hands out of his and took a step back, placing an arm’s length of space between them. “I need a drink. Something stronger than tea. Would you like one too?”
“I would, indeed.” His infallible instincts told him he would need it.
Chapter Twelve
Celia tried topour the brandy without spilling, but with her trembling, she was less than successful. She had promised Mama to tell Elias the whole of it and give him the chance to either accept or refuse their life of lies. Mama still regretted never giving Master Hodgely that choice.
“I have brandy this time rather than Madeira,” she called back over her shoulder.
“Anything is fine after this evening’s events.”
She bit her lip, knowing the events weren’t over. Before turning from the shelf of decanters, she sent up a silent prayer that what was about to happen would go well. After a deep breath, she forced a smile and joined Elias in the seating area in front of the small hearth. A cheery fire crackled within, its flames dancing behind the grating. It beat back the chill of the damp evening but did little to warm her hopes that Elias would understand. She handed him the glass with the genteel nod of a perfect hostess. “Here you are, my lord.”
“Elias,” he gently corrected her. In the firelight, his golden eyes shimmered with a richer warmth than usual. “You frighten me, Celia.”
“Frighten you?” She seated herself beside him on the small sofa in front of the fire and set her glass on the oval table beside it. She couldn’t drink. Not just yet. “How on earth have I frightened you?”
“Do you mean to send me away again?”
His bluntness almost caused her to choke. She swallowed hard and wet her lips. “I will not send you away again,” she said with a carefulness she hoped was convincing. “Not ever.”
Then she stiffened her spine and folded her hands in her lap. Might as well be on with it. Delaying it would not make it any easier. The problem was, she wasn’t sure where to start. Perhaps a bit of layering was in order. “As a solicitor, I am sure you are well aware of the laws regarding the ownership of entailed property?”
He blinked as though unsure he had heard her correctly. “Yes. I am well aware of the laws. Why?”
“Then you know it cannot be sold because the entailment commonly ties it to several generations of heirs.Maleheirs. Farther down the line of succession.”
“I am quite familiar with the laws of primogeniture.” He sipped his drink, his unflinching gaze locked on her.
What could she say? How could she make him understand? “My father died before I was born, turning my mother into a young widow, expecting her first child—the child who would decide her future.”
He said nothing, watching her like a cat watches a cornered mouse about to make its last fatal attempt at fleeing.
“I was told my mother sobbed when I was born. Both from joy and fear. Joy about my good health and yet fear for what would become of us—financially, socially, where we would live.” She waited for him to comment. When he didn’t, she continued, “You see, by the time I was born, my mother had not only lost my father but all her family as well. Influenza, you understand. She was completely alone except for a few loyal servants.”
“But you and your brother are twins.” The puzzlement revealed in the slight furrow of his brow didn’t match the dawning realization smoldering in his eyes. “I am sure your mother was relieved when he was born a few moments later. The duke’s heir.”
“She would have been—had he ever been born.” Celia waited, bracing herself. “I am not a twin. Never have been. Not even while in my mother’s womb.”
He frowned and slowly tilted his head to one side. “You do not mean to suggest…”
Celia rose, went to her desk, and signed a sheet of paper with the same signature she used for all business dealings. As she returned to Elias, she gently blew on the ink to dry it. Without a word, she handed it to him, then settled back in her seat and waited.
“This is not possible.” He barely shook his head while staring down at the official signature of Charles Tuttcliffe, the sixth Duke of Hasterton. “Surely, you cannot mean to say…”
“That we created Charles to protect our entailed properties, our money, our place in Society? The title? That over the years, with the help of some well-paid and extraordinarily loyal individuals, we took the somewhat strained Hasterton holdings and formed the comfortably powerful estate we enjoy today? That my mother, a woman of brilliance, successfully carried off this subterfuge until I took over the reins seven years ago at the gentle age of ten and six?”
“Subterfuge?” He tossed back his drink, then pointed the empty glass at her. “This is not subterfuge. It is fraud. A fraud of the scale that would see you both hanged. Impersonating a peer?” He shook his head. “No. Not impersonating a peer. Pulling one from your imagination.”
“And now you know why I tried to protect you from ruin.” Her throat ached with the need to break down and sob, but she refused to give way to tears. At least, not yet. “An intimate association with me would make you just as guilty—whether you knew about our scheme or not.”
“I still could be deemed guilty.” Elias lurched to his feet and stormed back and forth in front of the hearth. “The entire firm could be charged after overseeing the Hasterton accounts all these years.” He halted and stared at her. “At the time of your birth, your mother had the Bening accounts protected by her marriage contract. Those were rightfully hers to use as needed. Why did she not rely on them instead of creating this farce?”
“At that time, the Bening accounts would not have provided enough for a dormouse’s survival, and the crumbs left from my father’s will were laughable. His many debts had to be settled.” Celia stood, unable to sit any longer. “Like many young women of the peerage, Mama was pressured into marrying my father for all the usual reasons. Her parents as much as forced her to give up the man she truly loved. Yet when she gave birth to a daughter sired by a man she never wanted, she was expected to become a pauper until she found another man to pay her way.” Celia thumped her chest, anger at the injustice of it all setting her on fire. “Just because I was born female, legally, I was denied the properties, money, and status that would have rightly been mine had I been blessed with a cock and a pair of bollocks.” She tapped her temple. “Neither my nor my mother’s brains, nor our ability to reason and make sound business decisions, mattered. Without my mother’s ingenuity, the title would have gone extinct. The entailed properties would have gone fallow until the Crown decided which of its favorite fawners deserved them. Any money left in the Hasterton accounts would have gone to the Crown’s coffers too. All while my mother was forced to make do with very little until she found a man of the peerage willing to buy her body and feed her infant daughter. Merely because I was born a girl and not a boy. Is that fair, I ask you?”
