20
Kit
“What do you mean, illegitimate?”I asked, stomach twisting.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Robert was not, as it turns out, his father’s biological son,” Father said, slouching low in his armchair while I paced in front of the fire in his rooms. “The timing was all wrong, apparently. Your mother has evidently known for years and kept this information to herself until she could use it to her advantage.”
“But...”
“With Robert and by extension his children out of the picture,youare the oldest legitimate male heir,” Father said.
Which was exactly the thread I’d been tugging at in my own head.
I wanted to be sick.
If I was my maternal grandfather's heir, then that made me...
“I’ll have to start calling you Your Grace,” Father said with a wry smile.
“I’ll bloody well disown you if you do,” I threatened, only half-joking. “I need to sit down.”
Father nudged the other armchair toward me, but I didn’t quite make it, instead sitting heavily on the floor, drawing my knees up and staring into the fire like I had when I was a little boy.
This was too much to process. Too big.
I was the fucking Duke of Hartsworth.
Ten minutes ago I’d been excited to go back to New York with the possibility of really starting a life with Andy on the horizon.
And now, everything had changed. Like I’d been so afraid it was going to one day.
I’d thought I had more time. Decades, at least. Father was in good health and absolutely forbidden from dying on me before I was at least in my fifties andreadyfor all this.
I wasn’t ready.
“I’m not ready,” I said, helplessly, as my father’s fingers stroked through my hair. I hadn’t noticed him moving the armchair.
“Why am I only hearing about it now?” I asked.
Clearly, I’d sailed straight through the denial stage of grief and landed on bargaining.
“Your window to disclaim the title will close on New Year’s Eve,” Father said. “One year from the day your grandfather died. One year from the day on which youtechnicallyinherited.”
I’d almost forgotten. I’d never been close to my grandfather—my only remaining grandfather.
“She wasn’t planning to tell me until it was too late,” I said, numb from shock.
“Nor me,” Father agreed. “But she drunkenly revealed all last night in the middle of an argument about you and Andy. I knew she was up to something, but I couldn’t have predicted this. I’m sorry, Kit. I wouldn’t have let it go this far if I’d known. You would have had more time.”
I sat and stared into the fire for long moments, static buzzing in my head in place of coherent thought.
Andy.
How was I going to tell Andy about this?
Things were still so new between us, our relationship was so fragile. This would easily be enough to break it. He’d reacted so badly to finding out what I really was, how could I tell him it was so much worse than he thought?
