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“I presume by your silence the rumors are true.” A cannonball of emotion formed in her throat. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. To shout in jubilation or ring her odious parents a peal.
The duke harumphed and scratched his jaw before saying, “We only wanted what was best for you—”
Adelhied was on her feet in an instant.
“Do not,” she ground out, “justify your contemptible actions on the pretense that what you did was for my benefit. I loved Charles. I was of age, and we were legally married. He mightn’t have been next in line for a title, but his family was landed gentry, his uncle a viscount.”
She drew in a ragged breath, struggling to regain her equanimity and not verbally fillet them with her tongue.
She looked squarely at the duke.
“I know you had him sent to Toulon, Father. You may not have pulled the trigger, but you killed Charles. And if that wasn’t evil enough, you took my daughter from me. The only thing I had left of Charles.”
The duchess wept softly into a handkerchief she’d procured from her bosom. “You are right, Adelhied. It was wrong. All of it.”
“Nonsense, Beatrice.” Her father’s wiry gray eyebrows wrestled with one another under the force of his fierce scowl. “We only wanted what all aristocratic parents want for their daughters. A brilliant match.”
“Parents should want their children’s happiness above all else, Father.” Adelhied stabbed him with an accusatory glare. “That is what I wanted for my sons. Had any of them chosen to marry outside our station, I would’ve supported them because I am their mother, and I love them. I would not have ruined their lives. Or caused them unbearable, unending pain.”
“Bah. Times have changed,” her father grumbled sourly and waved his hand dismissively. “Once upon a time, good daughters did as their parents’ bid.”
He would put this on her? Blame her?
“Where did you take my daughter?” Adelhied asked curtly, the thin rein she held on her temper becoming more tenuous with each passing minute.
Stilted silence filled the room, spreading like spilled oil to the shadowy corners. The duke jutted his chin out mulishly, his lips clamped tight as an oyster shell.
Obstinate and uncompromising as always.
After releasing a juddery breath, the duchess swallowed.
“It was called Haven House, something or other.” Mother gave her husband a sideways glance, an incongruent mixture of defiance and shame creasing her wrinkled face. “I cannot recall the entire name, but your father paid an annual fee. I’m sure we’ve a record somewhere—”
“Haven House and Academy for the Enrichment of Young Women,” Father grumbled. “Cost me a bloody fortune to keep her there. I stopped paying the fee five years ago when the girl took a position as a governess.”
“Governess,” Adelhied said at the same time he did. Her daughter was Mercy Feathers, a governess in the Trentholms’ household. She even had a version of the ducal title as a surname.
Someone had a very droll sense of humor, bless them.
Her daughter was alive.
Sweet God in heaven. Alive.
Tears coursing down her cheeks, Adelhied laughed and hugged herself. “My daughter is alive. My sons will be thrilled.”
She was thrilled. Overjoyed. Jubilant. Ecstatic.
“Naturally, you cannot claim her, Adelhied,” Father declared with his usual matter-of-fact arrogance. “It wouldn’t do at all. The scandal would be monumental.”
Did he expect that Adelhied would care?
He shook his head, making the loose skin beneath his jaws shudder like a bloodhound’s jowls. “The Featherstone name would be blackened. Your mother and I would be shunned. Cut from Society.”
“It’s no more than you deserve,” she snapped, galled at his selfishness.
Burrows returned with the silver tea service. After setting the laden tray upon the mahogany fold-over tea table between the gold brocade settee and matching chairs, he said, “Will there be anything else, Your Graces?”
Adelhied thought he sent her a sympathetic glance from beneath his lashes. Or perhaps it was guilty and apologetic, for there wasn’t any way that at least some of the servants hadn’t been aware her daughter had lived. And then was shunted off to some inconspicuous home for foundlings.
