Chapter Twenty-Four

Ellen stood at the window and watched Oliver bound down the steps and into his carriage. She blinked the tears from her eyes because she wanted to memorize his form, his long stride, the way his shoulders moved when he walked with purpose. She wanted to imprint upon herself the wholly masculine scent of him and the strength and feel of his arms around her when he held her close.

She wanted to remember it all, because it would be the last time she would see him alone.

She knew she’d acted irrationally, but she was a mother trying to protect her son. She cared little for herself. As long as Philip was protected—as long as the secret of his paternity was kept guarded—she didn’t care what happened to her.

Except when Oliver was present. When he was next to her, talking to her, she tended to forget all reason. He was so persuasive. For a moment she’d believed that he could help her, that he could make this nightmare go away. But she was also saving Oliver from her secret, protecting him the best that she could.

Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she had gone to him when she realized that Philip was his child. It wouldn’t have changed anything. She certainly couldn’t have left Arthur and gone to Oliver. The scandal would have destroyed them all. But sometimes she liked to pretend that Oliver would have swept her and Philip away and they would have lived happily ever after in a small cottage in the country, drunk on love and happiness and little else.

That was a fairy tale, however. And reality was never like fairy tales.

Her lie by omission had grown and grown until its evil tentacles had wrapped around her and she’d become a prisoner to it.

But wasn’t that what all lies eventually became? A prison?

William wielded her secret like a sword, threatening her and everyone she loved.

For Philip she had to stay true to the course. For Oliver she had to stand firm.

The thought of what William had done, killing people to provide his lectures with bodies to cut up, sickened her. She’d not thought that she could be any more disgusted by the man, but this was a new low. What was she to do? William would never let her go. He would never allow her to walk away in light of these accusations. Even Oliver admitted that William would probably find a way out of this mess.

“Was that Lord Armbruster?”

Ellen spun away from the window and tried to surreptitiously wipe the tears from her eyes.

“Yes,” she said to Philip. “He just left.”

“And what did he have to say?” Philip stood in the doorway, tense, his gaze direct and burning.

Uncomfortable, Ellen turned away from her son. “Nothing important.”

A heavy silence fell between them, so many unspoken words. She felt his disapproval from across the room.

“Nothing important,” he repeated with little emotion. “I see.”

She fiddled with a silly piece of crystal that was nothing more than a dust-catching ornament and wondered where it had come from, how long it had been there. This was her home; shouldn’t she know these things? But she looked at it like she’d never seen it before.

“So, you’re intent on marrying Needham?”

Her hand dropped from the frivolous ornament. “Yes, of course.”

“Even after what Armbruster told you?”

Her head jerked up to find her son staring at her with an odd, focused expression. “What do you know about that?”

“He’s a bastard,” Philip hissed with more emotion than she’d seen from him since his father died. “And you’ll just ignore it and marry him anyway?”

“Philip.” She passed a weary hand over her eyes, tired of trying to explain herself when she knew that her explanations were weak. What she wanted to do was scream at Oliver and Philip that she was doing this for them. That she was saving them from public humiliation and ruin. But she couldn’t say that, so she kept her course.

“This is unbelievable,” Philip said. “Insanity at its best. The man’s true character has been revealed, and you insist on staying with him. He’s a bastard, Mother.”

“That’s enough!” Her voice whipped out, startling them both. She never yelled at him.

Philip shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”

He turned to leave the room just as the butler opened the door to announce that Sir Needham had arrived.

Philip sneered at William and brushed past him, knocking shoulders with him.

William grabbed Philip’s arm, stopping him mid-stride.

Ellen made a sound of alarm, but it was as if her feet were nailed to the floor.

They were face-to-face, nearly nose-to-nose.

“Show some respect, you miserable whelp.”

Philip’s face turned red with rage, and he yanked his arm from William’s hold. “Never lay a hand on me again, sir. Or there will be fisticuffs.”

Before Ellen could move, William cocked his hand back and punched Philip in the jaw. The boy reeled back, his hand going to his face, his eyes wide and shocked and filling with a rage that frightened Ellen.

“No,” she cried out, hurrying toward them.

Philip turned his gaze to her, and she instantly recognized her mistake. By not berating William she had let her son know that he came second to William. That was not true, of course, but it was what he saw.

“Go to the kitchen. Have cook put a slab of meat on that. The swelling will go down in no time.”

But Philip had already turned away from her, leaving her standing there helplessly.

William took her arm and led her back into the parlor. “That boy needs some manners beat into him.”

Ellen turned on him in a swirl of skirts. “Don’t ever touch him again,” she said through tight lips.

William grinned. “And what will you do? Nothing. You will do nothing, because I know your secret, and I won’t hesitate to tell everyone I know.”

Ellen’s stomach clenched, and she felt as if she were to be sick. But there was one thing she could do. She would separate the two, keep them apart, so William’s evil could not touch her son. After all, she’d spent his entire life protecting him, and she wouldn’t stop now.

“Is it true?” she whispered. “What they are saying about you? Did you kill those men so you could cut them up?”

William appeared surprised and then calculating. “How did you come by this information?”

She realized her error. She could not tell him that Oliver had been by to warn her. He’d told her never to speak to Oliver again.

William took a threatening step toward her. “Tell me how you found out.”

She had no choice but to throw Oliver to the wolf, in order to save herself. “Armbruster came by to warn me.”

