Page 26 of A Gentleman’s Offer

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It was the last thing he had expected to hear. ‘Blackmailed,’ he repeated, unsure if he had heard her correctly, or if she was still indulging in her fondness for exaggeration.

‘By Lord Nightingale,’ she said. Now that she had cast off the theatrical mannerisms that had always irritated him so, he could see that she was genuinely frightened.

‘I don’t understand. You can have done nothing…’

‘Oh, indeed not!’ Lady De Lacy spat out. ‘I have done nothing, and nor, my dear son, have you. But we would be the ones who would be made to suffer for it.’

He was silent for a moment, at a loss, then a sudden burst of unwelcome illumination struck him. ‘My father,’ he said. It was not a question; it was all becoming clear to him now.

‘Your father,’ she agreed with deep and abiding bitterness. ‘Using his precious charity, his great reputation for philanthropy, as a cover to meet that shameless woman, to live with her, to make a fool of me!’

There was no point, Dominic knew, in attempting to defend Angela Jones, his father’s long-term lover, to his mother – it would be cruel as well as useless. There was little point, for that matter, in attempting to convince her that Sir Thomas’s charitable impulses had been genuine, whatever consequences had sprung from them. He and Angela between them had saved dozens, perhaps hundreds of children from the dirty and dangerous streets of London, and made life a little easier for many more they could not save. But if Lady De Lacy had ever given a fig for any of that, she did not now. ‘I didn’t know you knew,’ he said gently. ‘I had thought it could be kept from you, so that the knowledge would not hurt you. Whatever else you believe of my father, however justified your anger with him might be, please do believe that he never set out deliberately to wound you.’

‘He may not have intended to, but still he did it. I always knew,’ she whispered, her voice vibrating with pain and anger. ‘Always. I knew where he was going when he left me alone, time after time. And I knew about the child.’

Dominic passed his hand over his face for a moment, then rose from his seat and went to take his mother’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ he said. ‘I truly am.’

She clung to him with a pressure that was almost painful. ‘He had to drag you into it too,’ she went on, ‘and for that I really never will forgive him.’

‘I swear I didn’t know while he was alive,’ he said steadily.

‘You played with her. His shameful brat. Your half-sister!’

‘I did,’ he acknowledged, ‘when he took me to the house. I became fond of her, it’s idle to deny it. Our ages being such, just three years between us…’ Best not to go there, perhaps. Certainly best not to say her name. ‘But I did not know who she was, I promise you, Mama. If there was a conspiracy to deceive you, you must believe that I was not part of it. Not then. I had no idea of her identity, or of their relationship, until he died and I read the private missive he had left me.’

‘And when you discovered the truth, you did not tell me.’

‘At his urgent request. He was convinced you knew nothing. He wanted to protect you from the knowledge – begged me to do so in his letter. He wouldn’t have told me at all, Mama, if it hadn’t been necessary to appoint someone whose discretion could be relied upon to have a care for their financial wellbeing once he was gone.’

He wasn’t being honest now. Not completely. But stark honesty could only hurt her even more. He had kept this secret for nine years and he would keep it as long as she lived. He would never reveal to his mother the details of that final deathbed conversation he’d had with his father, Sir Thomas’s slow, painful confession, in rasping breaths that each cost him a little piece of precious life, that the only woman he’d ever loved had been Angela, and not the lady from his own class and background his parents had pressured him to marry. Of course he’d clasped his father’s thin hand as he died and promised he would look after Sir Thomas’s lover and their child, as long as they and he lived and beyond. He’d done it gladly, not as a mere matter of duty. He loved them both, had always done so since his early childhood as a lonely little boy with – as he had always believed – no siblings, and few playmates. But why tell his mother? The truth could be a mercilessly cruel thing.

‘You see her still. You see them . You are intimate with them.’ It might have sounded like an accusation, but it was said so levelly that it seemed more a painful statement of fact.

‘Mama, I do, but I have an obligation to them; my father made it so.’ It was much more than that, they were family too, but once again, no need to force the painful knowledge on her.

