Page 75 of The Heart of an Earl

“Wait—you don’t know that you have a child?”

Des opened his eyes, shaking his head, the shock of it rolling through his body, waves drowning him with every breath. His stare went onto the table, his hands gripping the edge of it. Gripping it so he didn’t fall over, didn’t lose consciousness.

“Ah, hell.” Wolfbridge stood straight, grabbing a chair and setting it back, then landing heavy into it. He exhaled a brutal sigh as his hands went to his face, rubbing his eyes. “Hell, Desmond. Had I known I would have moved heaven and earth to find you for her. You…you just…disappeared.”

Des took in several breaths, rocks into his throat, his head bobbing slightly up and down as the reality of what Wolfbridge was telling him settled in.

His gaze lifted to his brother-in-law, his voice cracking. “She’s…she’s eighteen?”

Wolfbridge nodded.

His eyes closed. “I would—I would have moved heaven and earth just to come back to her. Just to meet her. To see her. To see her mother in her.”

His words stopped and he had to draw a ragged breath. “I’ve been gone for eighteen years? No…it cannot be. Not eighteen years. I was only eighteen when Corentine and I left for the East Indies. She cannot be that old. Not my daughter’s whole life. Her whole life has happened without me. I never saw her as a babe. Never held her in my arms. And I don’t even know her name.”

“Her name is Victoria—Vicky,” Wolfbridge said, his voice soft. “Corentine named her. She lived long enough for that. To hold her daughter. To name her. It meant everything to her. Those minutes. Those hours.”

Des shoved his chair back and bent over at the waist, burying his head in his hands. Searching for breath. Searching for a way to turn back time. Time he would never get back. His eyes flew open, his head jerking up to Wolfbridge. “Does she—does she look like…”

Pain flashed across Wolfbridge’s brown eyes, and his voice went to just above a whisper. “She looks just like my sister. Dark hair, blue eyes.”

Des’s eyes closed as he gasped an inhale. “I have to get home, Reiner. I have to get home.”

Wolfbridge nodded. “That you do.”

{ Chapter 23 }

Des looked across the ballroom at Wolfbridge Castle, stifling a sigh.

In between the middle two matching pillars that lined that side of the room, Lord Flouten was entirely too close to his daughter. Entirely too forward with the third glass of punch he’d delivered into Vicky’s hand. Any more and she’d turn into a fountain.

“That is a new height of sour countenance you’re sporting.” Wolfbridge moved next to him, a glass of port in his hand and a slight grin on his face. “I know these things can be arduous, but you’re scaring into the corners the slew of widows that came to entice the recently reinstated Lord Troubant onto the dance floor. My wife took the greatest care in selecting—as she put it—only the kindly, wealthy, healthy widows to attend.”

The frown on Des’s face didn’t budge. “Sloane shouldn’t have bothered. I don’t have the slightest interest in the widows.”

“You’ve been hiding in the billiards room most of the eve.” Wolfbridge’s gaze swept the ballroom. “Did you even look at them? Meet any of them?”

“Just the few Sloane managed to steer toward me—despite my caustic disposition.” Des heaved the sigh he’d been swallowing for the last half hour. “Again, she shouldn’t have bothered.”

A peculiar grin crossed Wolfbridge’s face. “It’s her way. She thinks everyone should be in love, whether they want it or not.”

Des cocked an eyebrow. “One would think nine years married to you would have cured her of that.”

Wolfbridge chuckled. “One would think that, wouldn’t they? Yet I have charms you know nothing of.”

“I beg you to continue to keep them hidden from me.”

Wolfbridge shrugged. “But still, you should take at least the slightest cursory sweep of the room, if only to placate my wife.”

“Not necessary.”

“Now that the title is back on your shoulders, you may want to rethink that. Your cousin was a bachelor to his core and never had the slightest inkling to marry and further the line after he had taken over the Troubant title. He actually seemed quite relieved that you appeared back from the dead.”

Des nodded, his look shifting away from a blond woman—in a deep purple mess of a gown lined with ostrich feathers—on the far left of the ballroom staring at him. Making accidental eye contact would not do. “George was. I was not expecting it of him. And the arrangement we came to suits him fine. He enjoyed managing the estate, so he’ll continue to do so—as he does it far better than I ever would. And he’ll continue to live in the comfort of the main estate, so has voiced no complaints. Especially since I don’t intend to live at Troubant Manor in Wiltshire and won’t get in his way.” He tilted his head toward his daughter across the ballroom. “Wherever Vicky is, I am, so I’m afraid you and Sloane are stuck with me for the time being, sour disposition or not.”

Wolfbridge watched the crush on the ballroom floor. “So why the current dour mood? You’ve managed to avoid the widows, so it cannot be that.”

“My daughter.” Des took a glass of port from a passing tray, swallowing a third of it in one long exasperated drink.

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