Page 28 of The Scottish Duke
“That’s most definitely Lorna. She’s always had such a sweet disposition.”
Sweet? He wouldn’t label the woman sweet.
After tucking the needle in the top of the fabric, his mother sat back.
“Why are you uncertain about the baby, Alex?”
“She had never...” No, the word wouldn’t pass his lips.
“She was a virgin?”
He took a sip of his whiskey. “It was only the one time.”
“Oh, Alex, I never thought you could be so naive. Of course the baby could be yours. I would urge you to go look in the mirror if you doubt that.”
“What?”
Her smile broadened. “Your father was virile, my son, while I was fertile. Nine months to the day of our wedding, you were born. Like father, like son?”
Bloody hell.
“What are you going to do?”
He didn’t have any idea. Normally, when he faced a roadblock, he never stopped looking for a way around it. In this part of the Highlands an occasional landslide would obliterate a track around a mountain. He didn’t turn around and return to his starting point. He just cleared the road. He faced any other obstacles in his life the same way.
Unless the obstacle was a woman heavily pregnant.
“What if the child is yours?” she asked. “Can you ignore its existence?” Her gaze didn’t move from his face. “I don’t know how you could. I would hope that you wouldn’t.”
She straightened her shoulders, placed one hand over the other and stared up at him, unsmiling.
“You’ve given no thought to marrying again, Alex. You’ve expressed no desire to do so.”
“Why on earth should I? And have my wife bed half of Edinburgh?”
She shook her head. “One bad experience should not color your reaction to all women, Alex.”
“What I’ve seen hasn’t led me to give your sex the benefit of the doubt, Mother.”
“You have no children, Alex. Did you never think that this might be your only child?”
“No, I hadn’t.”
Her smile thinned. “Such things normally happen in the course of events, my son. You should have considered that before you took her to your bed.”
That wasn’t exactly how it had happened.
“Do you dislike her so much, then, Alex? Why would you bed someone you dislike?”
“I don’t dislike her,” he said, feeling his way through the words. “She’s not what I expected.” She’d asked him to leave. No, she’d demanded it. He could still see the antipathy in her glare. “She has a great deal of pride.”
“You mean for a maid.”
He glanced at her.
“She was forced into service by circumstances, I believe. Most women are.”
He’d honestly never thought about why someone would come to work at Blackhall. He’d taken the servants for granted, that they would be there when he needed something done, that his meals would be prepared, that his rooms would be cleaned. He didn’t think about it any more than he thought about Blackhall’s many roofs.
