Page 34 of Secrets of the Heart

Rachel’s voice sounded small and tinny to her own ears. She felt suddenly as if she could not breathe. So it was all true, then…. Michael had not even gone home to Westhampton as he had told her he was. Instead he had stayed right here in London with his mistress. She wondered how many times before that had happened, how often, when she thought he was at home indulging in his solitary, scholarly pursuits, he had actually been in London…but not with her. “How easily you have fooled me. And how often.” Tears choked her voice, and she stopped speaking, swallowing to force the sobs back down her throat. She cast a fulminating glance at Mrs. Neeley. “You are an excellent actress, madam.”

“No!” Lilith Neeley cried. “No! I didn’t deceive you. I—that is—that is not Lord Westhampton.”

“What?” Rachel’s gaze swung back to the man on the stairs. The man did look a little different from Michael. His hair was darker, more brown than blond, and he needed a shave. His clothes were the rough full-sleeved shirt and loose trousers of a working man, and his boots were scuffed and cheap, not polished to a mirrorlike gleam.

Rachel wavered. Garson would never have let Michael out of the house looking like this. “But I—no.” Her face and voice hardened. “Do you take me for a fool, that I do not even know my own husband? Of course it is Michael.”

“He looks like him, ’tis true,” Lilith said, her voice slipping in her distress into a thicker accent. “But that is because he is Lord Westhampton’s brother.”

Rachel raised a single eyebrow. “Michael has no brother.”

“Not a legitimate one.” Mrs. Neeley gazed at her unflinchingly for a long moment.

“What? Oh!” Rachel looked back up at the man on the stairs. There were differences between Michael and this man—the hair color, this man’s rather disheveled look and rough clothes. And it would be just like Michael’s father to have had an illegitimate child; the man had been a well-known lecher. “I—but you look so much like him!”

“I’m not the only one,” the man replied gruffly.

His voice, too, was slightly different, Rachel thought, a little lower and more gravelly, with an accent similar to Mrs. Neeley’s.

Relief swept over Rachel so swiftly and powerfully that she went a trifle weak in the knees. This man who was so obviously at home in Mrs. Neeley’s house was not Michael at all, but an illegitimate brother who looked enough like him to be his twin.

“He is my brother,” Mrs. Neeley explained.

“Oh! Oh, I see.” Rachel could not keep from smiling. “Then—are you saying that you—”

“Lord Westhampton is my brother,” Lilith Neeley confirmed, nodding. “They are both my brothers.”

There was a similarity of coloring to Michael in Mrs. Neeley, for her blond hair was much the same color as Michael’s, and her eyes, also gray, had the same shape as Michael’s, though she obviously darkened her light eyelashes.

Everything was falling into place now—no wonder people had thought that Michael had a relationship with this woman. This man who looked so much like Michael had been seen coming and going from this house, and people had assumed it was Michael. Or perhaps Michael had even come here to see his siblings.

“But why has he never told me about you?” Rachel asked. “Why has he kept it hidden?”

The man snorted. “Hardly somethin’ you’d be tell-in’ the missus, is it? Particularly a tony lady like yourself.”

Rachel frowned at his sneering tone. She was not quite sure whether he disliked Michael, her, or the world in general.

Lilith Neeley quickly put in, “His lordship doesn’t know about us, that is why.”

There was a noise from the man on the stairs, something like a grunt, and Rachel glanced up at him before turning back to Mrs. Neeley.

“I see. I—please accept my apology for barging in on you this way and peppering you with questions. I can see now that I had no right.”

Mrs. Neeley looked at her, surprised. “It is quite all right, my lady. Pray don’t worry about it.

“I will tell my husband about you,” Rachel went on. “You don’t know him. Lord Westhampton is a very fair and good man. I am sure that he would wish to meet you.”

“Is he now?” Mrs. Neeley cast a look back at the man on the stairs, then turned back to Rachel. “Still, my lady, I do not think that there are many husbands who would wish to hear that their wives had come to visit a gaming establishment or spoken to his relatives that were born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

“That’s right,” her brother said, coming down a few steps. “I wouldn’t advise telling him that you was here, talking to the likes of us.”

“That is because you don’t know Michael.” In truth, she suspected that Michael would not be pleased to hear about her going unattended in a hansom to the home of a woman whom she thought to be his mistress. Well, she decided, she would think about how to tell him later. Right now she felt too good to worry about such things. And she also was not about to let this sullen stranger denigrate Michael.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Neeley,” she said, holding her hand out to the other woman. “You have been very kind. I should take my leave of you now.” She turned toward the man, still several steps above her and gave him a short nod. “And you, Mr.—”

“Hobson,” he said. “James Hobson.”

“Good day, Mr. Hobson. I hope that you will meet Lord Westhampton someday so that you can see how wrong you are about him.”