“No, I’m…” God, he wanted this moment over with, but as badly as he wished it done, Lachlan was finding it far more difficult than he’d expected to say what had to be said.
He’d never been a man of many words, butthesewords, these confessions…
I’m not Niall Ramsey’s son. For twenty-eight years I’ve believed I was a Ramsey, but I’m not, and I never was.
He was an Englishman, with an English father, and not justanyEnglish father. No, he was the legitimate son of the Marquess of Huntington. The son of a man he’d never met, and couldn’t imagine, and younger brother to the man who was standing before him now.
The moment had come. For the first time Lachlan wondered if it would be as hard for him to say these words aloud as it would be for Lord Huntington to hear them. What must it be like for him, to be one moment dancing a carefree quadrille with his wife, and in the next to find himself a brother to three strangers?
He cleared his throat. “I’m your younger brother. Not your half-brother, Lord Huntington. Just…your brother.”
Lady Huntington gasped, but Lord Huntington only repeated faintly, “My brother?”
He was gaping at Lachlan in shock, unable to utter another word, and Lachlan’s chest tightened. That baffled, lost look on Huntington’s face…was that howhe’dlooked, the day he’d found out everything he’d believed to be true about himself and his family was nothing but a mountain of lies?
“I should have written, but I didn’t know about you until a few weeks ago, when my mother…” Lachlan cleared his throat. “That is,ourmother, confessed the truth, just before she died. I’ve brought letters that prove…” Lachlan trailed off, his throat closing. Prove what? That they’d all been victims of a lie that had dragged out over decades?
A deafening silence fell over the room, and they might have sat there for hours, all of them staring stupidly at each other, if the old lady sitting beside Hyacinth Somerset hadn’t broken the silence with a sudden, sharp outburst. “But this is outrageous! Brothers don’t simply fall down from the sky, Mr. Ramsey, and drop without warning into the middle of a London ballroom!”
Ciaran’s lips quirked, and he turned to offer her ladyship a mocking bow. “We came from Scotland, ma’am, by way of the Great North Road. The sky had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m the younger son, with no claim to the Huntington title, or the fortune or properties. Isla’s the youngest, our only sister, daughter to our mother and Niall Ramsey. Ciaran…” Lachlan swallowed the bitterness in his throat. “Ciaran’s birth wasn’t as tidy as Isla’s, but our mother and Niall Ramseydidmarry, as I’ve said. We’ll leave it there.”
No one in the room could possibly mistake his meaning, and another tense silence fell over them all. Even the old lady sitting next to Hyacinth Somerset didn’t say a word, though she did take a healthy sniff from her smelling bottle.
The moment stretched on until Lachlan turned to Lady Huntington with an awkward bow. “I suppose this means you’re my sister-in-law, Lady Huntington.”
“Indeed it does.” Ciaran bowed to Lady Huntington. “And Miss Hyacinth our sister-in-law of a sort, too. A large, happy family, and all of us overjoyed to be so, I’m sure. Pity, though, that business about Lachlan killing me.” He turned to Hyacinth Somerset with a wicked grin. “I daresay you agree with me, Miss Somerset, when I say it’s a deuced awkward thing, accusing your brother-in-law of murder.”
Chapter Four
If Lord Huntington was about to throw the Ramseys onto their arses in the street, he’d better call his burliest footmen to do the job, because Ciaran wasn’t likely to go quietly.
Lachlan, who was sprawled in a deep leather chair in his new brother’s study, had opened his mouth to offer this advice when Lord Huntington turned abruptly away from the window, and fixed Lachlan with an intense hazel gaze that was at once both alien, and disturbingly familiar.
Lachlan recognized that gaze. He’d seen it hundreds of times before, staring out at him from his mirror. He and his new brother didn’t look much alike, though. Not really. They were both large men, but Lord Huntington was fairer, his features smoother and more refined, and he looked like what he was—a marquess. He had a sort of easy aristocratic elegance that would forever elude a rough devil like Lachlan.
The eyes, though, the shifting shades of brown and green, each color fighting for supremacy—there was no mistaking the eyes.
They were their mother’s eyes.
“What was she like?”
Lachlan jerked in surprise at the question. He’d been prepared for a flood of words to spew from his lordship’s lips—words likeleave, and never return—but not this.
Lord Huntington stood in front of the window, his hands braced on the sill behind him, waiting. He didn’t clarify who “she” was, and Lachlan didn’t ask him to. There was no need.
“She was…complicated.” Even as he chose that word with care, Lachlan wasn’t sure it was the truth. Maybe their mother had been simple enough, and it was only his feelings for her that were complicated. “You have no memory of her?”
“Hazy images, but not much else. I was very young when she left. I do remember she smelled sweet, like flowers. Or perhaps it was citrus. I couldn’t say for certain.”
“Orange blossoms.” A faint smile curved Lachlan’s mouth.
“Was that it?”
“Yes. Sweet, but with a tart edge to it. It suited her.”
“I’ll have to trust your opinion on that.” Lord Huntington drew away from the window and wandered to the middle of the room, but once he was there, he seemed not to know what to do with himself, and he turned back to Lachlan. “I don’t remember her voice, or much else about her, but I remember that scent.” He paused, then, “The first year after she left, when I still believed she’d come home, I waited for her, every moment of every day. At night, I used to dream she’d come into my bedchamber, and tuck my blankets around me, but a dream was all it ever was. She never came.”
