Her.
His father’s mistress had born a girl.
“You’ve another daughter, then,” he said dispassionately. “Congratulations.”
“Her name is Joanna. And it was better that I never went to see her. She was raised to believe that another man was her father. I never wanted to dissuade her of that notion.”
Of course not.
Why would the marquess care for a third child when he couldn’t be bothered with his first two?
“Does Anne still have the ring?” Weston asked.
A long pause, and then…“I don’t know.”
Incredulous, he whirled to face his father. “You don’tknow?”
“Anne…Anne passed away when Joanna was still a young girl. Scarlet fever,” Jason said heavily. “I don’t know what became of the ring after that.”
“And you never thought to find out?”
The marquess glared at his son. “Should I have arrived on their doorstep while they were still in mourning and order them to return it to me?”
“No, you never should have given it away to begin with.” As a quiet rage took hold of him, the likes of which he was always exceedingly careful to control, Weston forced himself to take a step back. “Mama would have wanted my wife, the future mother of my children, to have the ring. Not some American harlot.”
His father’s face turned a deep, mottled red. “If you want it, then go find it.”
And that was what Weston did. With no leads to go on other than a name and a location, he hired the best personal investigator that his vast wealth could buy to find the ring. In a twist of incredible fate, Weston’s search coincided with the ring appearing at a jeweler’s shop in Boston. The investigator, Harrison, had already paid off every jeweler within thirty miles of the city to immediately notify him should a priceless heart-shaped ruby be brought to them, and when it did, he had one of his so-called “pocket boys” nab the ring and steal onto the first ship bound for London.
As soon as the ring was in Weston’s possession, he had paid the investigator twice his asking fee, then another hundred pounds for his discretion. He still hadn’t bothered to tell his father. As far as he was concerned, the marquess didn’t deserve to know. But he had shared all that he knew with Brynne, if only because the weight of it all was better shared between two people, and if she were to ever discover he’d kept a secret of this magnitude from her, she’d never speak another word to him again.
And that was it.
The matter was resolved.
Or at least ithadbeen until this morning when he rode through Hyde Park…and saw his damned half-sister.
Weston wouldn’t have known who she was if not for the picture the investigator had his pocket boy draw at Weston’s request. Sheer curiosity had driven him to want to know what Joanna looked like, even though he had absolutely no intention of ever meeting his father’s bastard.
The sketch had been childish and lacking in detail, but it was accurate enough that when Weston saw the tall, red-haired, blue-eyed woman marching through the park, he knew at once who she was.
What he didn’t know was what the hell she was doing here.
“Do you think she’s come for the ring?” he asked Brynne.
His sister tapped her paintbrush against her chin. “One would assume. Youdidsteal it from her.”
“You cannot steal what is rightfully yours,” he growled.
“But if it was left to her by her mother—”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters a great deal to her, I believe, if she’s traveled all the way to London.” Brynne crossed her legs at the knee. “What are you going to do, West? If our sister asks for the ring back.”
“I’ll tell her that I’ll give it to her.” He smiled grimly. “Over my cold, dead body.”
Chapter Twenty
