“What station is that, exactly?” Ellis asked, giving in to her anger in front of the duchess for the first time. “My station is the only thing you’ve ever given me. I’m a bastard because of your behavior. It’s a mark against you, not me.”
“Me?” The duchess narrowed her eyes. “Society does not look at it that way. You should close the door. I can’t imagine you want the entire household hearing what I have to say.”
Ellis hesitated. On the one hand, she didn’t particularly care if the household heard anything, but on the other, she’d always been a private person, or at least a person used to clinging to the shadows. In the end, she moved away from the door without closing it and glared at the duchess in open mutiny.
“I don’t particularly want to hear what you have to say. How did you even infiltrate the house? It’s my understanding you’ve been banished.”
The duchess pursed her lips again and strode past Ellis to close the door firmly. She turned back and moved to stand in the center of the room, once more clasping her hands in a ladylike fashion before her waist. “If you think I have no way to enter the house I called home for more than two decades, you are even more foolish than I thought. I’ve come to discuss something with you. I informed your employer—rather, your lover—that you are illegitimate.”
Ellis paused. Had Roman known that already when she’d told him?
She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did you do? And when?”
“Does any of that really matter?” the duchess asked in annoyance.
“I’m merely curious, because I’ve already told him that I’m illegitimate,” Ellis explained.
“I see,” the duchess murmured. “Well, as you pointed out, I’ve been pushed out of the family, and I find myself in need of funds. I had hoped that Keele would pay for my silence regarding your unfortunate background, but he refused.”
She’d tried to extort Roman? Ellis couldn’t believe the woman’s gall. She was overjoyed that Roman had denied the duchess, but why hadn’t he told her?
The duchess continued, interrupting Ellis’s thoughts. “I’m afraid my only option now is to find a way to earn money for myself. The only means I can think of is to publish a memoir in which I will detail your father’s affairs, as well as my own indiscretion—and I may as well include the story of your brother’s fake betrothal and how he never really intended to marry that strumpet, but then she trapped him with a child. You must agree it’s a riveting tale of one of Society’s most prominent families.”
Ellis gaped at the duchess, unable to believe what she was hearing. “You would ruin the entire family, including yourself…for money?”
The duchess shrugged. “What else am I to do? Henlow will no longer pay for my house in Bath, nor will he allow me to stay at the dower house at Beacon Park, nor will he pay for me to live anywhere in London. What am I to do?”
“Why is that any of our responsibility, especially your children? We don’t owe you anything.”
“You owe me life.” The duchess snarled.
Ellis could do nothing but laugh. “After the way you’ve treated me the past seventeen years, the only thing I owe you is my eternal loathing. You are the worst person I have ever known, and this threat you’ve just made only proves my point.”
Breathing deep to calm her rage, Ellis took a moment to contemplate the woman before her, with whom she shared blood and nothing else. Still, she had memories of the duchess laughing and spending time with her children, just not with Ellis. She’d always thought the duchess loved Min and Sheff, if no one else. “Why do you want to torture everyone, including yourself as well as Sheff and Min? I expect you to torture me—you’ve always done so. But why? What did I ever do? It wasn’t my fault you had an affair with Rowland Harker.”
The duchess’s jaw was tight. Her lips had gone white, and she’d let her hands fall to her sides. “I despised having you in my household,” she spat. “I couldn’t wait to get rid of you the moment you were born. Henlow wanted to raise you as his own, but I wouldn’t allow that. He insisted on placing you with the Dangerfields, who had so desperately wanted a child and didn’t have one.”
Ellis’s heart swelled at the mention of her adoptive parents. She missed them so very much.
“Every time I looked at you, I saw Rowland Harker,” the duchess went on. “You were—you are—a constant reminder of the abhorrent mistake I made, and I know that’s why Henlow wanted you in this household. His cruelty was unparalleled. It wasn’t enough that he paraded his mistresses around and behaved like an utter reprobate.”
The duchess seemed to have no idea of her hypocrisy in saying her husband’s cruelty was unmatched. She could give lessons. But Ellis didn’t have a chance to point this out as the duchess pressed on.
“When I publish the book, I daresay no one will blame me, considering how Henlow has always treated me. They’ll understand that I went elsewhere for affection. The duke is the clear villain of this tale.”
Ellis shook her head. She was beginning to wonder if the duchess might be a little mad. “You can’t do this.”
“You’re not going to stop me. And it’s not as if you can give me any money,” she said with a light, humorless laugh.
Ellis wondered if she could convince Sheff to use the money he would have offered as Ellis’s dowry to pay the duchess off. It would be worth it to remove her from their lives forever.
Her door flew open, and Sheff was there along with Jo and Min. He stalked into the chamber, his dark blue eyes dark with fury. “How the bloody hell did you get in here?”
Jo and Min followed him in. Min appeared equally irate, and Jo only a bit less so.
The duchess lifted her chin. “This was my home until you so cruelly threw me out.”
“When I find who let you in, I will dismiss them immediately,” Sheff growled. “Nobody wants you here. I’ll escort you out.”
