“I just wanted to be loved, but he was as cold as you, once I’d—” She had the grace to blush. “Once I’d submitted to his desires. It was only once, just one time, I swear. I kept his letters, read them over and over, knew that someday—”
He felt his head start to buzz. “Letters?There’s more than one? How many?”
“I don’t remember!” she pleaded.
“You do,” he insisted. “How many letters?”
“Eight!” she sobbed.
“All like this one?” he asked, horrified, imagining the intimate details of his cuckolding spreading like plague, being read aloud in salons all over London, discussed by gentlemen in the clubs and gaming hells.
She forced herself up. “I did it for you, Ellison. He wouldn’t acknowledge her, wouldn’t answer my letters after she was born. But I had these”—she reached for the page in his hand, but he held it away from her. “I wanted to make him pay, wanted to force him to acknowledge her, to marry her to royalty. Surely you can see how advantageous a royal marriage would be for us?”
He stared at her. “You tried to blackmail the Prince of Wales?”
She ran a hand through the tangles of her hair, preening. “I gave him what he wanted. Now he must pay.”
“You’re a fool,” he whispered. “He was myfriend. How he must have laughed all these years, knowing his cuckoo was in my nest. He danced with Sophie at her come-out ball—oh, what an honor, what a jest!” Bitter acid filled his mouth. He turned away to spit in the chamber pot. When he turned back, Elizabeth was watching him. She had the gall to look proud, even in her drugged state.
“You didn’t think I was beautiful, but he did. He wrote me poems. He swore he couldn’t live without me, would harm himself if I did not submit to him—”
“And he wrote this down?” Bray demanded. “In letters?” Oh, the stupidity! He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefingers. “Does Sophie know?”
“Of course not. I wanted to wait until Prinny arranged a suitably important marriage for her before I told her—”
He laughed bitterly. “I have raised her to the highest consequence, insisted on the best tutors, the finest modistes, the most esteemed company. I had no idea I was raising a princess.”
She raised her chin. “And now you do. Perhapsyoucould convince His Highness to see that Sophie must be married as befits her station in life,” she said.
“Her station in life is the bastard product of a roll in the hay between two of the stupidest people in England!”
Her face fell, her slack jaw dropping to her chest. He had no more to say. His anger had been spent, and the bottom had dropped out of his world in the space of a morning. He turned away from the bed, unable to look at her.
“Your maid will pack your things. You’re leaving at once.”
“Where am I going?” she whined.
“Carswell Park for the time being. I will decide where you’ll go more permanently later.”
“Ellison, please!” she begged, trying to rise from the bed. She was a ruin, a parody of a lady turned whore. He let his gaze move over her, taking in her eyes, red and bleary from drugs and tears, her expensive lace nightdress, rumpled and stained, and the tangled mass of hair falling around her like the locks of a madwoman.
Perhaps he’d send her to a madhouse as part of his revenge.
He crossed to the door, opened it. Her maid jumped back from the keyhole, nearly knocking over the footman crouching behind her. Both servants regarded him with wide-eyed expressions of feigned innocence, but he knew they’d heard everything.
“Pack her things,” he said to the maid. “She’s to be ready to leave for Carswell Park within the hour. You will accompany her, and so will you.” He included the footman. Let them rot with their secret on the Welsh border for a while. There’d be no one to gossip with on the wild edge of civilization. “You are to speak to no one before you go, is that clear? I will know if you say even one word of what has occurred here,” he said menacingly.
They both nodded, fear in their eyes now, wordlessly obedient, suitably terrified.
He stalked down the hall, passing Sophie’s apartments. He could hear the dissonant clatter of a pianoforte being badly played. She was having her lesson. He paused outside the door. He usually liked to go in and listen, play the indulgent father. His fist clenched. Not today. He wasn’t sure he could ever look at her again. For a moment he considered sending her away with her mother. But questions would be asked. Sophie was the Season’s most popular debutante. People would want to know why she’d left Town so suddenly. What if the prince asked him about her? Would he have the gall? And the stories thetonwould make up for themselves would be every bit as ruinous as the truth.
He cringed as she played another wrong note. She was still his daughter in the eyes of the law, his to dispose of as he wished. Elizabeth expected him to marry the girl to royalty, did she? He’d do the opposite. He’d marry the girl off quickly and quietly, to the most minor lord he could find—anyone who’d take her, so long as he took her far, far away.
CHAPTERFIVE
The butler who opened the door of Westlake House was crisply dressed and wide-awake, as if it were noon instead of barely dawn. If he was surprised to see Alec on the doorstep, he gave not the slightest indication. He simply stepped back and let him enter the cavernous hall, assuming that Alec had been summoned, and had come at once, the hour notwithstanding.
“Good morning, Northcott,” Alec said, stepping over the threshold into the Earl of Westlake’s home, and handing Northcott his hat as he did so.
