He couldn’t wrap it up into such a neat package. At least, not yet.
“Cam—John—is my half-brother! Our father cheated on Cam’s mother withmymother. If he knew, that alone would hurt him. He revered his father.”
He fell silent a moment, then shook his head. “John Angsley is truly my blood brother, yet I cannot tell him. For then, he would have to keep this secret from his mother. And that would gut him.”
He groaned. “How will I look Lady Cambrey in the eyes when she returns from London?”
“As you always have,” Eleanor assured him. “Look at her as a dear woman who has treated you with kindness and who took you into her home when you were a little boy, to be companion to her only surviving child.”
He thought about that. “I’m glad she doesn’t know. She is a gracious lady, and she might have viewed me differently had she known I was her husband’s bastard. I’m glad he’s dead,” he finished, knowing he spoke harshly.
She lay her hand upon his arm. “I never knew him, but I have always understood Gideon Angsley to have been a kind and smart man. However, no one ever said he was infallible.”
He looked at her, captivated by her soft brown eyes.
“I cannot begrudge him his infidelity,” she added, “for I cannot bear the thought of you not existing. And I would wager everyone who knows you would feel the same way, particularly John.”
He sighed, the best he could do in lieu of a smile.
Eleanor reached her hand to the back of his neck, tugging at him to lean closer. When he did, she kissed him, full on the mouth, in front of Percy and any stable boy who might be watching. She even nibbled on his lower lip as she drew away.
“Does that feel any different?”
“No,” he said begrudgingly.
“Are we still getting married?” she asked.
“I’m a bastard,” he pointed out.
She shrugged. “I’m happy to be Mrs. O’Connor. If I were another Angsley wife, like my sister, it would only confuse matters.”
He smiled.How could she make light of such an important matter?Yet, with a few words, she had lessened the tension inside him.
“Would you love the Angsleys or Beryl and her siblings or John any differently or any more if you had known?” she asked, leaning her head against his shoulder.
He pondered her question. He’d always thought of them as family, and without knowing the truth, treated his cousins as his cousins and Cam as his brother.
“No,” he agreed. “In my heart, everything is the same. Except now I know who my father was and what he was like, instead of him being a mysterious man from the distant past who never knew me.”
“And the earl made sure to have you close so you would, indeed, know him,” she pointed out.
Unexpectedly, tears pricked his eyes.
Dammit!He was going to cry if he wasn’t careful.
“Your mother is worried you hate her.”
“Dear God! Of course not. She did everything for me, including giving me up to be raised by the man who didn’t love her and by the wife whom he adored.”
“That must have been hard for her,” Eleanor agreed, refusing to let him wallow.
“I know.” Then he thought of the proof. “But that ring must stay with her. If it ever was found with us at Turvey House, it would hurt people.”
She nodded her agreement, then cocked her head at him in a way he found utterly enticing. As usual, when he looked at her sweet, upturned mouth, he had to force himself to listen to her words and not merely watch her lips.
“Although, there may come a time,” Eleanor pointed out, as they began to walk back to his mother’s lodging, “when our sons and daughters are older, you may want to tell them who their grandfather was. And by then, it might not hurt anyone. Maybe then, you will claim your ring.”
Grayson drew her arm through his. Up ahead, his mother was standing by her front door, waiting. He waved to her to signal all was well.
