Page 30 of Denying the Duke (Lords and Ladies in Love 3)

“Patience.”

She didn’t raise her head. “What?”

“I am still your mother, and while I cannot order you to see His Grace, I deserve your respect. Please look at me when I am speaking to you.”

Patience glanced up, her chin in the air. “Like the respect Father gives you?”

Her mother sucked in a deep breath, two patches of bright red on her cheeks. “That is uncalled for.”

“But true.” She would not back down now. Her mother’s acceptance of her father’s ill treatment had allowed the man to bully everyone. Had her mother stood up to him, perhaps all of their lives would have been different.

“You know nothing of your father and me.”

“I know you spend many a day behind closed doors suffering from his abuse.” She put her needlework aside. “Why, Mother? Why do you allow that?”

Tears sprang to the woman’s eyes. “Allow? Do you think I allowed that? I had no choice. Once you marry y

ou become your husband’s property to do with as he chooses. To whom was I to complain?”

“You could have requested to live in one of his other estates. Or gone to Bath, or somewhere else, and taken me with you. We would have been happier.”

“Oh, my dear daughter. You know so little of the world. I regret what your father did to you more than what he did to me. You should never have been betrothed to Cyrus. The man was a monster.” She closed her eyes. “I had heard stories, but your father would not listen.”

Patience rose from her chair and settled on the floor at her mother’s knee. “Why did he do it? I had never heard the duke’s name mentioned before we all traveled to the Abbey when he made his announcement.”

“The duke owed him.”

She drew back and studied her mother. She remembered Father saying something similar to her once, but she’d shoved that to the back of her mind. “What do you mean? What did the duke owe him?”

“His silence.” A faraway look came into Mother’s eyes, and she smiled softly.

More confused than ever, she said, “Whatever do you mean?”

Mother ran her hand over Patience’s hair. “A long time ago, the Duke of Bedford and I had plans to marry.”

Patience sucked in a breath. Her mother and the duke? “What happened?”

“What generally happens when a young couple in our class fall in love. His parents decided someone else would suit him better, and my parents liked your father.”

She couldn’t imagine anyone liking her father, but perhaps he’d been different in his youth. Unable to digest all of this, Patience sat back on her heels, a thousand thoughts swirling through her mind. “I still do not understand what the duke owed father.”

Mother stood and walked to the window, her back to Patience. Could she not look at her when she told her story?

“Your father and I were married a few years—it was after you were born—when we attended a house party where the duke and duchess were guests, also.” She stopped talking and just stared out at the rain.

When it appeared her mother would not continue unless urged to do so, Patience whispered, “Go on.”

She turned and raised her chin, looking directly at Patience. “We had a brief affair that week. I soon discovered I was with child, but since your father had not touched me in that way for months, he knew the child wasn’t his.”

Patience was stunned into silence. An affair? Mother?

Sitting down once again, she continued, the words rushing out as if she needed to say them quickly, or they would not be said at all. “When I told your father, he beat me so severely I lost the babe. Things were never good between us, but after that they were much worse. When he told me of his plan to marry you to the duke’s heir, I was—needless to say—upset.

“You father said he had threatened the duke with revealing our story to the duchess. As much as I like the duchess, she is a hard woman and quite prideful. She would have made Bedford’s life miserable had she learned what had happened.”

“Even after all those years?”

“Yes. You see, according to the marriage agreements drawn up by the late duke and the duchess’s father, she had control of a great deal of money that the duke needed.”