In The Prince's Bed (36 page)

“Will you have some breakfast now, my lord?” Emson asked.

“I suppose.” Though he didn’t know if he’d ever have an appetite again. Except for a certain winsome, fiery-haired miss—

No, she was gone. He had to get that through his thick skull. Despair weighting him, he left the bed to walk over to his writing table and stare at the breakfast tray. It contained an apple, two boiled eggs, and a slice of what looked suspiciously like real bread rather than sawdust formed into bricks.

“No hemlock?” he said acidly.

“Fortunately for you, Mrs. Emson sends me breakfast every morning on the sly, and I thought it would suit you better. Only the coffee is Mrs. Brown’s.”

Emson’s wife had been the lady’s maid at Edenmore until the death of Alec’s mother. Then the woman had married Emson, the valet-turned-butler who’d always fancied her. They’d both left service, and he’d probably never thought to return. But here he was, still waiting until Edenmore could afford another butler.

Alec sighed. The old man would be waiting a while longer. He pushed the tray aside. Even good food couldn’t tempt him. “It might be better for everyone if you gave me hemlock.”

“Nonsense. Your lady merely needs time to consider the situation rationally. Then I am sure she will return.”

Alec gave a harsh laugh. “She won’t. You don’t know her. She has principles, and they don’t bend for anyone. Certainly not for a bastard like me.”

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He’d meant “bastard” in a figurative sense, but when a long silence ensued, and Alec glanced over to find the hoary-headed servant staring oddly at him, a chill swept over him. “You know? About my…”

Emson nodded tersely. “I did serve your father for forty years, my lord.”

A shiver ran down Alec’s spine. “Who else knows?”

“Only me and my wife. It was hard not to notice when our mistress turned up with child, even though the master had not gone to her bed in months.”

Alec sighed. Servants always seemed to know things before anyone else. “I suppose you also know who my real father is.”

“Your mother told Mrs. Emson it was a certain… royal personage.”

“She told me the same.” That was something else he hadn’t told Katherine, and she’d definitely deserved to hear it. “Odd, isn’t it? The earl wasn’t even my father, yet despite all my efforts to avoid his mistakes, here I am, right in his place. At least he managed to hold on to the woman he married for money.”

Emson looked perplexed. “The old earl didn’t marry your mother for money. He loved her then. Thought the sun rose and set in her.”

Alec snorted. “Yes, I could tell from how he treated her.”

“But it was not like that when they were courting. Your mother considered his lordship a very attractive prospect, and he thought her quite amiable. Yes, she had a fortune, but that was merely icing on the cake. She was young and pretty and made him laugh, something you know he rarely did. So he was sure that once they married, she would be the one to help him overcome his problem.”

Alec glanced at him, perplexed. “What problem?”

Emson stiffened. “I beg your pardon. I thought you knew. Since you know all the rest, I thought somebody must have told you—”

“Told me what, damn it?”

Emson actually blushed. Alec didn’t think he’d ever seen the man’s papery cheeks turn pink. “The old earl could not”—he gestured to the drawer that held
The Rake’s Rhetorick
—“attain the physical state required for those activities illustrated in your reading.”

Alec gaped at him. “He was impotent?”

“I believe that is the term for it, my lord,” Emson mumbled.

“How in God’s name would you know such a thing about him?”

“I was his valet in his salad days, if you will recall. I slept right off his room for many years. And whenever he brought… er… ladies to his rooms, I was the one who… paid them. For services or nonservices, as the case may be. Not to mention that my wife was your mother’s—”

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“Enough.” He’d have to watch what he told any valet he ever hired. “So in all the years the earl was married to my mother, he never—”

“Never, from what your mother said to my wife.”

Alec wheeled away from the writing table, hardly able to take it in. He’d painted the old earl as the devil incarnate when the truth was far more complicated.

A sudden thought occurred to him. “That’s why the old earl spent all that money on quack remedies, isn’t it?”

