The Inheritance (40 page)

He had seen his father watching Daisy when he thought no one was looking, his eyes shadowed with fear. He hoped for both their sakes that the child was born healthy.

Colin unsaddled Buck and gave him a ration of oats before he headed back toward the house.

His talk with Roanna had been only one of the good-byes he was being forced to endure. He had spoken recently with his father about his desire to return home, to Texas.

“I got a letter from Simp,” he had told his father. “He wants to know when we’re setting sail for home.”

“In the spring,” his father had replied.

“When in the spring, Pa? March? April? May?”

“Don’t try pinning me down, Colin,” he replied irritably. “I can’t make any decision until the child is born.”

Colin hadn’t really been surprised that his father refused to commit to a date for leaving England. He had sensed his father’s growing attachment to the land. And to Daisy. Colin had often wondered, as he watched Daisy with his father through the fall and winter and into the spring, how they managed to spend so much time together and ignore the confrontation everyone knew was coming when the baby arrived.

“Hello, Pa, Daisy,” Colin said as he strode past the two of them on his way into the house. “How are you, Daisy?”

“Big,” Daisy retorted.

Colin laughed. “As a horse.”

Nicholas shot his son a warning glance. “You look like all women look at this stage in the game,” he consoled Daisy. “No better, no worse.”

“Your father is a wonder at compliments,” Daisy said wryly.

Colin smiled. “I saw a carriage with a fancy crest in front of the manor when I rode up. Are we expecting company?”

Daisy and Nicholas exchanged glances.

“I certainly wasn’t,” Daisy said. “I don’t want anyone to see me in this condition.”

“I wonder who it is,” Nicholas mused.

At that moment Lady Celeste appeared on the gravel walk at the edge of the rose garden. Her face was chalky white, and she was clutching her shawl tightly around her shoulders.

“Someone has arrived, Your Grace,” she announced to Nicholas.

“Who is it?”

“Lord Estleman.”

Nicholas froze. His eyes skidded to Daisy, and he saw that she was as surprised—and distressed—as he was. It was too soon. Now that the moment had come, he wasn’t sure he was ready to learn the truth. What if he wasn’t entitled to be Duke of Severn? What if none of this rightfully belonged to him? He knew the law would never question his claim, that legally he had inherited the title and the lands.

But Estleman could tell him whether his mother had betrayed his father. Or whether his father had made a horrible and irrevocable mistake in judging his mother.

“Will you come inside and meet him, Your Grace?” Lady Celeste said.

“Why did he come here now?” Nicholas asked his aunt. “How did he know I was looking for him?”

“I’m sure Lord Estleman will be able to answer all your questions.”

“I’m coming with you,” Daisy said as Nicholas began to stride toward the house.

Nicholas whirled on her. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Doesn’t it?” she said, eyes flashing, chin upthrust. “I have a right to know who you are. Who our child will be.”

It no longer mattered, Nicholas realized, whether she learned the truth now or an hour from now. He had no intention of keeping it from her. He shoved a hand through his hair. “All right. You might as well come along.”

Colin didn’t ask to come. It mattered not at all to him whether his father was born to the English aristocracy or not. He could love him and respect him no more than he already did. However, he knew that the question of legitimacy had given his father nightmares for years. He hoped for his father’s sake that Lord Estleman had the answers his father sought.

Nicholas felt more and more anxious as he approached the library, where Lady Celeste had instructed Thompson to usher Lord Estleman. He wasn’t aware of how tightly he was gripping Daisy’s hand until she said, “Nicholas. You’re hurting me.”

Higgenbotham started to open the library door, but Nicholas stayed him. “Wait a moment.”

He turned and hauled Daisy a short distance away where they could speak without being overheard.
“Will you come to America with me when the baby’s born? I want you with me there.”

“Why are you asking me this now, Nicholas?”

“Because I need an answer.”

Daisy put a hand on his forearm and felt the rigid muscles beneath her fingertips. “Do you think you don’t deserve all this?” she said in a quiet voice. “Are you afraid you love it too much, even though by rights it shouldn’t be yours? Who better to be Duke of Severn than you, Nicholas? I’ve seen how your eyes devour the land, how your heart beats fast when you lay eyes on the house after being gone for a day. It doesn’t matter what Estleman says. Severn is yours. It belongs to you.”

