Page 77 of A Virgin for the Duke of Ash

“Precisely. You have to understand, my dear, the old Duke was not a very nice person…”

Oh, he was definitely not just “not nice”—the man was a coldhearted beast!

“And did he find them?” Evie asked her.

The only ray of hope in this tragic tale was if the Duke had actually found them and provided handsomely for them. It was not unheard of for noblemen to have paramours and children out of wedlock, but they were provided for, and some were even educated to the same standards as their legitimate heirs.

Unfortunately, Caroline shook her graying head. “By the time he found them, poor Ann had already died, and Daniel was already a young man who wanted nothing to do with the man who shunned him and condemned him to a childhood of poverty and misery.”

Evie’s eyes widened in horror. “What do you mean?”

“Ann, Daniel’s mother, managed to hold onto the son she bore only for a few scant months before the Duke’s money ran out. After that, she could no longer provide for the babe, so the moment he was weaned, she surrendered him to an orphanage in the hope that they might be able to at least feed him.”

Evie gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in horror. She could only imagine how horrible it had been for Daniel.

Orphanages were the last resort for children of the very poor or the deceased. They were mostly overcrowded with hardly enough to feed all the children in their care, relying solely on the mercy and charity of others.

“You can only imagine how he reacted when the former Duke summoned him to bestow this ‘great honor’ of a title on him.” Caroline laughed in derision.

“I gather he was not pleased about it?” Evie smiled a little.

“Oh, not only that, but he also spat in the man’s face and told him to shove his title up where…” the older woman trailed off,her face turning red. “In any case, the boy was quite rude, and rightly so! If it had been me, I might have taken a vase to his head as well!”

Despite her heartbreak, Evie could not help but chortle at the older woman’s recounting of how the former Duke tried to entice his mostly forgotten son to take on the mantle, years and years after he all but scorned him for his lowly birth.

“But he is the Duke of Ashton now,” she murmured. “That means he must have accepted the title and his father’s offer.”

“On the contrary, it wasIwho convinced him to take his birthright.”

Evie looked at the older woman in astonishment. “You did? B-but how?”

She knew firsthand just how stubborn Daniel could be. He would never have accepted anything from the former Duke without a good reason.

“I was already old, and if Daniel refused the title, it would have passed on to a distant cousin who would have made a mess of things,” the Dowager Duchess scoffed. “Seeing as I had no children of my own, I took it upon myself to approach him and propose an arrangement that would benefit the both of us.”

Evie raised an eyebrow at this. “Meaning?”

The Dowager Duchess smiled, seemingly pleased with herself. “You have to know that by the time his father started recognizing him, Daniel had already made a name for himself—although not in the way most gentlemen did. While the ignorant fool wiped away his inheritance, his own son had acquired a great wealth for himself. When my husband died and Daniel still refused to accept his inheritance, I personally went to see him and pleaded with him to have mercy on me.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “I was a childless widow, and whoever inherited the titles and estate of the Duke of Ashton could very well throw me out without a shilling to my name. Thus, I proposed that we come to an agreement—Daniel would accept his inheritance under the pretense that he is some distant nephew of the Duke of Ashton, and I would enjoy his protection for the rest of my days as his aunt.”

The Dowager Duchess reached for her hand with a sad smile. “Daniel would never acknowledge being his father’s son, but he took pity on me on the account that I had suffered the former Duke’s existence for the better part of two and a half decades. In a sense, we were comrades in arms. Survivors of my husband’s selfishness, if you will.”

Evie smiled at her. “You are not wrong, of course.”

Caroline smiled and patted her hand. “Knowing him for as long as I have now, I can assure you with utmost certainty that he cares for you, my dear—more than evenherealizes, I would say. I can only hope that he comes to his senses before it is too late.”

As much as she wanted to believe the older woman’s words, Evie also knew that there was nothing that could change Daniel’s mind once he had already set it to something. He was so strong and resolute, and it had been one of the things she had admired about him.

“I cannot do anything about it, Aunt Caroline,” she told the older woman brokenly. “He has already refused me—again. How could I possibly stay here any longer?”

The older woman looked at her with great sadness in her gray eyes. “I know, my dear child. Sometimes, I wish I could take a stick and beat some sense into him, but Daniel is a grown man, and he would have to come to these realizations by himself.”

But what if he never did? What if Evie left and he truly forgot about her?

Pain unlike anything she had ever known ripped through her.

How could Daniel so easily turn his back on her when she would go to hell and back for him?

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