Margaret made a gurgling sound, half disbelief, half dread. “There’s more?”
“Of course there’s more,” Lucas muttered, delighted.
Emma elbowed him hard.
Lady Beaumont drew in a breath that appeared to age her by a decade.
“What I have shared,” she said slowly, “is only the beginning of the truth.”
The air tightened. Several people leaned forward without meaning to.
Margaret shook her head, her voice thin. “Mother… how could there possibly be more thanthis?”
Sophie’s hands fluttered towards her sketchbook, as if she needed something to hold onto. “What else could there be?”
Lady Beaumont smoothed her trembling hands over the tablecloth, lifted her chin, and said:
“It is time you knew the truth about Thomas.”
The effect was instant.
Sophie looked up at once at hearing her father’s name, her green eyes widening. “Dad?”
Lady Beaumont put her lips together before speaking again.
“Thomas,” she repeated, “was not the duke’s son.”
The silence deepened, sharp, electric.
“He was Edward’s.”
Sophie’s mug slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the table and splashing tea across her notebook. She gasped, a sound soraw it felt ripped from her chest and reached blindly for Lucas. He caught her instinctively, holding her trembling shoulders.
“What?” she whispered. “What do you mean?”
Lady Beaumont closed her eyes, as if bracing herself against the pain her confession was causing.
“Thomas was Edward’s child,” she said again, firmer this time. “Conceived before I was forced to end our relationship.”
Margaret screeched so sharply it echoed. Her hand pressed against her throat, pearls shifting beneath her fingers.
“Oh my God. No. No, that can’t— mother, what…”
Caroline’s eyes went as wide as saucers. “Oh my god!”
Richard blinked rapidly, as though someone had just spoken in another language. “But… but the duke…”
“Raised Thomas as his own,” Lady Beaumont said. “We married quickly. Discreetly He agreed to the arrangement because it benefitted him financially.”
Her voice broke.
Across the table, Sophie’s entire body was shaking. “You… you never told him? My father died thinking—” She cut herself off, pressing both hands to her mouth. Tears pooled and overflowed between her fingers. “He never knew?”
“No,” Lady Beaumont whispered. “I could not bear to shame him, or you. Or myself. And by the time I found the courage to speak the truth, the window had long closed.” She glanced down at the table. “When my husband passed, I found myself standing in a life that had never belonged to me. A life built on duty, expectation, and performance.”
Her attention flicked briefly to Margaret.
“I wanted… silence,” she admitted. “A life not constantly observed by society or my own family’s relentless standards. I wanted my children to be allowed to breathe without the suffocating weight of titles and scrutiny.”
