Page 69 of The Madame Catches Her Duke

“The duke knew my mother all those years?” Marce asked in a breathless whisper.

Rowan was stunned into muted silence, unable to gather words, let alone his thoughts.

“Yes, though they did not fall in love until many years later.”

His mother’s words, spoken with such soft affection, were like a shocking punch to Rowan’s gut. Everything he’d believed the last nearly fifteen years, every torturous moment of vengeance he’d spent years imagining and seeking, every day he’d lived with the need to avenge his father’s betrayal of his family, every trip to Hadlow that he’d lied to his mother…it had all been for nothing.

Chapter 29

“Love?” Rowan tightened his grip on Marce’s hand until it fairly hurt from the pressure.

“Do not be dense, Rowan,” the duchess scolded. “They would not have continued on for so many years had it not been for love.”

Marce was torn between fleeing the room and remaining frozen in her seat, listening with rapt attention to every word Leona uttered. “You never breathed a word about knowing my mother.”

It was the words that came from her mouth, but Marce dwelled on something entirely different. Her mother had been in love. True, unconditional love.

Leona gave her a weak smile, then coughed several times before blotting her mouth with her kerchief and continuing. “We—Julian, Sasha, and I—thought it best to keep it between the three of us if you and Rowan were ever to meet. Misguidedly, we assumed that day would never come.”

“Father’s infidelities,” Rowan seethed. “You knew of his betrayal? For how long?”

“Come now, my son,” the duchess sighed. “It is not a secret that your father and I were an arranged pair and that my illness prevented me from being the wife I should have been to him. We loved one another, had an affection that most couples of our time did not know, but we were never in love. It was simply not our fate.”

“And so Father abandoned you and found another.”

“Nothing is that simple or uncomplicated, as you well know.” Leona admonished her son and glanced back at Marce. She was startled to see the kindness hadn’t left the duchess’s eyes. “After you were born—and we lost several other babes—Julian was distraught. He feared losing me and having to raise you alone. And so, with an heir begotten, I gave him his freedom. You were a strong, sensible lad, and we had no need for a spare.”

“You allowed him to abandon us?” Fury laced Rowan’s tone, aimed at whom exactly, Marce was uncertain.

“No.” The duchess shook her head vehemently. “No, I gave him leave to find true love. That it was with Sasha, a woman I admired greatly, was favorable…and preferred. I knew if I passed, she would be kind and loving to you, Rowan; however, I am here, and they are both gone.”

Marce concentrated on every word, the memories of those long-ago times when the duke arrived at Craven House with sweet treats for her and her siblings and a kiss for her mother coming to the forefront of her mind. They’d been in love. It was different than it was with any man Sasha had taken up with prior.

In some deep place within, Marce had known.

“Just because we were not in love with each other, did not mean Julian was destined to live a life without.”

“But what of you, Mother?” Rowan’s voice broke.

“What about me?” Leona demanded.

“What did you gain by allowing him to stray?”

“I had everything I ever wanted here at Hadlow. A healthy, handsome, attentive son, and a husband who was happy, even if I wasn’t the one to give him that.”

“He wasn’t here when you nearly died…when the twins came.”

“Neither your father nor I could have predicted that the babes would come that night.” A hooded, sorrowful darkness passed across the duchess’s face. “The little girls would have been another gift for me, from a man I could never bring complete happiness to. However, even after all our years together, he still wanted me to find my own contentment.”

Marce couldn’t help but think that she was privy to a conversation that was meant to be private between a mother and her son. “I should allow you two to converse privately.”

She made to stand, but Rowan held fast to her hand.

“Don’t go.” He didn’t take his eyes off his mother as he spoke.

There was much she knew he didn’t say, though the words hung heavily in the air all the same.

This involves both of us.