‘It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not,’ she said wearily now. ‘There’s no point in reproaching you for something that is not your fault but Thomas’s. And yes, you are right to think me weakly self-indulgent, as I know you do, to mind so much that he never loved me. But whether I am or not, Lord Nightingale somehow knows of their existence. Their identities, everything. Of your father’s cruel betrayal of me, and the child that was born of it. The bastard mulatto child.’

‘That is not?—’

‘I will not have you school my tongue, Dominic. Not today. Be silent. The mulatto child. The shameful bastard. That is what the world will say, as they make pious, shocked expressions and laugh gleefully behind their hands, and in my face. That is, if they don’t cut me completely. That is what Lord Nightingale will tell them, you can be sure of it, if you do not marry his daughter.’

He could see that there was no use in trying to argue with her, such was the depth of her distress. And though the way she spoke about people he cared deeply for must disturb him, it could not come as a shock. She was concerned only for herself and for her standing in the world, but, the truth, if it came out, would damage Angela and her daughter as much as it would damage Lady De Lacy. More, much more, because they were so much more vulnerable, lacking the protection that her wealth and status brought her.

He rose to his feet and paced restlessly about the room, oppressed by its confines as he always was. ‘Good God, ma’am, why? I understand that he is blackmailing you, to bring about my marriage with his daughter – I have grasped as much as that!’ he said impatiently. ‘But what I cannot conceive is why he should do such a thing!’

‘Nor I,’ she answered listlessly. ‘I asked him, of course, but he would only smile in that infuriatingly smug way he has, and tell me nothing to the purpose. How I loathe and despise him! You are a great catch, I suppose, and by this stratagem he has captured you. Maybe it is no more than that.’

‘Even supposing that to be true, why should he care? However generous my arrangements might be, he will not lay his hands on a penny. I have not made him a trustee of his daughter’s marriage settlement; he is far too advanced in years. And Miss Nightingale herself is a substantial heiress, is she not?’

‘You know she is. But what does it matter? Maybe he merely does it because he can, to enjoy having power over us. Maybe he’s mad. I think he must be. A madman with the means to ruin us, that’s a comforting thought. But you see now why the wedding must go ahead, Dominic. I implore you to think of me, of my standing and my pride, and how humiliated I would be, if you have no care for your own reputation!’

He could see why she thought the marriage must go ahead. It would be unreasonable, he supposed, to expect his bitterly hurt mother to have any concern for the other potential victims of Lord Nightingale’s cruelty, or understanding of their situation. And he didn’t have to agree with her motives at all to understand that they were in a terrible bind, even worse than before. ‘To give in to blackmail is to encourage the blackmailer to try again,’ he said. ‘Or so I have always understood, not having any previous experience of such matters.’ He was struggling to regain his customary insouciant manner.

‘In normal circumstances – if there can be said ever to be normal circumstances when one is being blackmailed – I cannot doubt that you would be correct, Dominic!’ said Lady De Lacy tartly. ‘But surely not in this case. Our scandals will become Nightingale’s too. I cannot believe he intends to expose us to public censure and mockery once his purpose has been achieved and our families are inextricably tied together. He will have got his wish, the dreadful creature, his daughter will be Lady De Lacy – what more could he possibly want from us?’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said noncommittally.

He could only be glad that he had never had the least intention of revealing Maria’s secret to his mother. She was plainly at her wits’ end. He would not put it past her, in her desperation, to try a little blackmail on her own account, by threatening Lord Nightingale that she might spread the details of his older daughter’s unconventional private life far and wide. Things were ugly enough as they stood without making them worse in such an incendiary fashion. They were in dangerous waters, he thought, more dangerous by the day. There was a great deal to think on here – not least the knotty problem of whether he could in all decency betray his father’s confidence, and Angela’s, to Meg. He must, if he were to tell her that Lord Nightingale was more despicable and far more ruthless even than she and her sister had imagined. That seemed like something she should know, and Maria too, for their own protection as much as anything else. But it was not his secret…