Page 46 of The Scottish Duke
“Well, Lorna, you know more than me,” Nan said, smiling and staring pointedly at her stomach.
Because she had no answer to that, Lorna retreated to silence.
“Have you lost your sanity, Alex?”
Alex glanced up from his desk in his library to find his uncle striding toward him.
When he was five, Alex realized that his aloof older brother wasn’t his brother at all, but his father’s. Thomas was an uncle, a relationship that took a while for him to understand.
Thomas made a detour to the sideboard and poured himself a brandy.
Alex put aside his work, moving to one of the wing chairs in front of the fire. Thomas joined him there, stretching out his feet toward the hearth and regarding his snifter of brandy the way a jeweler appraises a fine diamond.
In a way, perhaps Thomas was an expert of sorts when it came to spirits. He drank so much and so often that he’d acquired a tolerance for alcohol and the ability to mask when he was drunk. Most people didn’t realize that the fascinating conversations they were having with the Earl of Montrassey wouldn’t be recalled by the man in the morning. Or that his seduction of a certain female would disappear from his memory with the dawn.
“I think it’s a blessing, really,” Thomas had once said. “The Almighty evidently doesn’t want me to suffer a guilty conscience. Poof! He wipes it all away. Each morning I am as sinless as a babe.”
Thomas was a charter member of Beggar’s Blessings, a club founded for libertines in Edinburgh in 1750. The club went on to have branches in Inverness and then London, where the membership extended to include working men as well as the nobility. The only requirements of membership were to pass the marathon masturbation initiation and to add to the club’s collection of pornography. His uncle had done more than that. Thomas had come up with the idea of having lectures to teach advanced carnal arts and hired various “posing girls” who acted out pornographic material for the enlightenment of the membership.
Nor was Thomas the least discreet about belonging to such a club. Or about his drinking and wenching, either.
“Are you really going to lecture me on my behavior?” Alex asked.
“You’re an absolute fool to bring your mistress to Blackhall,” Thomas said. “It’s as much an admission that the child she carries is yours.”
“I believe it is,” he said calmly. Unlike his uncle, he had a conscience, and it still reminded him of events of a certain stormy night. Not to mention how Lorna had been living since leaving Blackhall.
“That’s no reason to be saddled with its support for the whole of your life. My God, if I had to pay for all the children I’ve created, I wouldn’t have two farthings to rub together.”
“How many children do you have, Uncle?”
“Five at last count, I think. Although, there was one girl in Inverness who was rumored to have given birth to twins. I don’t know if it’s true or not. Perhaps I should check.”
His father had been one of the most moral men Alex had ever known. He often wondered how his uncle was so different. The man served as an object lesson of sorts. On the rare occasions when Thomas offered an opinion about something at Blackhall, Alex chose the opposite solution. That he objected to Lorna’s arrival was a point in Alex’s favor.
“Bed the girl if you must, Alex, but do it away from Blackhall. You don’t want the whole countryside to know you acknowledge the child. You’ll have the old biddies wagging their tongues from morning until night. It isn’t done. A man’s get is his business. It isn’t paraded around like you’re proud of it. Hide the girl away. If you’re determined to support the child, do so, just not at Blackhall.”
“You don’t disappoint, Uncle,” he said. “I thought you would react this way and you have.”
“I’m giving you good advice, Alex. This will come back and haunt you. Have you any thought for your mother? What is she going to do when she learns what you’ve done?”
“Mother knows.”
Thomas frowned. “What do you mean, Louise knows?”
“Just that. She’s aware of the entire situation.”
He’d had a meeting with his mother the minute he left the cottage. He hadn’t wanted one of the gossiping servants to tell her the tale.
He wasn’t altogether surprised when she didn’t look upset. In fact, she appeared pleased with the developments. She’d even kissed him on the cheek when he finished explaining what he’d done.
Thank you for that, Alex. I can’t wait to see my grandchild.
Thomas shook his head now. “Don’t you think you’re taking confession to extremes, Alex?”
“She was the one who originally informed me of the circumstances, actually. Someone wrote her.”
Thomas finished off his brandy and placed the empty snifter on the table between them.
