“But all that time …”
“I was scared of failing to live up to who I wanted to be, Constance. I was scared of not deserving you unless I did. I was scared you wouldn’t want me.” He sighed, shakily. “I still am.”
Suddenly, she understood.
All his lectures. All her hurt. All his anger. All those years.
Her heart broke for him and for herself even as it swelled.
“Don’t be scared of that,” she said. “It was never true. I’ll prove it.”
She leaned in and kissed the Earl of Apthorp in the middle of the party of the century.
And when she was done, the crowd cheered so loud she knew she would remember it all her life.
Chapter 17
He put the conversation off.
He knew that he must tell her the full truth about his past, and the risk it brought to them, before they married.
But he wanted to find the perfect words. He wanted to find a way to tell her that it had never changed the way he felt about her. That she need not regard him differently, or less.
But he was not quite used to being honest with her. And when he was around her, the brightness in her eyes was so sharp and buoyant that he didn’t want to dampen it.
Which must be how he had gone from having a week to having a few days, to having two nights, before they were due to stand in the chapel.
And why he was once again climbing up the trellis to Constance’s balcony window at an hour peopled primarily by thieves and nightsoilmen.
He tapped softly at her shutters.
“Are you certain you were never a highwayman?” she said, appearing in the window with a yawn. “You missed your calling as a criminal.”
“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“No. I was writing. But should Shrimpy not be more alert to intruders?” She pointed to the dog, curled up peacefully in his basket before the fire, asleep. “I think you gave me a defective hound.”
Apthorp smiled at her. “Perhaps he objects to doing his duties out of protest at that ridiculous name.”
“Shrimpy adores his name. Don’t you, my wee prawn?”
The dog snored.
“May I come in?”
She smiled, stepped back, and pulled him in. “I would like nothing better.”
Her bedchamber was unsettlingly bare. “Where are all of your things?” he asked.
“Most of them are already en route to your house, I would imagine. I have little left here except my wedding gown. Which you really aren’t supposed to see until I walk down the aisle.”
She gestured at a pale gown that stood on a wooden Paris doll. It was wide as a horse cart and ghostly in the moonlight. Despite its pomp, it looked a little mournful without her in it. He looked away, thinking of how forlorn this place would be when she left it.
He shook off the thought. She would be at his house. As his wife. Provided he managed to get through this conversation.
He reached out and took her hand again.
“Constance, I need to tell you something before we marry. I’ve been trying to find the right words and I’m afraid they have eluded me.”
Her face went soft and gentle, like she could tell how deeply he did not want to have this conversation. She squeezed his hand in her two smaller ones.
“I am familiar with your checkered past,” she said. “Whatever it is cannot be so terribly shocking.”
“Well, actually, there’s a rather important detail I haven’t shared with you.”
“Julian,” she said softly, tracing the webbing between his fingers. “I think I know what you’re about to say.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “And if I am correct, you have done the best you can.”
“Really?”
“Well, ideally you would have married. But we all make mistakes, and it seems you have handled it honorably.”
She seemed very serene and certain and he was not at all sure she had understood what she had just forgiven him for.
He swallowed. “Marriage is typically not the desired outcome of the arrangement. That’s the reason one chooses to pay for it. To keep marriage entirely out of the equation.”
“You were paid for siring a bastard?”
He paused. “Constance, what are you talking about?”
“Anne,” she said quietly.
“Anne?”
“I don’t mean it like that!” she said quickly. “She’s an innocent child, and I adore her. We will openly acknowledge her and settle funds on her and raise her as we would any other daughter. You needn’t worry.”
“You think Anne is my child?”
She gave him a slightly sympathetic smile. “It wasn’t terribly hard to figure out, Julian. She looks exactly like you. Isn’t that why you were so reluctant to make love to me? You didn’t want to risk another …”
He felt himself stiffening, wanting to turn away and shut this conversation down.
“Anne isn’t my daughter,” he made himself say. “She’s my ward.”
“Julian.” Constance looked at him skeptically. “If we are to marry, you must be honest with me.”
He sighed. This wasn’t his secret to tell, and he had promised never to tell it. But she was right; he had to learn to trust her. And she would no doubt find out the truth as a matter of course given she was about to join his family.
“Anne isn’t my child. She’s my niece.”
She looked at him in genuine shock. “Your niece? But that would mean …”
“Yes. She’s Margaret’s.”
Constance gaped. “But Margaret’s so innocent.”
He sighed. “Yes. That is precisely the problem.”
Constance looked distressed. “I’m sorry. I would never say anything … but, well … how? Who?”
He hesitated. He’d promised his mother and sister never to speak a word of the sordid tale to anyone. Maintaining the appearance of respectability was his mother’s greatest wish. Secrecy had been the only consolation he’d ever been able to offer for having failed them.
“You can tell me,” she coaxed. “Julian, you can tell me anything. I promise you discretion. Especially about something like this.”
“Anne’s father is Lord Harlan Stoke.”
At his name, her shocked expression turned into something more appalled.
“Oh no. No. Poor Margaret.”
“He took to calling on her three summers ago, while I was working in town. He summers near my estate. He courted her, told her he would marry her … not to worry that they had not said vows in a church yet. And when he learned she was with child, he dropped her. Flagrantly denied his involvement.”
Margaret had been so despondent he’d worried she might harm herself. And then her pregnancy had been difficult, endured in secret at a small, cheap house he’d let in Scotland with only their mother for company. She loved Anne, and had recovered her health, and was infinitely relieved the scandal had stayed hidden. But the ordeal had made her fragile in a way she had not been before. A way that seemed soul deep.
“That’s despicable,” Constance seethed. “I’d heard he had by-blows, but I had no idea about Anne. Why didn’t you call him out? He should be kept away from women.”