She lifted her gaze to his at last, and there were tears sparkling in her eyes. “Because I’ve been lying to you, Aiden. I’ve been lying to you since the day we met.”
The first thing that shot through Celia’s body and soul the moment she said those words was abject terror. Aiden was simply staring at her, his eyes wide with confusion and hesitation. The second expression cut like a knife because it drew him away from her, though he continued to hold her hands.
And yet, even as she wrestled with that pain and heartache, there was another emotion that made itself plain: relief. She had spent twenty-four hours reliving her grandfather’s claims about her. That she was like him. That she had lied and should continue to lie in order to get what she wanted.
Those words had haunted her all of last night. But by confessing, she had erased them from her soul. Shewasn’tlike Gregory Fitzgilbert. She wouldn’t use the man she loved, she wouldn’t trap him with a version of herself that didn’t truly exist.
“Celia…” Aiden’s voice was rough. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” She drew her hands away and got to her feet. Now was the time to give him everything. To lay herself bare and hope he could still feel something for her in the end. “And Rosalinde will be back soon, so I know I must explain quickly. Do you know anything of our story? Our past?”
He shifted slightly, and she recognized the answer. Of course he had researched her. As a duke, he would want a good pedigree in his bride.
“I suppose, though, that you only know the public version of who I am, who my family is.”
“The public version,” he repeated slowly.
“Everyone in Society believes that while my mother was spending an extended time with her aunt, she met and married a gentleman and they swiftly had two children, Rosalinde and me. But then she and her husband died in an accident, leaving us to our grandfather’s care.”
Aiden nodded. “Yes, that’s the story I’ve heard. Is there another?”
She pinched her lips together. “Oh yes. There isthatstory and then there is the truth. My grandfather was and is a horrible, horrible man. Abusive to everyone he can reach, lashing out at the simplest slight. I don’t know what my mother endured, but it was enough that she fell in love and ran away with a servant from his house.”
Aiden stood. “A servant?”
His tone was unreadable beyond surprise, and she watched him closely as she continued. “Yes. They fled from my grandfather and never married. Gray presumes that is because the reading of the bannes might have revealed their location to Fitzgilbert and put them in danger. So, my first confession to you is that my father was no gentleman. And the second is that I am thebastarddaughter of no gentleman.”
Aiden’s face was still indecipherable. He revealed nothing, but he never looked away from her. Like he was judging every nuance, every word, every motion.
“But you said you made a bargain with your grandfather. What does that mean?” he asked.
“This leads to my third…well, it isn’t a lie exactly, but a betrayal.” She turned away from his focused attention and tried to keep the terror and guilt from her voice as best she could. “My sister and I grew up believing our mother and father had died together. But when I came of age, my grandfather told me the truth. My fatherdidn’tdie in an accident. My mother died birthing me, but my father lives still.”
Aiden stepped toward her. “What? Then why would he let such a bastard take you?”
She spun on him. “I don’t know. He was a servant with no resources and two daughters he hadn’t married to claim. My grandfather was rich and powerful and cruel. I have to hope that Fitzgilbert simply swept in and took us, leaving our father little choice but to let us go. Either way,thatis what truly happened. My father is alive and the only person in this world that knows his true identity is my grandfather. Long ago, he promised to reveal that identity only after I…after I…”
“What, Celia, what did he require you do?” Aiden asked.
She squeezed her eyes shut to calm herself before she opened them and looked him in the eye. “After I married a title. Hence, my engagement to Stenfax. He needed my grandfather’s money, I needed his title for access to the truth. And he is a good man, but I never felt anything for him.”
For the first time since she began pouring her heart out to him, Aiden smiled slightly. “And the broken engagement?”
“Another fiction,” Celia sighed, realizing perhaps for the first time, just how filled with lies her life was. “Rosalinde and Gray trulydidfall madly in love.”
“Anyone with eyes can see that.”
“But Stenfax and Ididn’tstep aside to appease my grandfather. Exactly the opposite, actually. Rosalinde tried to stop our marriage because she could see I didn’t love him, nor him me, and she wanted me to have a chance at happiness,truehappiness. When she did, our grandfather viciously attacked her.”
Aiden jolted. “He attacked her? Physically?”
Celia began to shake as she remembered that horrible day just a few months before. “Yes,” she whispered. “He tried to choke her to death in a rage. Gray’s swift action is the only reason he didn’t succeed. The claim of our stepping aside for the love of Rosalinde and Gray was made to reduce the scandal caused by the spectacle.”
“Because people saw the physical altercation between Danford and Fitzgilbert,” Aiden mused. “I wondered what would cause such a thing. But if your grandfather threatened your sister…”
“Yes.Thatis poking a lion. Gray would die to protect her. And I can’t be sorry it all happened, for it allowed my sister great happiness. Besides, the breaking of my engagement was for the best. After all, I metyou. But I…I…still want to know who my father is.”
Aiden nodded immediately, although she couldn’t believe for a moment that he actually understood that drive. Not when he had been raised with family and privilege.
