She cleared her throat delicately. “I am Miss Darcy Whitley.”
“So you have already mentioned, Miss Whitley,” he returned, inclining his head. “Why were you upon my doorstep at such an hour, demanding an audience with me? Courtesy dictates I wait until you are refreshed, but I am impatient and curious. Why are you here?”
Her lips parted, breath catching as if she had rehearsed a speech and now found it stuck in her throat. She drew a steadying breath. “I… I…”
He lifted a brow. “Surely you have come too far to have your wits and courage desert you?”
A pretty flush rose along her cheekbones; before she could answer, one of the girls blurted, high and breathless, “We are yoursisters, my lord. Your family!”
CHAPTER 2
Sebastian stilled, the very breath in him suspended. Then a chill struck clean through his chest like a blade. “I beg your pardon. What did you say?”
Silence tightened the room as the girls stared at him, rigid with fright. The only sounds were the softtickof the mantel clock and the whisper of rain against the windows. The girls continued to look at Sebastian, plainly frightened and uncertain. Then he noted their gazes. Two of the girls had eyes a deep, arresting blue, his very shade, and a small cleft at the youngest chin was his father’s echo.
Shock hammered through him. He took one step forward and halted. Across from him, Miss Whitley rose, her fingers twining so tightly her knuckles blanched.
“Your father—” she began.
“No.” The word cut the air like a heated blade. Anger and disbelief surged swiftly and hotly. “My father would never betray my mother and our family in such a manner, and certainly not for so long, Miss Whitley.”
Sympathy and something else unknown gleamed in her gaze. “He… I am afraid it is true.”
A rough laugh escaped Sebastian. He had never taken a married woman to his bed, nor would he keep a mistress already engaged elsewhere, or a lover who had an attachment. Such honorable guidance was learned at his father’s knee, and this woman would have him believe they were his father’s illegitimate issue. Was the very honour his father taught him a falsehood?
“How old are you?” he demanded, his voice low. “How old are they?”
“I am one-and-twenty,” Miss Whitley said, scarcely above a whisper. “Emelia is sixteen, Jane is thirteen, and Sarah is eleven.”
He inhaled, sharp and painful.One-and-twenty.The youngest eleven. This did not suggest a lapse; it suggested alife. Was his father a bigamist, or was their mother a kept mistress?
Four children.
Sebastian’s stomach turned. Thank God, his mother and younger sister have been settled in Bath for the past couple of weeks, not in town. Even a breath of this would gut his mother and shatter his sister. Many men of fortune and rank kept mistresses; yet his parents, by every account, had loved honestly, respected one another’s sensibilities, and guarded their vows. To think otherwise set his teeth on edge.
A hollowness opened beneath Sebastian’s ribs. Had he known his father at all? The man he had admired above all men, whose counsel he still carried into the Lords when he rose to speak on relief, on trade, on the duties of a nobleman toward those in his care. The voice he had tried to emulate in committee rooms and on the floor might be the voice of a hypocrite. The thought struck like cold iron, and he gripped the edge of his desk to steady himself.
“My lord?—”
“I have heard quite enough, Miss Whitley. In the morning, you will break your fast and then quit my house.”
Her face drained of color. The youngest flinched at his tone, and the middle two pressed closer as if seeking shelter from their oldest sister.
“Please, my lord, allow me to explain all that I know of this matter. Perhaps then, you?—”
“I am not interested in hearing more,” Sebastian said, cold as winter. He would not allow anything to harm his mother and sister. “If you insist, you will leave tonight.”
Tears sprang bright in Miss Whitley’s bright golden-brown eyes, her lips trembled, and she whispered, “Please.”
The single syllable carried an ache that seemed to echo in the spaces between them. It was filled with fear and desperation. Sebastian’s jaw flexed. He could not endure the sight of those girls shrinking into themselves, nor could he stomach turning them out into the street at such a late hour on a wet night. Yet he would not—could not—allow one breath of scandal to touch his mother, his sister and his family’s legacy.
“We have nowhere to go,” Miss Whitley said quietly. “That is the reason I took the risk to travel to London with my sisters. Your father… he is our father, too. He cared for us as he could, and then he died, and Mama… Mama could not endure?—”
“Be silent,” he snapped. “I do not care about your blasted lives!”
She flinched. The youngest gave a soft, wounded sob. Miss Whitley glanced at the girls and drew them closer with trembling hands.
“Our mother died two years later after… after your father,” she managed, seemingly steadied by will alone. “As the eldest, I did my best to care for my sisters. I had no choice but to seek you out… for help, my lord.”
