An Heir of Deception (18 page)

“Well, that’s because he lives here, in England.”

Her son’s face brightened, a smile splitting his face. “Does that mean I can meet him?”

Charlotte glanced at Alex in time to see another flash of emotion flit across his face. This time she had no trouble pinpointing it. Anguish. She redoubled her efforts.

“Darling, Lord Avondale—Alex, he is your father.”

With her words, a burden of five years in the making lifted from her shoulders only to have nail-biting anxiety set in. She held her breath.

Nicholas’s head whipped around so fast she feared he’d injure himself. Mouth agape, eyes the size of half crowns, he stared at Alex.

The silence was excruciating even if it lasted only seconds. The longest seconds in his life.

Alex eased his mouth into a smile, hoping to reassure and express his pleasure at the same time. His son didn’t have to know that under his mask of calm, his nerves were razor thin and felt stretched to snapping.

Alex wasn’t a poet and never purported to the artistic craft. But the light from the sun on the most beautiful summer day paled to the smile lighting his son’s face. It brightened everything in the room, in the house, in all of England. More than anything, it lit up everything gray and shadowed in his life, giving Alex a sense of purpose he’d never had before. The care of this child—his wonderful son—was his. The notion was staggering and humbling.

“You are my papa?” Nicholas’s voice trembled with excitement.

Alex began to speak but words failed him, caught somewhere between his heart and his throat. When they looked back on this moment, years from now, he prayed his son’s first memory of him wasn’t seeing him reduced to a blubbering mess upon their introduction.

He cleared his throat again. “Yes, I am your father.”

As pleased as Nicholas appeared, he didn’t so much as budge from his mother’s side, although he’d given her back the full use of her left arm. What did he do now? Alex couldn’t remember a time the duke had ever touched him in affection and while he knew his mother loved him, she simply wasn’t the touching sort.

But he wanted to touch—hug—his son. Hold him long enough to make up for all the years they’d lost.

“Go on,” Charlotte said, her voice soothing. “If you’d like to hug him, you can. I’m sure your father would like that.”

Alex didn’t want to feel kindly toward her. But for her, there’d be no awkwardness to overcome. Father and son would have long been acquainted to the sum of four years. However, he grudgingly conceded that she was trying to help. As well she should.

Nicholas slid from the sofa and took a tentative step toward him, his smile wavering. He glanced back at his mother, who nodded her encouragement.

Alex pushed from his seat and dropped one knee to the rug. He opened his arms and that was all the reassurance Nicholas needed, stepping into his embrace. His small arms encircled his neck, and Alex had never been so close to blubbering in his entire life.

“I always wanted a father.”

Emotion constricted Alex’s throat. He squeezed the little body to him and breathed him in. He smelled of soap and baby powder and felt sturdy and fragile at the same time. “No more than I wanted a son just like you.”

Over the top of Nicholas’s head, Alex met Charlotte’s gaze. Tears streamed down her face. She quickly bent her head and snapped open the reticule she had at her side. Seconds later, a handkerchief materialized in her hand, which she put to immediate use sopping up her tears.

When Nicholas removed his arms from around his neck, Alex wasn’t ready to release him. But because he didn’t want to overwhelm him, Alex dropped his hands to his side, resisting the urge to snatch him back, hold on to him for dear life and never let him go.

Nicholas returned to his mother’s side, his smile fairly triumphant and absurdly pleased. Smiling, Alex levered himself up and back into the chair.

That had gone well. Certainly better than Alex had anticipated given the rocky start.

Charlotte sent him a wistful smile and for a moment he was transported. Back to a time of unbridled happiness when the future looked brighter than the sun and was a journey they’d take together as man and wife.

She’d been crying so in all fairness her face ought to be blotchy and her eyes red-rimmed. Instead, her creamy, unblemished complexion and blue eyes defied the ravages of tears as if to punish him. If only he wasn’t still attracted to her, how easier his life would be. But better physical attraction than feel even a fraction of what he’d once felt for her. Loving her that much had nearly destroyed him.

“Mama, I’m hungry.” Nicholas had resumed his seat beside his mother, his feet dangling over the lip of the sofa revealing blue stockings beneath navy trousers. He wasn’t dressed like a proper English boy, a fact Alex intended to remedy straightaway. It was bad enough he spoke like an American, he couldn’t have people mistaking his son for a foreigner, thus encouraging them to treat him as though he didn’t belong.

Alex rose to his feet. “I will have Cook make you something to eat. What would you like?”

“I want to go to my cousins’ home and eat with them,” Nicholas blurted.

Home.
A word that should have conjured up images of love, hearth and family instead represented nothing but division and strife. And suddenly Alex was consumed with a blinding anger. Gretchen Manor ought to be Nicholas’s home.

No, this would not do. He, forced to call on his child like some interloper, or dependent on Charlotte to bring him by? He hadn’t been willing to put his son through the trauma of being separated from his mother, but to have to live with her, share a roof with her…the prospect was as enticing as it was disturbing. And he resented her for that. That after so long, she still had power enough over him to entice. Adam had lost that battle with Eve but Alex refused to allow Charlotte to be his downfall.

“Nicholas, I am your father so do you know what that means?”

Two pairs of blue eyes snapped to his—one in question, the other warily.

“It means you—we will all live here. Together as a family.”

Alex’s announcement rattled her to the core.

“Mama, does that mean we’re never going back to our real home?” Nicholas asked in alarm. The only reaction to indicate Alex was at all affected by his son’s obvious distress was the tightening of his jaw.

