Finally, she let out her breath in a huff. “It was an act of war!”
“That was why you chose my father’s servant,” he said.
Her shoulders sagged and he could see he had her surrender now. “He never wanted me. Your father, he made that clear. He wanted my father’s money, he wanted…propriety in public. But me? He could barely look at me. I grew to hate him for it. Like a poison that crept into every corner of our life together.”
Lucas stared at her. All these years, how he had resented her for what she’d done. For the parentage she had stolen from him, for the way she’d pushed him away. And yet now he saw her pain. She hid it well. Perhaps he’d inherited his own ability to do the same from her. But beneath that cold mask she wore, that lady-of-the-manor chilliness that kept a wall between her and everyone else, there was the pain. The regret. The loss.
“I made a mistake. Once.” She shook her head. “And then there was you and there was no denying it. Especially when that cad of a valet decided to blackmail me for it.”
Lucas lurched. “He did?”
“Yes.” Her voice was thick with disgust. “He threatened to bring my world down around me.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“Indeed. I even tried to…” She blushed deeper. “Well, I tried to soften your father to me. To make it not so obvious that you weren’t his. It did not work.”
Lucas shut his eyes, pained by the idea of his mother, so alone as she tried to seduce a man who didn’t want her to cover up being seduced by one who had used her. That rejection from the duke had sealed her fate, sealed his own.
“When you came, it ended it all,” she said, lifting her chin. “And yes, I grew to resent you for it. Despise you for it. For your chin, which was like that other man’s. For your laugh that was like his.”
“So did Willowby. Even before I was told the truth, I knew the emotion,” Lucas said softly. “It was no life for a child, to feel that hatred and not understand it.”
She nodded slowly. “I know that. I knew it then, but I was incapable of anything else. In a way, it was a relief when you knew. When you left. When he died.”
“I imagine so. He no longer controlled your purse. He no longer withheld your future. And I no longer reminded you of what you had longed for and lost.” Lucas met her gaze. “And now, looking at me, with the years that have separated us, do you still despise me?”
She examined his face carefully. “When you said you almost died, I admit there was something in my stomach that…lurched. A great desire not to lose what I never wanted or cherished.”
Her words were frank and they still hurt. But he’d asked her for her honesty and there it was. He found, in this moment of calm that had been made possible by Diana’s pushing, that he could understand her. And see the hope that those words created for them.
“I was not his son,” Lucas said. “But I am yours.”
“So you want…what? Some kind of close bond?” She said the words like they were foreign. With a faint lilt of disgust.
“No, I don’t think that’s possible. We’re not built for it, are we, after so much between us?” He sighed. “But that doesn’t mean we must be completely estranged. There is something in the middle, isn’t there?”
He shifted as he said those words. As he felt them in his heart. No matter what else had happened, therewasa place for his mother in his life. Small, perhaps. Distant. But not broken. Not entirely.
Diana had given him the strength to see that. To be able to take the leap to say it to his mother. It was Diana’s gift to him. Her last gift, perhaps, and that turned his stomach far more than the wait for his mother’s response.
“I don’t want to be estranged.” Her words came deliberately. “But how do we move forward?”
“Carefully,” he suggested. “Slowly and with a bit of understanding for each other. Something I don’t think either of us has ever given to the other.”
She nodded. “Very well. I think I can do that.”
He reached out and took her hand. She let him, and he realized it was the first time he had touched her in years—decades, perhaps. After a few seconds, she released him and got to her feet. He followed. The discomfort still hung between them now, but it felt less awful. Less permanent.
It was a start.
There was a knock at the parlor door, and they both turned as Jones entered the room.
“You have an urgent message, Your Grace,” he said as he handed over a folded sheet of paper. “I would not have normally intruded, but the man said it was most important and could not wait.”
The duchess smiled. “It is likely for the best. I’ll leave you to your urgent business. Perhaps you’ll come and call on me for tea in a few weeks. We’ll start with that.”
Lucas nodded and watched as she left the room, Jones on her heels. He turned the note over and blanched. It was Stalwood’s seal that closed the page. The man had a different one for different kinds of messages. This one indicated that the spy should come right away for a meeting. When Lucas opened the page, he was not surprised to find it blank. The seal was the message, nothing more.
