William stared toward the dark ceiling. He could picture it all clearly, even after a dozen years. “I took him to her. Even delirious, she knew him. She screamed. He had her taken away. I went to his home. He said he was having her taken care of. I begged to see her. Finally, I was allowed.”
A servant had taken him in a rented hackney, but had been told not to enter. No one was to know who William visited that day at the prison. A jailer who wasn’t told his name brought him to his mother, huddled on a cot in a cell. “I wasn’t allowed in the cell. She was too ill to come to the bars. That’s when she told me why we’d left, what happened to Charles. She told me, too, to do as the marquess asked. Always. She said a man filled with so much hatred couldn’t live long, and then I would be free of him, but for now I must not anger him.”
He shook his head, trying to scatter the memories. Her tears as she said she loved him. The hard knowledge, as the jailer returned, that he would never see her again.
He cleared his throat. “The marquess never told anyone. The world thought my mother had gone mad, and then died. Madelina doesn’t know she was born out of wedlock, and her mother never knew she wasn’t legally married to the old man. Not that knowing would have saved her when he pushed her down the stairs.”
“Pushed her down the stairs?” Lanora repeated, her voice as dazed as her dimly seen expression.
“There’s no proof. He said she fell.” Another surge of guilt welled in him. “I knew he beat her. I should have intervened.”
“You were a boy.”
“I was seventeen when she died.” Old enough to act.
“So when he married Cecelia, you hid her?”
William nodded. “I did.”
He leaned his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes. All of the memories he kept hidden, all spilled from him in so short a time. God help him, he was tired.
Lanora withdrew her hand. He realized he’d been holding it too tight. Her weight shifted. He kept his eyes shut, not wanting to see her go, even though he hoped she would return. She was Lanora, Darington’s daughter. She would forgive all, understand, and love him. That was how it must be. Still, it hurt when she stood to leave.
The bed shifted. Warmth spread along his right side. Lanora took his arm, wrapping it about her shoulders as she snuggled against him. Her head settled on his chest. She put an arm about him, careful to avoid his stitches.
William kept his eyes closed, not wanting vision to ruin this dream. The honeysuckle scent of her enveloped him. He could almost believe they were in the country, far from London, at peace. That peace stole through him, easing muscles tensed by the anguish of the past. His arm about Lanora, William drifted to sleep, knowing this was how he wanted to spend every night, for the rest of his life.
