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Damn, damn, damn.
Though he hadn’t meant to upset her, Adam looked after Penelope with a tight chest and the urge to berate himself. He’d managed to keep the secret for years; why had he decided to tell her some of it right now?
Because she needs to know. In fact, she needs to know all of it.
The sensation of falling for her once more assailed him, and he knew beyond a doubt that he did indeed love her, and he couldn’t be happier. But he wanted her to take the plunge as well, hoped she might finally return those feelings.
And he wanted to tell her the remaining truths. Privately if possible. Her whole world would crumble and if she allowed him, he would be the one to help her rebuild it. No running away, no hiding, he would stand his ground as he should have done years ago. This time, he would tell the world the truth, both about that night and about his feelings for her.
With knots of worry pulling in his gut and his chest tight with unease as well as anticipation, Adam loped after her. Though sad to leave the lush wonderland of the square behind, winning Penelope and securing their future was more important.
Knowing her, she would want answers, and directly from the source, and God help them all if she tracked her brother to earth. Eventually, he caught up to her in the crowded drawing room. She had indeed found her brother, and with her hands propped on her hips, it appeared that she was demanding those answers from him, but just as she asked a question, the country reel that had been in progress upon coming into the room ended, and an awkward silence fell over the space.
“Is it true that the whole family has lied to me about my parentage?” The question seemed to echo in the quiet.
Oh, God. Adam maneuvered his way through the crowded room until he reached her side. “Perhaps this isn’t the time or the place to have what should be a private discussion.”
She turned to him with rounded eyes that reflected shock and hurt. “You tore the lid off what I thought I knew about my life, Adam. Now I want to know the whole truth.” Then she regarded her brother once more. “I am owed at least that.”
A purple flush consumed Charles’ face, and instead of answering her question, he glared at Adam. “What the hell have you done?” When Adam refused to say anything, he looked at Penelope. “Lord Maplecrest is trying to divert your attention from his crimes. You know this, Penny. Haven’t we talked about this before?” He tried to reach out and take her hand, but she backed away, crashing into Adam’s form in the process. “Think about what he did to Sarah, to Papa. Isn’t that why you wanted revenge on him in the first place? Why you wanted to come to London?”
“Yes, but...”
Adam grunted. Then his jaw dropped. It all made sense now. “Is that why you let me kiss you? Why you wanted to do...” He couldn’t utter those words, for he refused to destroy what was left of her reputation. “Well, never mind.” None of that mattered. Because he loved her, hadn’t stopped. Always would.
“I, uh...” A blush stained her cheeks. “Yes, it started out that way. I wanted you to hurt as much as I was hurting, destroy you like you destroyed my sister’s life, but now—”
“Stop.” With a glance about the room and all the occupants that stared at them, her brother shook his head. “You don’t need to explain anything to him, Penny. He’s not worth it. That man ruined our family, hand a hand at killing our father. Never forget that. Let’s go home.” Charles took hold of her upper arm.
Penelope was having none of it. “No.” She wrenched out of his hold.
“Yes.” His tone brooked no argument. “We are leaving.”
“Stop.” Adam took the moment and grabbed her hand. He squeezed her fingers until she met his gaze. “It’s now or never Penelope. You can learn the truth of everything, your family, the scandal of what happened three years ago, my involvement in it—everything—or you can walk away right now without hearing the explanation and having the lies unveiled.” Holding tight to her hand, he ignored the room full of people gawking at them, the people who wouldn’t wait to run outside with the rumors and concentrated just on her. “You can walk away, but I’m not coming with you.” His voice broke, and he hated himself for that sign of weakness. “It nearly killed me to put so much distance between us the last time. I can’t do it again.” That was the truth. The rest was up to her.
A few moments went by as she stared back at him. “Why would you do this?”
“Why not?” He shrugged and hated the judgment in the eyes on them and the growing audience. “I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. Not even after being treated so badly by your family.” Perhaps it was better to have this part of the truth out with. It might make everything else easier.
“What?” Shock filled her eyes and was reflected on her face. “You love me?”
“Yes.” It was so simple that he grinned. “You were the only woman to have my heart. Three years ago on a dance floor, I fell hard for you, and running away couldn’t dim those feelings. Neither could I forget.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back. “Now, I am looking after your heart by telling you what you should have been told a long time ago. You need to know the truth, even if that wrenches you from me permanently.”
Yes, she might hate him after this, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Slowly, she nodded. “I would like that.”
“Absolutely not.” Charles shook his head. His eyes shot daggers. He drilled a forefinger into Adam’s chest. “My father told you three years ago to leave Penny alone. I told you to let the matter drop, but you don’t know what’s good for you, do you Lord Maplecrest?”
“Are you trying to threaten me again, Baron Endress?” Adam caught his hand and physically removed it from his person. “Because that would be a bad idea. I’m not easily cowed this time.” Annoyance pushed through his chest. “I have no qualms about arguing with you this time.”