William chuckled. “How very noble of him to try to save his damsel in distress. He’s such a lovesick fool, still pining after you even after our engagement. Really, I feel sorry for the chap having lost out to Lord Fieldhurst and now me.”

“Stop it,” she said.

William was suddenly very still. “Don’t ever tell me what to do.”

She swallowed her fear, but it stuck in her throat like acid, eating away at her.

“Never forget, dear Ellen, that I know everything. I know that whelp of yours is Armbruster’s son. I know the secret you’ve been carrying inside you for sixteen years. And I know what it can do to you and that bastard son of yours. I can ruin all of you.”

…

Philip waited until Needham had gone before confronting his mother. The anger had come after the paralyzing shock of hearing Needham threaten his mother with the knowledge that his father…his father…the man he had thought was his father was not actually his father.

Even thinking about it made his head pound and caused a great pressure behind his eyes that made him blink to clear his vision.

Eventually, he had run to his father’s study and slammed the door closed. Philip had stood in front of the fireplace and looked up at his parents’ portrait, painted right after their wedding.

Philip had never thought that the rendering was a good likeness of his father. But last year, when he realized that he was forgetting his father’s face, he would come to the study to look at this portrait.

Now he studied it with an intensity he’d never had before. He searched his father’s face, looking for a resemblance to himself. For anything that would indicate that Arthur had sired him.

Needham had to be wrong, except his mother had not bothered to correct Needham. She hadn’t denied the disgusting revelation. In fact, she’d said nothing at all.

Nothing.

Philip curled his fingers into fists and wanted to punch Needham right in the face.

But—and he would never admit this out loud—there was something about Needham that frightened Philip. A coldness that chilled him. When Philip looked into Needham’s eyes he saw two things—hatred and evil.

He listened to Needham leave, the door close behind him, and still he stared up at the man who he thought had been his father. Then anger propelled him back to the parlor and his mother.

“Is it true?”

She was sitting on the couch when he walked in, bent forward, elbows on knees, face in her hands.

She turned her head and dropped her hands, and Philip was taken aback by the dead look in her eyes, the defeated slant to her shoulders, the paleness of her usually vibrant skin.

He’d never seen her like this before, even when his father had died.

His father.

Who was his father?

“What Needham said to you. Is it true? Is Armbruster my father?”

She stood and for a moment he thought she might fall over, she was so unsteady. “Where did you hear that?”

“Through the door.”

She closed her eyes, and her lips went pale. “You shouldn’t be listening at doors, Philip. It’s bad manners.”

“Forget the bloody door,” he burst out. “Is it true what he said?”

“Of course not.” She tried to smile, but her lips couldn’t quite complete the act.

“So he lied when he said that? And you just let him lie about you? And about Father? You just sat there and let him say these horrible things about you?”

“Philip…” She seemed so weary. So…beaten down. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand why you would want to marry a man like Needham. He has people killed so he can cut them up and pretend he is this great person in front of other people. He lies to you about me and about Father and he implies that you are less… That you are a…” His throat was slick with outrage and an emotion he couldn’t quite name. Sadness that she was unwilling to defend his father and herself.

“That’s enough,” she said. “No more, Philip. Just know that…what I’m doing is important for you.”

“No. I will not accept that. I want… I demand an explanation.”

Finally, color flooded her face. He didn’t even care that it was anger. “You have no right to demand anything.”

Philip took a step forward and pointed to his face and his swollen eye. “He hit me, and you allowed it. You didn’t even defend me.”

“Everything I do, I do for you. Make no mistake about that.”

He had no words left. He felt that she wasn’t hearing him, that she had created this wall between them that he was banging his head against. After his father had died they had become close, but it seemed that lately that closeness had evaporated. Part of it was his fault, he knew. He’d behaved abominably and had no excuse for his actions.

He could say he was sowing his wild oats, but really he’d felt out of control, lost without his father. Angry that his father had left him, and he’d acted out in inappropriate ways.

But this rift between he and his mother frightened him more than losing his father had. At least he’d had his mother after his father’s death. If he lost her, he had no one. And he feared he was losing her not to death, but to William Needham.

“You will be returning to Eton in a few weeks,” she said. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was concentrating on the floral pattern at the top of the stuffed chair, running her finger over the edges. “I want you to stay there through the holidays.”

Philip felt the blood drain from his face. His eye throbbed with the beat of his frightened heart. “You’re sending me off? You’ll not allow me back even for the holidays?”

She drew in a shaky breath. “You saw what he did to you. Staying at Eton is safer than being here, with him.”

She was claiming that she was protecting him, but it didn’t feel like protection. It felt like abandonment.

“Needham doesn’t want me around,” he said flatly. “And you won’t fight for me.”

“I am fighting for you. You just don’t understand.” But she still wouldn’t look at him, and there was no heat in her denial, so he knew it was true.

“Why?” he whispered. And then an idea came to him, a horrible thought that had to be voiced. “It’s true, isn’t it? What Needham said about my father. Armbruster sired me, didn’t he? My father…” He swallowed through the lump in his throat. “Isn’t really my father and Needham is blackmailing you with the information.”

She lunged toward him, grabbed his arm in such a tight grip that he flinched. “Don’t ever say that again. Never. Do you hear me, Philip?” She shook his arm. “You are never to say those words again.”

They stared at each other, her with her anger and desperation, he with his fear and dawning horror.

He shook off her grip and walked out of the parlor and the house.