“Do you know my mama?”
At her daughter’s innocent inquiry, the present came crashing back like the waves against the shore. An undertow of emotions sucked her under: bewilderment, yearning, mortification. She struggled to breathe, frantic thoughts dashing against her skull.
Dear heavens…Glory. Must protect her. Can’t let him find out.
Rhys was still looking at her, only now his dark brows were drawn. His gaze traveled between her and Glory. The golden hazel eyes flickered…with speculation?
Fear cleared her head. Reminded her exactly who he was and who she was—or had been, rather.
Shame thumping in her breast, she told herself that she was no longer that foolish wench. A girl who’d been so dazzled by a handsome gentleman that she’d given up her virginity with no thought to the consequences. Who’d proven that she was a trollop, a Goode through and through. Who’d woken the next morning to find herself in the room of an inn, alone…
With a fifty-pound note left on the table. For services rendered.
The memory of the humiliation centered her. She had no one to blame but herself for the choices she’d made. Yet she’d paid the price in full, and now she’d made a life for herself, one of gentility, and she’d stop at nothing to protect Glory from her past mistakes.
Seeing her daughter’s expectant look (and Patty’s curious one), Maggie knew she had to manage the situation. She put a cork in her emotions and schooled her expression.
“I believe the gentleman once visited the shop,” she said in her most professional tone. “Mister…Johnson, was it?”
“It’s Jones.” His face was inscrutable. “Rhys Jones.”
“If you’ve been to Foley’s,” Glory said to him, her brow furrowed, “why didn’t you mention it earlier?”
Maggie’s breath held, but he said, “It was several years ago and slipped my mind.”
Thank God the man was a good liar. Then again, she oughtn’t to be surprised. A rake like him must have ample experience with running into women who’d shared his bed. Who knew how many wild oats he’d sown up and down the English coast?
You were stupid enough to be one more notch on his bedpost.
The self-disgust that constricted her insides was tighter than any corset. “I do apologize, sir,” she said brusquely, “but I have patrons waiting in the shop. Come, Gloriana—”
“Wait, Mama,” Glory burst out. “Mr. Jonesisa patron. He wants to hire us. And he’s promised to pay usone hundred poundsto find fossils for him. Didn’t you, sir?”
He bowed. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Foley.”
“That will help the shop, won’t it, Mama?” Glory said.
Maggie’s throat cinched at her child’s triumphant smile.Surely God would not be so cruel.
All she wanted was to give her daughter a childhood with the things her own had lacked: respectability and security. Thanks to Paul, she’d succeeded in giving Glory a good name and a life of decency. After his death, she’d tried to hide the financial woes, wanting to protect her girl from adult worries. Apparently, she’d done a shoddy job of it if Glory knew that the shop needed saving—and had had the wherewithal to bargain for a one-hundred-pound fee.
Dumbfounded, she watched as her daughter beamed at Rhys Jones. The man who’d seen Maggie as no more than a whore, who’d bedded her and left her…with a bastard.
As panic thrummed in Maggie’s breast, she told herself that, save for the color of their eyes, Glory and Rhys didn’t look much alike. No one would suspect the disgraceful truth—which she planned to take to her grave. Although she’d told Paul about the circumstances that had led to her pregnancy, she’d never told her husband the identity of her lover. Being a true gentleman, Paul had never pressed her for a name. And when she’d given birth to Glory, she’d been relieved that the girl had taken after her…mostly.
Seeing the bold gleam of gold in her daughter’s green eyes had, at times, unnerved her. Luckily, with her own eyes being green, nothing had seemed untoward. No one had ever questioned that Gloriana was Paul’s child—and she had been, in the ways that mattered.
I won’t let anyone take that away from her, Maggie vowed fiercely.Or from Paul.
Even if Rhys suspected that Glory was his, he likely wouldn’t give a damn. A rake like him probably had by-blows littered across the countryside.
“Is this true, sir?” Hypatia’s hopeful inquiry refocused Maggie’s attention. “You wish to retain the services of Foley’s?”
“Miss Foley, here, has been extoling the virtues of your business,” Rhys said.
He oozed charm. The dimples that had led to Maggie’s downfall were in full display. But more than his good looks, it was his manner: even on a windy beach, with sand upon his boots, he was confident and charismatic, lord of all he surveyed.
Once, Maggie had found his princely manner irresistible; now it aggravated her.
