His brother calmly sauntered to the sideboard, filled a fresh glass, and returned to him, holding it out in offering. “How should I have known you were unaware?”
He checked the urge to throw the tumbler against the wall to join the first, accepting it with great reluctance. “Did you not think I would have mentioned it to you at least once in these last eight years?”
Leo returned his stare, unflinching. “Do you think you are the only man in London who has fathered a child with another chap’s wife? Half the sons and daughters of thetondo not resemble their supposed sires in the slightest.”
It was true, and Clay knew it. The way of the world, or at least of the privileged world. “She was not another man’s wife then.”
“No, but she became one.”
His brother was only stating fact. It should not feel as if he had plunged a dagger into Clay’s heart. But yet it did. Ara’s betrayal ran so much deeper than he had ever fathomed. He had thought nothing could be worse than the twin scars he bore from her—the one on his face and the one on his heart—but he had been wrong. Keeping his son from him, willfully allowing another man to claim the lad as his own without ever breathing a word of it to Clay…
Little wonder he had needed to flee Burghly House. He itched to shake her. And then raise her skirts and drive himself so deep inside her she would never forget he had been the first one to claim her. To make her his.
But he could not do either of those things.
“Yes,” he agreed, heaving out a sigh borne of the magnitude of his whirling thoughts and emotions. “She married Burghly, and she passed my son off as his.”
“It has been done before,” Leo said quietly. “Many, many times. Why should this one be any different?”
“Because he ismyson, damn it.” His grip tightened painfully on the glass, and still he did not take another drink. “I did not know, Leo. Ishould haveknown. If I had, I never would have left for the Continent. And if I had not gone, I would have realized she carried my child. I would have married her myself.”
“Why did you not?” Leo asked, taking another sip of whisky, eyeing him with that penetrating stare he had. “Marry her, I mean. You were mad for her then, and you had obviously ruined her. Why did you go?”
He had never confided the truth of his scar to anyone but his mother years later. When he had returned to Brixton Manor bloodied and shaken, he had been too ashamed to admit what had happened.
Clay took a long draught of whisky once more. Perhaps this was a day of catharsis. It certainly seemed so. He swallowed, relishing the burn of the spirits down his gullet. Mayhap this would help him heal.
Or forget.
He touched a finger to his scar. “This is why I left, and she was responsible.”
Leo did not seem particularly surprised by this revelation either. “Do tell, brother.”
“I was going to marry her.” Memories he had suppressed for so many years returned, visceral and vicious. “Until the day she betrayed me, and everything changed.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eight years earlier
Let me chooseyou, if you dare.
Try as he might, Clay had not been able to expel Ara’s fierce words from his mind.
He had gone to her the next day as she had asked, against his sense of honor. Against his better judgment. And against everything he had been taught, he had lost control. One kiss from her was all it required for him to vacate his sanity.
One kiss had led to another. Then another. Then another.
Until they had fallen as one to the blanket she had spread on the forest floor. Until he had lifted her gown to her waist and kissed his way up her beautiful legs. Until he had pleasured her with his mouth so thoroughly, she had spent twice, writhing and crying out beneath him like a beautiful sylvan goddess.
Afterward, she had asked to touch him, and he had allowed her to free his aching cock from his trousers. He had shown her how to pleasure him, how to stroke him, and he had come in her hand like a callow youth. It had been the most blisteringly satisfying experience of his life, and he had not even been inside her.
For he had not taken her innocence. Not entirely. But he had gone beyond the pale. He had behaved in a dishonorable fashion toward her. He had been weak and sinful, and he had not been able to resist wanting her when he knew he ought to leave her the hell alone.
Ruining Lady Araminta Winters that day would have been bad enough. But he had continued his folly. For weeks, they had met in secret. In the forest. In a hunting cabin on his father’s estate. Thrice, he had even smuggled her back into his bedchamber by using the servant’s stair with no one being the wiser. With each assignation, they grew bolder and his ability to keep from sinking home inside her diminished in increasing increments until he knew he had to act or the day would come that he committed the worst sin of all.
So today,hewas choosingher.
He stood in the ante-room of Kingswood Hall, pinned beneath the contemptuous glares of half a dozen lords and ladies from previous centuries. There was also a picture of the Nativity and one of the Holy Family, having no less censorious an effect.