Emson nodded. “He wanted a son very badly.”

“His own son,” Alec bit out. “Not another man’s bastard.”

“It was not merely that. He did love your mother enough to want to—”

“Love? That ass had no idea what love is. He was always calling her vulgar and cold, while she spent her nights crying.”

“It was easier on his pride, I expect, to blame her.” Emson shot him a veiled glance. “Some do say that it is the woman’s fault if the man cannot perform his duties. So he may even have convinced himself that such was the case.”

Alec bristled. “My mother was the sweetest, best—”

“I am not saying he was right, my lord, either in his beliefs or in his actions. Clearly in later years, he took the blame upon himself or he would not have sought cures. I am just saying it weighs sorely on a man when he cannot bed his wife.”

“I suppose that’s true.” He sucked in a heavy breath. “And it probably weighs sorely on the woman, too.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, after the old earl and your mother married, and he realized she was not… the solution to his problem, he lashed out at her. That wounded her feelings and made her uneasy around him, which in turn made him more bitter and on and on. It got worse until finally—”

“She let the Prince of Wales seduce her.”

Emson nodded. “And then the marriage became as you knew it.”

“With the earl always berating her and her believing she was of no worth.” His jaw tightened. “And that her son was a reckless ne’er-do-well who would never be a credit to his name.”

Alec glanced away. He couldn’t believe he was talking about this with Emson. But then, who else was he supposed to talk to about it? The only other people who would understand were his half brothers, who weren’t around, and—

Katherine. If she’d stayed, he could have told her. The woman who’d ached for him because he was

“poor” and seemingly too proud to tell her might not have flinched at the idea that he was secretly a bastard because his father had been impotent. She might have understood and accepted it, as she’d done
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with so many other things about him—why he’d worked with horses, why he’d hidden his past… why he liked to break the rules.

But he’d driven Katherine away. And all because he’d been too much of a coward to trust her with the truth from the beginning.

Just like the old earl.

Alec stared blindly at his servant. “I thought it was the fortune that made it impossible for them to be close. He was always swearing that he wouldn’t have married her if not for it.”

Emson nodded. “The master was wrongheaded and too proud for his own good. Trouble is, his sort of pride has no place in love. A man must be humble enough to show his whole self, bad and good, to the woman he loves if he is to gain her trust.”

“Which I didn’t do,” Alec said.

Emson shrugged. “You weren’t marrying for love. You were marrying for money. That’s different.”

“I wasn’t marrying only for—” He stopped short. He had been. His deceptions and manner of wooing had all been to lessen the risk of losing Katherine’s fortune. None of it had been to lessen the risk of losing her love. And now that he’d lost both, he saw that he’d put all his attention in the wrong place. Because losing her fortune didn’t mean losing Edenmore. He could always find another heiress or borrow more money—assuming that Katherine kept silent about him in society, which he somehow knew she would.

But he didn’t
want
another heiress. He only wanted Katherine. So losing her love meant losing it all, because without her…

The reality of what he’d done sank over him like a funeral shroud. Oh, God, how would he live without her? What did it matter if he restored Edenmore to a brilliant and efficient estate if he had no Katherine to share it with?

No Katherine to laugh at his puny jests, no Katherine to fuss over him, no Katherine to love. He groaned. He loved her. Like an idiot, he’d gone and broken his own rule—not to fall in love with the heiress.

But she loathed him now. And too late, he understood what she’d been trying to tell him.
How can I
ever separate the things you said to win me, from the things you said to win my fortune
? He hadn’t thought of it that way. He’d been too busy scheming to realize that his one deception would make her regard everything he’d said to her as a lie.

Even if it wasn’t.

But how could she know that, when he’d never shown his true self? When he’d kept parts hidden purposely to deceive her? How could he expect her to know what was real and what wasn’t? He couldn’t. That damned fortune of hers would always be between them, convincing her that he’d
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never really cared for her at all.

Unless he gave up the fortune.

