Page 90 of Beyond Scandal and Desire
“You could have called on me like any other gentleman.”
He laughed harshly. “Hedley would have kicked me out the moment he saw me. Do you think he would have been pleased to know his bastard had an interest in his ward, a woman he intended to marry off to his heir?”
If that were true, the duke’s acknowledgment wasn’t going to change anything, wasn’t going to allow them to be together. “If I wasn’t his ward, if the gossip rags weren’t speculating that Kip and I would marry, if White’s wasn’t wagering on my receiving his proposal by the end of the Season, would you have even given me a glance?” Into the silence, she cursed and fought back the tears. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her weep. “This scheme of yours—why not just ask him for the acknowledgment?”
“I did. Half a dozen times. He ignored every missive I sent except for the first. ‘I have no bastard.’ That was all he wrote. You think I look like him now? You should see me without the beard. I have his damned dimpled chin.”
“And if he will not acknowledge you?”
“Then I will see his heir ruined.”
“You can’t ask Kip to pay for the sins of his father.”
“Why not? I’ve paid for them my entire life. I’m the duke’s bastard, Aslyn. Hisbastard.” He fairly spat the word. She flinched at the disgust she heard in his tone.
“But you’ve risen above it.”
“You never rise above it. Always it’s there. Do you know there are foundling homes that won’t take in bastards? Neither will workhouses. Because we are born in sin, of sin. We are the devil’s work.”
“But Kip’s done nothing to you.”
“He’s lived within the shadow of the man who sired me then cast me aside.”
“Then punish the father not the son.”
“I am punishing the father. He will see his legitimate son ruined and his bastard succeed. He will know he is leaving his titles and estates to someone unworthy of them, while the worthy one can’t have them.”
“If you do this, you’re not worthy of anything. You shall be the lowest of the low, not even worthy of a gutter in which to lie.”
“He wanted me killed!” He charged away from her. “He gave me to a woman knowing she would kill me.” He spun around and glared at her. “No. Worse. He paid her to starve me. That is how bastards are dealt with when they are not considered deserving of life.”
Her stomach roiled. “I don’t believe the duke would condone such a horrible practice, would partake in it.”
“My mum took out an advert in theDaily Telegraph, saying she would take on a sickly child for a fee. There were code words in the advert, in the way it was written, alerting potential customers to the fact she would dispose of the child. He brought me to her in the dead of night, naked except for the blanket in which I was wrapped. ‘I don’t want it to suffer,’ he told her.It. To him, I was not even human. But she couldn’t bring herself to kill me. Two others had been brought to her. She’d kept them tranquil with laudanum until they eventually died. Then her own three children died of typhus, and she thought God was punishing her for the deaths she’d brought to innocents. So I was spared. She raised me as her own. But it did not change the fact that my father—and I suppose my mother, whoever the hell she was—wanted me dead. I often wonder if he continued to fuck her, if his other bastards were put to death without any more thought than one might give the killing of a fly.”
She didn’t know what to say. She knew the Duke of Hedley, had grown up in his residences, had taken breakfast with him nearly every morning since she was nine years old. “The man who raised me would not have done that.”
“A hundred and fifty quid. That’s what my death was worth to him.”
He seemed so sure, yet it was inconceivable to her that Hedley would condone murder. It was also inconceivable that this man would seek to destroy those she loved. “Being wronged does not justify hurting others.”
“Tell that to your precious duke. All I want is for him to publicly recognize me as his son. To admit to me what he did—he does not have to do that publicly. But he does have to acknowledge me, invite me to their affairs—”
“They don’t have affairs. They never entertain.”
“Then he can take me to his clubs, introduce me as his son, assist me in gaining the respect I deserve.”
“But you’ve done that on your own, with your business—”
“I can’t get into his bloody clubs!”
That was what was important to him? Membership in gentlemen’s clubs? Disappointment slammed into her. When it came to men, apparently she was a terrible judge of character. “All the wooing. Was your goal to ruin me or to wed me?”
“Once way or the other I will be accepted by the nobility. I will move about in their circles.”
“Even if it costs you whatever affection I might hold for you?”
“You don’t love me, Aslyn. I’m a commoner to play with for a bit, to come to when you’re looking for some scandalous adventure, a bit of the rough. When your life is too clean and you want to play in the dirt for a while. Then you can scrub it all off and forget you’d ever dallied with the likes of me.”