“While I appreciate your defense, it’s quite all right.” Penelope laid a palm on his chest to encourage him to calm. She nodded as she once more met his gaze. Gratitude reflected in her dark depths. There was another emotion there too, but he didn’t want to rush his fences and try to identify it lest he was wrong. Then she peered at her brother. “Just the fact you don’t want him to speak makes me want to hear his story.”
The baron sputtered. “But you—”
When she fully turned her back on her brother, gasps went through the crowd. To Adam, she said, “Please, go ahead.”
His chest tightened further. “In public? In front of all these people? This is a private matter.”
She snorted. “What difference does it make? My family has already been branded and judged. At least this might set a few things right.”
And there is a chance she will finally look at me differently and without disgust.
With heat rising on the back of his neck, Adam nodded. “What you saw that night when everyone rushed into the garden where you found me with your sister in my arms wasn’t what you assumed.”
“Bah! Lies.” Charles shook his head. “Sarah told us—”
He held up a hand in interruption. “I’m sure she did. Her reputation was ruined, and she wanted to drag down whomever she could.” Ignoring everyone else, Adam talked directly to Penelope. “It also wasn’t me who started rumors prior to that night of Sarah being fast or promiscuous. And it certainly wasn’t me who fathered her child.” This was a delicate conversation at any time, but here in this venture with all eyes upon them? Almost certainly societal suicide.
“Then who was it?” Penelope squeezed his fingers.
“In fact, it was a former friend of mine, and he was quite the rake, going from girl to girl.” His throat felt all too tight, for the man’s name would once more be dragged into the public eye, but then perhaps, he should be held accountable for his own crimes now. “I’d gone outside that night searching for my friend—he was already well into his cups before the ball hit its midway point—and I wanted to encourage him to go home.”
The baron didn’t like that. He sputtered, shook his head. “Yet you were the one who fled to America. Only the guilty run.”
Adam leveled his gaze on the other man. “If you persist in making this explanation a longer affair, I will have you escorted from the room.”
“You have no authority.”
“I am a viscount, and thereby have a higher rank than you.” Then he crossed his arms at his chest and once more focused on Penelope. “By the time I found him, the deed was done. He was with your sister, and from the looks of things, she hadn’t given her consent to the coupling.”
Gasps went through the room.
He continued, he had to before he lost his nerve. “I confronted Dellingham that night, accused him of that particular crime. He denied it, but his faculties weren’t all there due to the drink. Then he ran off, said women like Sarah were only of one stamp. I was left in the gardens with your sister, and she was sobbing, trying to put her clothing back to rights.” When he relaxed his posture, he shrugged. “I couldn’t leave her there; she was nearly hysterical, so I wrapped her in my arms to comfort her. What else could I have done?”
Penelope’s expression softened. Her eyes filled with tears. “You did everything right, because you are a hero, Adam. Whether you want to believe that or not.”
“I don’t know.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “And of course Sarah said nothing. She let everyone who arrived in the garden assume you had done that to her, let everyone think you fathered her child.”
Another round of gasps and whispers went through the room.
“Yes.” With a frown Adam nodded. Because Penelope wasn’t frightened, apparently, of public opinion, she didn’t hint at the aftermath from that night. “After that night, things became a bit of a blur. Rumors flew that your adoptive mother was the daughter of an opera singer and that the sins of the mother had no doubt passed to her daughters. Obviously, that is untrue.”
“Yet we were forced to flee London for Derbyshire.” That slight waver in her voice went straight to his heart. “Sarah never spoke the truth, never said who had violated her.”
“Perhaps she didn’t know. It was dark.”
The baron chose that moment to speak up. “And you didn’t say anything either. How do we know you are telling the truth now?”
“Because I treat everyone with respect. Yes, I made the mistake of running before, but your sister made me realize I deserved to have the truth known.” He loved her even more for that. “I was angry and bitter, especially after being threatened by both your father and your brother.” He narrowed his gaze briefly on the baron. “A few days later, I went over to my friend’s home, intending to demand that he make things right.”
“And?” Penelope hung on his every word, but at least she wasn’t openly angry with him.
Adam shrugged. “He had apparently been pitched from his horse in Hyde Park during an illicit race when he was in his cups and broke his back, which paralyzed him from the waist down.”\ While that put an end to his chasing of women, it also put an end to his life as he had known it. “\I, uh, couldn’t destroy him the rest of the way, couldn’t demand anything of him, obviously, and what was more, he wasn’t remorseful, so I chose to wash my hands of him.”
“Even though rumors and gossip had their way with your name and reputation. The events of that night made the whole of London believe it had been you who’d done those things to my family.” Wonder and horror filled her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Adam.”
The baron scoffed. “Pretty words, and anyone could say easy lies of that sort.” He shook his head. “I demand to know the name of the man who ruined my sister Sarah.”
