Her eyes widened with the sudden icy blast of panic. “You can’t do that!” She grabbed his arm. “What if he doesn’t believe you? You’ll be executed on the spot.”
“I hope it won’t come to that.” He dropped a soft kiss on her mouth. “Have faith in me, love.”
“I do,” she said. “It’s Argyll I don’t trust.” He was doing this for her. She couldn’t let him go through with it. She had to do something. “What if all of us were to come with you—me and the children. We’ll go wherever you want to go until the truth comes out.” Even if it meant sacrificing everything she’d worked to achieve for her son.
He gave her a long look and shook his head. “I’d not ask you to do that. I’ll not strip your children of the future that rightly belongs to them. I’ll not see your son deprived of his—”
“He’s not Francis’s son,” she blurted. The words were out before she could take them back.
The room went completely still. He didn’t move a muscle. The eyes were black as coal, boring into her with a cold intensity she’d never seen before. “What did you say?”
The change in him was instantaneous. His voice was so hard and flat it was nearly unrecognizable. Panic fluttered wildly in her chest. Knowing this moment was inevitable didn’t make it any easier now that it was here. But she trusted him. He would understand. He would do the right thing.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her naked from the bed, holding her more harshly than he ever had before. His hand felt like a steel clamp around her upper arm. “Tell me what you said,” he repeated.
She lifted her chin, bracing herself for the maelstrom. “Dougall is your son.”
He looked at her as if she’d just shot him again. His fingers bit into her arm. He swore—a vile curse she’d never heard him use. “You lied to me. How could you keep this from me?”
The cold accusation in his eyes cut her to the core. He was looking at her as if he didn’t know her. He was looking at her the way he’d looked at her that night ten years ago when he’d snuck into her room and accused her of betraying him.
The look shattered the rein she had on her control. How dare he act as if she’d wronged him! She’d done the best that she could under the circumstances. All she’d done had been for her child—fortheirchild.
She jerked her arm out of his hold and shoved him away from her. “It was you who left us, Duncan.Youleft me pregnant and alone.” His head jerked as if she’d slapped him, but she didn’t care. He wanted the truth, he would hear it. “I swallowed my pride after you’d so cruelly accused me of betraying you and went to Castleswene to tell you that I was carrying your child only to discover that you’d left. How do you think I felt? What was I supposed to do?” Her voice shook with emotion. “I was terrified of what would happen if anyone found out. I couldn’t bear to think of the scandal my mistake would bring down on my innocent child. I knew what it would be like for him—as I’m sure you do.” He flinched, but she didn’t care. “So when Francis Gordon asked me to marry him I did what I had to do. Don’t you dare judge me.”
His eyes narrowed. “You deceived him, too.”
She balled her fists, for the first time in her life close to striking someone. “I told him everything. Every ugly bit of it. The man you sought to blame for your predicament, who you wanted to destroy, knew the child I carried was yours, but vowed to love and raise him as his own. A vow he kept.” That stopped him for a moment, but it did not stop her. Anger erupted inside her. Anger that had been contained for a very long time. “And what did he get in return? A pitiful excuse for a wife. A woman who could not love him, because her heart still foolishly longed for the man who’d broken it.”
“You never loved him,” he said flatly.
She turned away, removing the plaid from the bed to wrap it around her. Suddenly she felt naked and cold. “Nay, I couldn’t even give him that. To both our great disappointment.”
Duncan didn’t want to hear about the saintly Francis Gordon—the man who’d raised his son. He didn’t want to hear her bloody excuses.
The betrayal cut deep and raw.My son, damn her.How could she keep something like that from him? He’d convinced himself to believe in her, and she’d been lying to him the entire time.
He’d known. Part of him had known the boy was his, but he’d chosen to believe her. Fool. “How did you do it?” he asked stonily. “How did you hide his birth?”
She sat on the edge of the bed, weary, as if her impassioned defense had taken everything out of her. “After the battle, Huntly and most of the high-ranking clansmen involved were forced into exile. Francis didn’t go with his father to the continent, but we removed to one of the Gordon’s remote castles up north. We took only a few trusted servants with us and didn’t return for two years. There was no reason for anyone to question our story.” She paused. “I think my father suspected, but he never voiced his suspicions.”
“How convenient for all involved. Gordon stole my son and no one ever questioned it.”
Her cheeks flamed. “He gave your son everything you denied him when you left.”
Knowing that there was an element of truth to what she said didn’t make it any easier to hear. Duncan was so angry he didn’t trust himself to stay another minute—he might say something he would regret. That they both would regret.
“That will change.”
Her face paled. “What do you mean?”
He met the panic in her gaze with determination. “What do you think? I intend to claim my son.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
He laughed, throwing the words she’d once said to him back at her. “How are you going to stop me?”
She grabbed him, holding the blanket tight around her neck with one hand and his arm with the other. “You can’t do this. Don’t you see? You’ll destroy everything I’ve done for him.”
