Mr. Darcy furrowed his brow. “So, Larilane told the duke about his child?”
“That’s what it sounds like, isn’t it?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Mr. Darcy. “I spoke to him, you know, and he was the one who told me that your mother had been impregnated by a man who beat and bruised her. When he spoke of that, he was angry and horrified. He would not have returned a child to that.”
“Well, a duke has little interaction with his child, does he?” Elizabeth spread her hands. “It’s not as if a duke carries out the day-to-day punishment or the care or much of anything with a child. How often would a duke even see his own child?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it depends on the duke,” said Darcy, looking her over. “It’s the principle of the thing, of course.”
“I’m only saying, maybe he could have convinced himself it would have been all right,” said Elizabeth. “And maybe, selfishly, he wanted my mother to himself, and he knew that if he got my mother’s babe out of the middle of everything—”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Darcy. “I feel as if there’s something more going on here.”
“It is all very strange,” Elizabeth agreed.
“Obviously, whatever it was that Larilane tried to do, it didn’t work,” said Mr. Darcy. “Because, here you are, and you were notraised within the reach of the duke. However, if the duke knew you existed, he wouldn’t have let you live out the life you lived.”
“I was a girl,” said Elizabeth, shrugging. “If I’d been his heir or something, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered—”
“No,” said Darcy, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He rubbed his forehead. “Well, maybe they never married? Maybe it was only an elopement? Maybe he might be convinced to forget about a bastard daughter? But a legitimate child of either sex, I can’t think any man would rest until he knew where the child was.”
“That was why she hid me and passed me off as belonging to my father,” said Elizabeth.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Darcy, nodding. “Maybe she said you had died.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “I had not thought of that, but it does make sense, actually. And this was why she hid me away and did not have contact with me, to protect me from the duke.”
“He’s dead now,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Yes, and I feel some odd pang about that, about never having met him, even after reading this letter wherein he is described as a monster.” She laughed softly. “I can hardly make sense of that.”
“That seems entirely logical to me,” said Mr. Darcy. “Everyone needs to know where they came from.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter, or it shouldn’t. I have a way I was brought up, a family, and I don’t know why it is that everything about that feels so different now.”
“It is different,” he said, regarding her. He got up from the desk and looked her over. “Lord, the things you’ve been through as of late. It is a wonder you’re still standing.”
She scoffed. “It’s not that much.”
“You were ravished—”
“Not really,” she said. “I suppose the colonel shared that with you?”
“Well, regardless, I’m not sure that being deceived by that villain made it much better,” said Mr. Darcy. “It may have made it worse in some ways.”
“Well, I thought I was with child, and that would have been impossible,” she said.
“Yes, and when you look back on that, it probably just makes his sins against you worse because you see how he manipulated you and lied to you.”
She hung her head. “True.”
“And then, right on the heels of all of that, discovering that all of the foundations of your life, everything you had thought to be true was false? I can’t imagine how it is you’re not unraveling.”
She let out a little, strangled laugh. “Oh, perhaps I am.”
He thought about it, about the way she’d been behaving lately. They’d all thought that moving into that house as an unmarried woman alone was a bit eccentric, possibly courting whispers about her reputation. Then, she’d apparently agreed to go to bed with Richard without marrying him, which…
He had not thought about that from her point of view, had he? Why would she have done such a thing, however?
