Her mind blanked in shock.
“Your son,” she repeated carefully.
Her capacity for absorbing surprises was nearing its limit.
A half-dozen distinct emotions collided in her chest like billiard balls, all painful and unsubtle. From sort of a surprising and nearly unbearable, melting tenderness to curiosity to stunned amazement.
But the worst, the most distinct, the most shockingandunworthy... was jealousy.
It, in fact, pressed the breath from her.
Whohad borne him a son?
When?
Where was she now?
Suddenlysomany things she’d noticed about Marchand made more sense. His kindness to the boys from Bethnal Green, his deftness with Daniel Peck. The baby. Missing pieces of the picture of him were flowing into place.
“My son,” he confirmed, again.
He did not expound, and the way he’d said it called to mind a door being firmly shut.
“I... I... didn’t realize you’d been married.”
He turned toward her and tipped his head with a wry “come now” expression, as if she ought to have known better. Then shook it slowly.
One day she would not blush when he matter-of-factly revealed such details of his extraordinary life, and that was the day her mother would roll over in her grave.
Today was not that day.
“Silly me. Wedlock. Such a quaint notion.”
“It’s not a quaint notion,” he said shortly. “But hewasborn out of wedlock. As was I. As I’m certain you’re aware, it’s not generally a cause for rejoicing. But these things happen commonly enough.”
Not in her world, they didn’t. Her parents would have been horrified to know with whom she was casually conversing. These things were disastrous and scandalous in her world, though even she had heard the cautionary tales of girls who had been seduced and abandoned. It was why girls—the aristocratic ones, anyhow—were so scrupulously guarded.
The girls born and raised in St. Giles must be so terribly vulnerable.
She wanted to know all about it, and yet she wasn’t certain she could bear hearing it for a dozen complicated reasons, all of which were less of a revelation to her than they ought to be.
Despite everything, she appreciated how Marchand never made excuses and never apologized for himself.
“Your son... so he’s not the boy I saw in your office?”
He shook his head.
A new thought rattled her. “Mr. Marchand... are you married to anyone now?”
She didn’t know why she’d so blithely assumed that he wasn’t. Suddenly there seemed no reason he couldn’t be, for when had Marchand behaved in an expected way? What did she really know about the rules of the demimonde?
But the sickening plummeting sensation in her stomach was well-nigh unendurable.
She waited what felt like a gruesome eternity for his answer.
“No, Ginny,” he said almost gently. “I’m not married. If I was, I wouldn’t be gallivanting around with the likes of you.” He paused. “Probably.”
She transferred her gaze to her thighs, confused and unnerved by the relief that gusted through her. She felt unworldly and young and off-balance.
