Richard leaned against the bookshelf, arms folded, watching the door.
The front door opened. Harding’s voice carried from the entrance hall. Footsteps, quick and agitated, grew louder in the corridor.
Lord Langham entered the parlor at a pace just short of a run. His face was flushed. His cravat was crooked. His eyes swept the room and landed on Charlotte, and every drop of color drained from his cheeks.
“Charlotte.” The name came out strangled. He stared at his eldest daughter as though she were an apparition. “Where have you— What is— How long have you?—”
“Langham.” Evander stepped forward. “Sit down.”
“I will not sit down.” Lord Langham’s voice climbed. His gaze ricocheted from Charlotte to Richard to William to Mary and back to Charlotte. “Someone will tell me what is happening. My daughter vanishes for five months, and now she is sitting in your parlor, and there is a man beside her I have never seen in my life, and you expect me to sit down?”
“Langham, please?—”
“It has beenmonths, Your Grace. Months of silence. Months of me telling every drawing room in London that my daughter is visiting family in the north, which no one believed, and every week another letter arrives asking after her health, and I have run out of ways to lie.” Langham’s hand shook as he pointed at Charlotte. “And now she is here, and she looks as though she has been living in a barn, and there is a stranger holding her hand,and Lord Richard is standing by your fireplace as though he has been here all along, and I am expected to sit down?”
“Papa—” Charlotte started.
“Do not.” Langham held up a trembling finger. “Do not speak to me yet. I am not ready to hear you speak yet.” He turned back to Evander, his chest heaving, his cravat damp with sweat. “I demand an explanation, Your Grace. I demand to know what has happened to my daughter, and who that man is, and why I was not informed the moment she set foot in London.”
“You were not informed because I needed Charlotte here first and calm before you arrived, which made calm impossible.” Evander’s voice dropped to the growl that had silenced Lord Whitmore at the Atherton ball. “Which is precisely what you are doing. Sit. Down.”
Lord Langham opened his mouth. Evander held his gaze. The parlor was very quiet. Charlotte gripped William’s hand. Mary held her breath.
Lord Langham sat.
Evander remained standing. He positioned himself between Langham and the settee where Charlotte and William sat, a placement that was deliberate and that Langham noticed.
“Charlotte has returned to London,” Evander began. “She is safe and well. The child, Thomas, is hers. Not Richard’s.” He let thatland before continuing. “The father is Mr. William Harcourt, the man sitting beside her. They are in love, they intend to marry, and I have arranged for them to establish a home in France, where William will continue his academic career at the Université de Paris.”
Lord Langham’s mouth opened and closed. His face cycled through white, gray, and a mottled red that crept from his collar to his temples.
“Not Richard’s,” he repeated. His voice was very quiet. “The child is not Lord Richard’s.”
“No.”
“Then who—” Langham’s gaze swung to William. He looked at the young man the way a butcher looks at a carcass he is deciding how to portion. “Who are you?”
William stood. “William Harcourt, my lord. I am a scholar of legal history at the Royal Society, and I am the father of your grandson.”
The mottled red in Langham’s face deepened to crimson. He turned to Charlotte.
“You.” The word came out like something spat. “You let this… this nobody compromise you! You brought shame on this family, on your name, on everything I have spent my life building… for a man with no fortune and no title who writes papers about deadlawyers!” He rose from his chair. “You are a disgrace, Charlotte. A disgrace! Your mother would be?—”
“Do not.” Mary’s voice cut through the room. “Do not bring our mother into this.”
Langham turned to Mary. “You knew about this?”
“I learned the truth two days ago. And I have spent those two days watching my sister weep with relief at being reunited with her child, while you have spent the past five months worrying about your reputation.” Mary stepped forward. “Charlotte made a choice. She fell in love. She is not the first woman in England to do so, and she will not be the last. But she is your daughter, and she is sitting in front of you asking for your blessing, and if the first words out of your mouth are shame and disgrace, then the failure here is not hers.”
Langham’s jaw worked. “You do not understand the position this puts us in. Theton?—”
“Thetonwill think what I tell them to think.” Evander stepped beside Mary. “Charlotte and William will marry. They will raise their son in Paris with my full financial support. The story London receives will be that Lady Charlotte Gillies fell in love with a scholar, married abroad, and chose a quieter life on the Continent. Anyone who speculates otherwise, anyone who whispers a word against Charlotte, William, or that child, will answer to me. Personally.”
The room went still. Evander held Langham’s gaze, and the older man flinched because the Duke of Blackholm was making a threat that was not a social nicety. It was a statement of fact.
“And the baby?” Langham’s bluster had thinned, but it had not disappeared. “The child who has been living under your roof for seven weeks? The one that all of London believes is Lord Richard’s? What happens when that child vanishes, too? People will talk. They will notice. They will say the Duke and Duchess of Blackholm took in a bastard child, and then the child disappeared, and then Charlotte reappeared in France with a baby of exactly the same age. The mathematics is not difficult.”
“The mathematics are my concern, not yours.” Evander’s voice did not waver. “I will manage the narrative. I have managed worse.”