The thought hit him like a low branch knocking a rider out of the saddle. If he gave up the fortune, arranged in the marriage settlement for the entire thing to go to her family, then she’d have no reason to balk anymore, no reason to distrust him. She would have to believe he’d meant every word he said. And he’d forever lose his chance to restore Edenmore to what it had once been. He could have one or the other: Katherine or Edenmore. Somehow he must find the strength to make the right choice.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Sometimes a rakehell must take a wild risk

to get what he wants.

—Anonymous,
A Rake’s Rhetorick

The afternoon after they’d returned to London, Katherine went in search of her mother. As she approached the parlor, the blessed numbness she’d achieved since leaving Suffolk began to fade, and the sharp bite of pain to gnaw again at her belly.

She and Mama had barely spoken since their flight from Edenmore. Unfortunately, they couldn’t continue that way forever.

Katherine entered the parlor to find her mother staring listlessly into the fire. A pang of sympathy hit her, which she squelched ruthlessly. It was Mama’s fault she’d landed herself in this fix, promised in marriage to a man she should never have considered.

Not only Mama’s fault, her conscience whispered.

She ignored it. “I spoke to the solicitor, Mama,” she said in a businesslike tone. “He says Lord Iversley will have difficulty bringing suit againstusfor breach of contract, since he used deception to obtain my agreement to the marriage.”

That wasn’t all his cursed lordship had used. The “love bite” he’d left on her shoulder was proof of that. The thought of it fueled her temper. How could he have feigned interest so often? Every time he kissed her and held her and called her “senhora”…

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She fought back the tears burning her eyes. Lord preserve her, when would she stop turning into a watering pot every time she thought of him?

Mama was staring at her with a sad little frown. “Katherine, my angel, are you sure it’s so awful that his lordship is a fortune hunter? Perhaps you should give him another chance.”

Katherine’s anger welled anew. “Isn’t that rather odd, coming from you? You’re the one who doesn’t want to share my fortune with any husband I take.”

For the first time in days, Mama’s own temper roused. “Now see here, little Miss Righteous and Noble. You have never lived with money. I
have
. When I was a girl, we lived very well. Papa never deniedus anything we asked for.”

“Until he died without leaving the money to you, the way you expected.”

Her mother rose, eyes flashing. “Can you blame me? Do you know how many years I put up with your grandfather’s carping about my poor choice of husband? I went from being his darling to being his disappointment. So yes, I wanted
something
in return.” Her eyes narrowed. “And I wanted something better for you, too, whether you believe it or not. I wanted a husband who would
not
embarrass you, who’d treat you better than your father treated me.”

“And you chose so well for me, too,” she said bitterly.

“I didn’t choose the earl, missy. And I certainly didn’t force you into any beds with him. You hopped into his bed all on your own.”

Katherine swallowed. That was certainly true.

“Nor am I happy to learn he isn’t rich, as Lady Jenner gave me to believe.” She frowned. “No doubt she’s another scurrilous friend of that Mr. Byrne.”

“No doubt.”

“But none of that matters now. It’s done. We must learn to live with our disappointment. And if that means you marry a man who will use your fortune to better his estate, then so be it. I should think you’d prefer that to the alternative—dying in poverty as an old maid. Which is your only other choice now. Your prospects were never that good, but now that you’ve been seen in a compromising position by Lady Purefoy in the orangery, they’re very bad indeed.”

Katherine’s chin trembled. “Surely there are still fortune hunters who don’t care about such things. We can make an arrangement with one.”

“You’d rather marry a man you don’t know than a man you know and like?”

“Yes. I let my emotions become engaged, and look where that got me. I should have been sensible, not been swayed by soft words and sweet looks. And now I’m paying for it. Marrying a man I don’t know, who won’t care about me, would be infinitely sensible.”

“But would he make you happy?”

“He’d make me happier than a man who… who
lies
to me. Who made me think he wanted me for
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myself, when all he wanted was my fortune.”