Nicholas was shaking his head. “Not if my mother betrayed my father. Not if I’m no part of him.”

Daisy grasped Nicholas by the shoulders and shook him—as much as someone her size could shake someone his size. “You’re being ridiculous. Your father could have repudiated you. He didn’t. Doesn’t that mean something?”

Nicholas snorted. “That he was a proud man. That he didn’t want the world to know my mother had cuckolded him.”

Daisy made an exasperated sound deep in her throat. “All right, then. Believe what you will. It’s entirely likely Lord Estleman won’t be able to shed any more light on the situation than anyone else has.”

She turned and started for the door to the library. She paused and looked to see if Nicholas was coming. He walked as though he were on his way to the guillotine. Higgenbotham opened the door and shut
it with the usual heavy
thunk
, which somehow possessed a note of finality as it closed behind him.

Nicholas’s heart was in his throat as he spied Lord Estleman. The tall man was standing by the twelve-paned window, looking out on the rolling lawns of Severn. If he had once been heavier than Nicholas, he wasn’t now. His thick black hair was threaded with silver. When he turned, the heart in Nicholas’s throat sank to his toes.

Estleman looked enough like him—in every way—to be his elder brother. Or his father.

Nicholas quickly exchanged a grief-stricken glance with Daisy, whose eyes were full of sympathy. She saw it, too.

Estleman was the spitting image of him.

“I’m Estleman,” the man said in a clipped accent. “I heard when I returned to London from India that you were looking for me … Your Grace. I believe we have some business to discuss. First, may I say that you’ve turned into a fine-looking man?”

“Since we look very much alike, sir, that’s seems a self-serving compliment.”

Lord Estleman chuckled. “Yes, I suppose it does.”

Nicholas had been expecting the older man to deny the similarity in their features. It seemed the nail in the coffin that he had only acknowledged it.

“I came here because I’m your—”

“I know who you are,” Nicholas said in a harsh voice.

“You do?” Estleman looked surprised.

“I want to know why you never came after my mother. Why you never came after me.”

“Oh, I see.” Estleman crossed to the fireplace, turning his back to Nicholas. He braced his palms
against the marble and rocked back and forth. “I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t? Or simply didn’t?”

“Couldn’t,” Estleman said as he turned back to face Nicholas. “You see, my father was still alive at the time, but in uncertain health. I couldn’t take the chance that he would find out about my relationship to your mother. The shock of learning about such a liaison might have given him a stroke. My mother begged me to use discretion. To my later regret, I acceded to her wishes.”

Nicholas felt his heart begin to pump faster as adrenaline sped through his system. He hadn’t known how he would feel when he finally learned the truth. Now that the moment had arrived, he felt physically ill. And mortally angry. His hands tightened into fists, his nails digging into his skin. He had to restrain himself from reaching out to strangle the man standing, seemingly unconcerned, across from him.

“So you see, there was no way I could help your mother,” Estleman said. “The truth might have killed my father.”

“The lie killed my mother,” Nicholas said through clenched teeth.

“Lie? What lie?”

“If you had come forward to protect her, she might not have left England. She wouldn’t have suffered, and she wouldn’t have died. I can’t condone what she did to my father, but she shouldn’t have been made to forfeit her life because of her affair with you.”

Lord Estleman was looking more and more confused. “My dear boy—Your Grace—what are you
talking about? Your mother and I never had an affair! The idea is unthinkable!”

Nicholas saw red. His hands closed around Estleman’s throat. His strength was superhuman. He wasn’t aware of Daisy clawing at his arm. Wasn’t aware of Lady Celeste screaming from the other side of the room. “Are you denying that you lay with my mother? That she bore me as a result? Why did you come here if you’re not my father?”

“For God’s sake, I’m your
uncle!
” Estleman rasped.

Suddenly Nicholas felt as though he were in a long tunnel. He could hear his mother singing a lullaby. He could hear his father shouting at her, accusing her of betraying him. He could hear himself crying, begging his mother to let him stay at Severn, to please not take him away.

