Page 60 of Captured By the Cold Duke
“Is that true?” his friend asked him, and Thomas forced himself to turn and meet his friend’s gaze. “You were in love with Cherie before you married her?”
Thomas’s mouth felt dry, but it wasn’t just nervousness and shame that were currently coursing through his body. There was also relief. At last, he was coming clean about all the secrets that he had carried alone for far too long.
“Aidan, I have loved your sister for many years. And from the moment I met her, I knew she was someone I wanted in my life forever. I’m sorry I never told you. I should have—but I was afraid of ruining our friendship by telling you of the feelings I harbored for Cherie. When we were forced to marry because of circumstances, I also felt a profound shame that I had somehow ended up with the woman of my dreams without ever coming clean to you about my feelings.”
“You have nothing to feel ashamed of,” Aidan said at once. “You married my sister to save her honor and knowing that you loved her all those years only makes me happier. I want my sister to be loved, Thomas. I want her to be adored the way I adore the duchess.”
Thomas felt a lump rise in his throat. He hadn’t realized how much he had been hoping for Aidan’s approval, and how much he had been fearing telling him of his feelings, until this moment.
“Thank you, my old friend,” Thomas said.
Aidan looked as if he wanted to say more about this, but instead, he grunted, “Let us return to this subject later. For now, we need to deal with Lord Rochford.” He turned to face the earl, who was watching this exchange with narrow eyes.
“Your attempt to buy my sister into marriage was disgusting,” Aidan spat. “And it is made even more disgusting to learn that it was born out of the late Duke of Wheaton’s revenge against his son for some perceived and unproved crime of his mother. I don’t care what may or may not have happened between the late duchess and her husband. I don’t care if Thomas is his father’s trueborn son or not. The late duke acknowledged Thomas as his, and that is all the proof I need.”
Lord Rochford started to say something, but Aidan cut him off.
“And even if Thomas wasn’t his father’s trueborn son—even if there was definite proof that he wasn’t the true heir to the dukedom—I would still be proud to call him my best friend.” Aidan looked at Thomas, and Thomas felt his heart swell.
“He is the best man I’ve ever met,” Aidan said simply. “Whereas you…” He looked back at the earl, and his expression became thunderous. “You are scum.”
“I was only doing what the late duke asked me to do!” Rochford shouted. “He wanted his ‘son’ out of the picture! He wanted me to be the real heir! When we spoke on his deathbed, the things he told me…” He glared at Thomas. “He told me he had neverstopped thinking of me as his true son, that he was sorry for abandoning me, and that I must marry Lady Cherie and assume the dukedom, no matter what it took. He made me promise him, on his deathbed, that I would do that!”
But Thomas was already shaking his head.
“The truth, Lord Rochford, is that my father used you. He used you to fit his own agenda. He treated you like his heir when he thought he couldn’t have a son, and then he used you again, once I had disappointed him. You know, he also told me something on his deathbed. He also told me I was a bastard, and he might be right; I’ll never know. But what I do know is that if I had truly followed in his footsteps, if I had shown the cruelty and craftiness that he had, if I had been happy to keep his business going despite the damage it was causing to the people who worked there and the land around it, then he never would have told me I was a bastard. Maybe he still would have hated me, but he wouldn’t have tried to ruin me. Because the man cared about one thing only: his profits. And the worst part about me, to him, wasn’t my ancestry, but my values.”
Thomas drew himself up to his full height, squared his shoulders, and looked around at all those assembled.
“But I’m proud to be the kind of man who shuts down a business that cared nothing for the lives of the people who worked there. I’m proud to be different from my father. And I’m proud to be the Duke of Wheaton because it means I can build a new legacy for the duchy, instead of the one my father left behind.”
“But he wasn’t your father!” Rochford shouted. There was something desperate in his expression now, and if Thomas hadn’t been so angry at what he’d done to Cherie, he might have even felt a little sorry for him. But while Thomas might have sympathy for how terribly his father had treated the earl, his sympathy ended there. Rochford was a grown man, and he should have chosen to not let his anger and resentment make him a monster.
Thomas took a step forward. “He might not have been my father, but he wasn’t yours either. I know you tried to replace your father with mine, but you never could, because my father wasn’t capable of love. And that’s what a father does: he loves his children.”
Thomas glanced at Aidan, and suddenly he knew one thing with utter clarity: if Cherie ever woke up, if she survived this, then he wanted to live as husband and wife with her. And he wanted to have a child with her.
And with this realization burning through him, he turned back to the earl. “Maybe you are my father’s true son,” he said suddenly, “because you are no more capable than he was of understanding love. And maybe I’ve let him influence me too much as well because I have also been trying to deny love. But no more. No more will I deny the love I have for my wife, and no more will the hatred you and my father spread ever affect me, my friends, or my family. You’re done, Lord Rochford.”
The earl slumped back at these words, stumbling a little, and the captain of the Bow Street Runners stepped forward.
“Lord Rochford, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of the Duchess of Wheaton,” he said. He signaled to his men, and the three of them surrounded Rochford, then moved forward as one. They grabbed him and turned him around, then put handcuffs on his wrists. Rochford didn’t protest or struggle. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him.
The Bow Street Runners led him forward and out of the study, and Thomas, Aidan, and Mr. Norton followed. Out in the hall, all of the servants seemed to have gathered, undoubtedly alerted to what was happening by the butler. They stood in the hall, watching silently, their expressions grave, as Rochford was led out of the front door, down the drive, and into the carriage.
“Finally, they got him,” Thomas heard one of them mutter, and a profound sense of relief washed over him. Rochford was behind bars, and who knew how much harm he had caused beyond the poisoning of Cherie? He would direct the Bow Street Runners to interview the staff and try to discover more of his crimes, as there were surely too many to count. But for now, Thomas was just glad that Rochford could no longer hurt Cherie any more than he already had.
He stepped outside, where Aidan joined him. Together, the two men watched as Rochford was loaded into the carriage. Before he followed the earl inside, the captain turned back to them.
“We will book him in tonight and keep him there until the trial,” he told the two dukes. “We will be in touch shortly to have you both bring your evidence forward. But I don’t anticipate that itwill be a lengthy trial. The earl was not particularly clever, and the evidence against him is overwhelming.”
“Thank you for your help,” Thomas said, and he shook the captain’s hand.
“Not at all,” the captain said. “Please accept my well wishes for the duchess and her speedy recovery.”
Then he climbed up into the carriage, the driver flicked the reins, and the carriage set off down the street.
Thomas let out a long, slow breath. “Well, at least that’s done.”
