But something about his self-satisfied smile made Nicholas sit up. This was not a stranger. They had met once before at the picnic.
“Oliver,” he said, doing his best to remain perfectly calm. “Please leave us.”
Oliver hesitated for a moment, then rose and moved to the other side of the room. The man sat in his seat, and Nicholas adjusted his hold on the glass of scotch so he wasn’t in danger of shattering it. “I have nothing more to say to you,” he muttered.
“Oh, but I have a lot I would like to say toyou.” The man grinned, revealing gapped teeth. His only distinguishing feature. “You see, you have yet to act.”
“There is nothing to say. I have no intention ofacting, and regardless of your claims, Sophia is my daughter. She was born under my roof, to my name, and I have raised her.”
“Ah, but blood is blood.”
Rage boiled in Nicholas. After Grace had died, he had come to suspect she had been unfaithful during the latter years of their marriage. She’d been bitter and resentful, and had spent more and more time outside the house in York, often unable to fully account for her whereabouts. His anger against her then had been immense, but ultimately she had died before anything could be resolved.
The letter had shaken things, but he had dismissed it—that she had been unfaithful toward the end of their marriage, he could believe, but before? Before Sophia was born? They had still been happy then—or so he had thought.
The doubt niggled at him; he could not with all certainty claim it was untrue. Grace was capable of it at one point, so what was to say she was not capable of it at an earlier part?
But all that didn’t matter. Men like him often raised bastards as their own to avoid scandal, or even unknowingly. So long as Sophia carried his name—his—then no one would question matters.
“What is your name?” Nicholas asked.
“You may call me Sherborne,” the man said, although that was not the question—Nicholas wanted to knowwhohe was. He had obviously already made investigations into Sherborne’s identity, but thus far, had made no real progress.
“Then you should know something,Sherborne,” Nicholas started, baring teeth. “No matter what you offer me, or what you threaten, I am not a man who will bow to your demands. No matter your wealth, I have more. My influence is larger. I suggest you leave now while you still can.”
“She came to me first after a fight,” Sherborne began, his tone contemplative, as though he was recalling an amusing anecdote. “You had both argued, and she told me she could not imagine a life living in that big house with no escape.”
Nicholas could not remember the specific fight, but they’d had many like it over the years. He gritted his teeth. “Watch your tongue.”
“If anything, I believesheseducedme. You could call me herbit of rough, though that is a subjective term. Compared to a duke, any man is socially inferior. But not, I might say, inferior inother ways. She told me how much she enjoyed being with me.Someone who would rut her silly. You were always so restrained with her, Winchester. I believe it came to be a bit of a bore.”
Years ago, Nicholas would have struck the bounder down where he stood. Alas, his feelings for Grace had quelled over the past years, no more so than when Isadora had entered his life. Now, Sophia and Isadora were his only concerns. Nothing more. This blackguard’s brash-faced tales could go hang.
Nicholas sipped his scotch and then placed it down carefully on the table. “Coming to gloat over the affections of a dead woman is a trifle pitiful, is it not?”
He sneered. “She came to me many times over the next few months. I believe she loved me, but love is neither here nor there, because she told me the child was mine once she knew she was carrying. And she told me that she wished formeto raise the babe.”
Whatever the truth of Grace’s faithfulness, Nicholas knew she would never have made such a request. Even had she loved Sherborne—and he doubted she had, for Grace’s affections seldom survived their usefulness—she would not have wanted Sophia raised in his house. Grace loved people according to what they could provide, and Sherborne had never been capable of changing her position.
Nicholas, regrettably, had been a duke.
Grace was never the kind of woman who would have exchanged a ducal nursery for sentiment.
“So, you see,” Sherborne said, spreading his arms, “I only follow her wishes. She died… though some might conjecture… waskilled,before she could ever act on them.”
“On the contrary.” Nicholas did his best to keep his voice calm, though he felt his cursed temper rising now at the man’s grotesque implications. “She had ample time to act on those wishes herself, had she chosen to. Sophia was two when her mother died, and she breathed not a word of wishing for Sophia to live in another household, or be claimed by another man.”
He fixed Sherborne with a cold stare.
“In fact, Sophia’s future was perhaps the sole aspect of her life that Grace felt content with. So you have no grounds to make any claims.”
“She ismine.”
Nicholas rose so abruptly he almost knocked over the armchair. “She is not. Whatever her blood, Sophia is a Skeffington. She is my daughter, and your belated interest will not change it.”
“I could tell the world of how your wife chose me over you. I know she has a mole between her breasts, right here.” He pressed a finger to his chest. “And a birthmark on her upper thigh the shape of Italy. Do you recall?”
Of course Nicholas recalled—he remembered the blemishes; he thought them charming, once