“Nicholas. Please, say something. Nicholas.”

He was sitting in the chair behind the Sheraton desk. He didn’t know how he had gotten there, but he felt Daisy’s hands on his cheeks, and when he blinked he saw she was staring worriedly into his eyes.

“Daisy?”

“You’re back,” she said. “Thank God, you’re back.”

He looked around and saw Estleman standing at the fireplace and Lady Celeste perched at one end of the settee weeping into her hands. How had she gotten into the room? She must have been there all along, and he had simply not seen her with his gaze focused on Estleman.

Nicholas stood and found his legs wobbly under him. Daisy slid her arm around his waist, and he put
an arm around her shoulder, accepting the support she offered. He walked the few steps to Estleman and stared into eyes so very similar to his own. The older man lowered his gaze.

“You’re my uncle?” Nicholas said.

Estleman rubbed at the bruises on his neck. “Yes.”

Nicholas frowned. “I don’t have an uncle, at least not one that I was aware of. Where did you come from?”

“It seems I shall have to confess the whole. Your grandfather, your mother’s father, was the one who had an affair … with my mother. Your mother found out I was her half brother and insisted on meeting me. We did meet, secretly, several times, because I couldn’t take the chance my father would find out the connection between us. You see, my mother had never told him that I wasn’t his son. I found out myself only when I caught my mother with her lover. She begged me not to tell my father. She was afraid he would disown her if he ever found out and throw us both out into the street with nothing.”

“I understand her concern,” Nicholas said bitterly. How unbelievably ironic the whole situation was. It was difficult to blame his uncle for wishing to avoid a fate he had reason to know was more terrible than words could describe.

“When your father made the accusations against your mother, Gloria was naturally hurt. Lord Philip would have forgiven her, I think, if someone hadn’t pointed me out to him. He took one look at me—”

“—and one look at me,” Nicholas said, “and came to the obvious conclusion. No wonder he believed she had betrayed him.” Nicholas still needed a
scapegoat. Someone to blame for the tragedy. Someone on whom to take revenge. “Who pointed you out to my father?” he demanded.

“That I don’t know,” Estleman said.

From across the room, Lady Celeste spoke for the first time. “I did.”

Three pairs of stunned eyes focused on the elderly woman.

“Why?” Nicholas demanded in a horrified voice. “Dear God. Why?”

Lady Celeste rose from the settee and walked the few steps to Nicholas. Her hands were clutched like a harpy’s claws around her fringed woollen shawl. “She took Philip from me. He courted me first, before he ever laid eyes on Gloria. But he never looked at me again after he met her. I thought … I thought if Gloria were gone he might turn back to me.”

Nicholas saw the world-weariness in her eyes, the guilt, the regret, and the shame. Overriding them all was the bitterness she still harbored against his mother after all these years.

“He never did, of course,” Lady Celeste continued. “He loved Gloria until the day he died. I’m afraid the more he pined for her, the more tightly I held on to the knowledge that would have saved them both.

“You see, Gloria wrote asking me to intercede for her, to explain about her meetings with our half brother and to ask Philip to take her back.

“I burned the letter.”

Nicholas grappled with his need to strike out with his fists at the small, gray-haired woman who had
ruined so many lives. To bloody her, to mangle her body as she had mangled his life. But killing her wouldn’t change the past. He had to live with that forever.

He turned and walked away from his aunt, the woman who had destroyed his family, to stare out the window at Severn. Jealousy. Selfishness. Misunderstanding. Stubbornness. They had all contributed to the tragedy.

He couldn’t forgive either his aunt or his uncle for what they had done to him and his mother. But now that he knew the facts, he had no further desire to punish the two of them. They would suffer enough in the years to come. Each of them had to live with the knowledge of how they had betrayed and destroyed their own flesh and blood.

Another truth dawned on him slowly.

I am Severn. I am my father’s son
.

Nicholas felt the sting of tears in his nose, and his vision blurred. He felt Daisy beside him and clutched at her hand, unable to speak, unable to look at her or at anyone at this moment of revelation. All the questions that had tortured him for so many years had been answered.

In a voice so soft it was almost a whisper Daisy said, “I love you, Nicholas Windermere.”