It was a fair enough order, and one that Adam didn’t have the strength to keep any longer. “I can tell you in private.”
“No, you can tell me now if you wish for a chance that Penny believes you.” Challenge rang in his voice and reflected in his eyes. He was a man desperate, obviously, for part of this castle of lies had been perpetrated by him.
“Fine.” It didn’t matter now, because their father was dead, and threats made against Adam had no bearing. “The Marquess of Culpepper.” Gasps went through the room. There was nothing for it. “When the incident happened, he hadn’t come into the title.” And everyone knew of his penchant for womanizing and acting without honor.
Shock went over the baron’s face, followed by an expression of such shrewdness that it made him quite unattractive. “That man shall pay for what he did.”
No doubt he would try and wring coin from the marquess, because that was the kind of gentleman her brother was. Disappointing but there was nothing for it. “Such a decision is entirely your discretion; I have fallen out of contact with him.”
Buzzing conversation filled the air. No doubt this on-dit would greet society matrons and gossips at the breakfast table tomorrow.
Penelope frowned. “None of that explains the duel you nearly fought with my brother.”
“It does not.” He huffed out a breath. “Once your sister was sufficiently tucked away into your father’s carriage, I sought out your brother.” He rested his gaze on the baron. There was no love lost between them. “Without your interference, what occurred that night could have been taken care of privately, but you never liked me from the outset.” As the other man sputtered, Adam looked at Penelope. “I did challenge your brother to a duel that night, but not over a mistress as he’d told you.”
“Then why?” One of her hands went to her throat. Twin spots of color blazed in her pale cheeks. Was she going to suffer an attack of anxiety?
“I demanded he tell you the truth about your sister as well as the truth regarding your birth, and when he wouldn’t, when he issued threats and drug my name through the mud, I’d had enough. I left England, wanted nothing else to do with anything here.”
It had nearly killed him to abandon her, but there was nothing else to do at the time.
“I see.” The words sounded as if they’d come from a tight throat while a good portion of the onlookers left the drawing room. Clearly, the rout had come to an abrupt end. “And my father’s death?” She bounced her gaze between them both. “Did he die because Sarah’s scandal was too much?”
“Perhaps that was part of it, but I rather think it was because I’d come to call on him as well as your brother, warned them that I meant to tell you all these secrets to dispel the lies so that you could live your life knowing who you are, who I truly was in the event it made a difference.”
Slowly, she nodded. “He threatened you because you wanted to tell me he was my true father.” It wasn’t a question. “Why didn’t he want me to know I was a result of an affair with a mistress?”
“Only God knows.”
She turned her focus to her brother. “Charles?”
Mottled purple color suffused his face. “We were trying to spare your sensibilities since you are prone to hysterics.”
A strangled sort of sound escaped her. “Feeling what I do isn’t something I’ve made up in my mind for attention. I truly can’t help it.” Tears sprang into her eyes again.
Adam briefly touched her arm. “Your father was livid. He didn’t want anyone to know of the affair, said my father had lied, but if it eases your mind, according to what my father said, the woman who gave birth to you suffered from the same mental condition. It is not your fault.”
“Oh God. This is too much,” she managed to whisper while darting her gaze about the still gawking audience. She stared at him with shock filling her eyes. “All along, you were the only one who didn’t lie to me, who didn’t treat me as if I were a delicate porcelain doll.”
“I wish I could have done more. We have wasted so much time.” Would she wish to continue with a relationship, let him officially court her?
“Yet my family has prevented anything from happening between us.” Her chin wobbled, and he lost his heart to her yet again. She stepped over to her brother. Then her hand shot out and she slapped his cheek. The echo of that seemed to ring in the silence. Gasps from the audience followed. “You had no right to drive him away, no right to keep any of this from me.” Tears were evident in her voice. “I’ve been such a fool, been made to look like one too.”
“Penny, we were only trying to protect you.” When the baron reached for her hand, she shook her head and backed away.
“No.” She shook her head. “You were perpetuating lies that destroyed our family as well as the viscount’s name. You and Papa made everything worse, made me believe the worst of Adam, made me hate him when...” A hiccupping sob left her throat. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. Everything is such a mess.”
Then she pushed her way past them both, plowed through the onlookers, and finally pelted from the drawing room.
“This is your fault,” Adam said to the baron, and he didn’t care what the man thought of him. “That poor woman has labored beneath your lies to the detriment of her health, and you couldn’t have the wherewithal or honesty to help her. She deserved so much more from her life; that woman has more integrity in her pinky finger than you do in your whole form.”
With nothing else to say, he left the drawing room, daring anyone to challenge him. All he wanted at that point was to find Penelope and pick up the pieces, and if he was fortunate, secure a future together.
The Watterson family’s sensibilities as a whole be damned.