Charlotte grew more annoyed by the minute. That he hadn’t spoken of this with her, something this important, so life altering was simply beyond the pale. And the way things stood between them, living under the same roof was in no one’s best interest. At least not at present.

“Nicholas, my housekeeper brought her grandson by for a visit. Would you like to meet him? He’s just about your age,” Alex coaxed with a smile.

“The cook can fix you both a snack and then you can play. Do you like trains?” Alex asked, continuing in his relentless pursuit to win his son’s affections. “If you do, I believe there’s a new train set upstairs in the playroom.”

Toys. A child his age to play with. Food. They were all nirvana to a boy’s ears.

“A train set? For me?” Her son was on his feet in an instant, his body taut as a harp’s string with barely contained excitement.

Alex chuckled as he stood. “Yes, a train set for you. Let me call Mrs. Martindale.” He promptly rang for the housekeeper.

Her son turned and beamed at her. Charlotte smiled stiffly. Apparently, the want of his cousins’ company had soundly been trumped.

Five minutes later, a giggling Nicholas, his new friend Jonas, the housekeeper’s five-year-old grandson, and Mrs. Martindale herself, departed the room.

The moment the door closed, Charlotte spun in a flourish of flounced skirts and flashing eyes to confront him.

“Alex, how could you?” she asked, her voice high and incredulous.

While she stood, her body tense, her composure shaken, the blasted man sauntered over to his chair and sat down. In seeming quiet repose, long legs stretched negligently out before him, he regarded her.

“I believe I told you I wanted my son with
me
.” He spoke in a tone that made her grit her teeth.

“But you had no right telling Nicholas we would be living with you. That is something you should have discussed with me first. Have you forgotten he is just a boy and his whole life has changed? He’ll require time to adjust.”

“Did he appear distressed when he left?” he asked, gesturing toward the closed drawing room doors. “Believe me, children adapt better and faster than adults. Nicholas will be fine.”

“How can you be so unfeeling? His excitement over the toy will fade and then where will he be? I shall tell you, he’ll be fretting over the fact that he’ll never see his friends in America again,” Charlotte said, arms akimbo.

“As my wife—”

“Wife? Alex, you know as well as I that this marriage is a farce. You detest the fact that you must be married to me to legitimize our son.”

His brows shot up and she wasn’t sure if his surprise conveyed was at her obvious anger or her thoughts about their so-called marriage. A grimness settled over his features, and his gray eyes pierced her with an icy glare.

After the show he’d recently made of settling into the chair, he came to his feet slowly, like a lion preparing to pounce when it finally had its prey in sight. And he didn’t commence speaking until his advantage was complete; in height, strength and fury.

“No, madam, it is you who should be the grateful one. This
farce
you so disparagingly call our marriage is the only thing standing between you and total ruin. This
farce
is the sole reason I’m not taking you to court for custody of my son. So unless you wish to jeopardize everything you hold dear, I suggest you climb down off that mountain you seem intent on pitching yourself from due to your own obduracy and thank God I deign to even speak to you, much less claim you as my wife and have you in my home. I doubt any other man in my position would be as generous.”

Now Charlotte wished for a chair because her legs no longer wanted to support her. Blindly, she backed away from him until the backs of her legs bumped against the give of the brushed-velvet sofa. She didn’t so much as sit as drop down onto it with a
whoosh
and fluttering skirts.

One would think she’d have grown accustomed to it by now. Yet still when she heard the contempt in his voice and saw the way anger lit his eyes, it felt as if she was floating outside of herself observing another woman. For the woman who elicited such violent emotions in him could not be her. The Alex she knew had been passionate, loving and kind.

She looked at him only after she could breathe without the stabbing pain in her chest.

At first glance, he appeared composed. But upon closer inspection, Charlotte noticed the tick of his jaw, as if he were grinding his teeth, and how he held himself absolutely still.

“Alex, this will never work, you and I living together in the same residence. Do you not see that? You despise me.” Her voice caught on the word. “It will be a great miracle if we are able to persuade anyone we’re happily reunited.”

He took his time answering. “I said
you
were desperate for a second chance, not I. In any case, it’s no business of theirs how we are in our private lives. The only thing that matters is we present a united front. Our happiness or lack thereof is no one’s concern but ours.”

She could believe he’d have no qualms about subjecting her to a life of misery, but himself? That she couldn’t imagine. But there was one person whose happiness they both cared about.

“And what of Nicholas, shouldn’t we try so for his sake? I should not like him to have to endure the kind of childhood where it’s obvious his parents don’t get on.”

Endless seconds passed before he replied softly, “No, I shouldn’t like my son to be raised in that kind of atmosphere. I know well enough what a trial that can be.”

A tiny flame of hope flickered alive within her. Perhaps, she was getting through to him.

“What kind of marriage are we to have?” Charlotte refused to live in suspense, wondering and hoping, although yearning would be the worst. It was best she walk into this with her eyes wide open.

She hadn’t thought the question impertinent or provocative, but suddenly he regarded her slyly, as if he found something in her perfectly legitimate question vaguely amusing. “What kind of marriage would you like us to have?”

“I-I should prefer we not constantly be at odds.”

“I believe we can manage that. What else?” he asked softly, eyebrow raised.

“And that you not look at me as if you cannot bear the sight of me.”

“I wasn’t aware that I did.”

She noticed he didn’t deny that he could not bear the sight of her.

“Sometimes even
you
cannot hide
everything
you’re feeling.”

He smiled one of those cryptic smiles that spoke volumes but revealed nothing. He advanced toward her, until he stood over her, forcing her to crane her neck to meet his half-lidded gaze.