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Chapter Eleven

A third glass of mead. Or was it his fourth?

Christopher wasn’t sure. Still, it wasn’t enough to forget the pain that had sliced through his chest when he’d told Sian he was forced to renounce their plans and seen her selfish reaction.

He would need at least another three glasses of mead to make that particular pain disappear.

Or four.

The fire crackled, making one last effort at a flare before going completely out. How apt. Everything within him was slowly dying as well.

Christopher stared at the hearth, not seeing the struggling flames or the glowing coals.

Despite the heat emanating from it, he felt chilled to the bone.

This afternoon, Sian had made him feel every bit like the careless, scandalous, insensitive rogue people likened him to.

And it had made him realize that, deep down, he wasn’t like that.

Because he cared. At least, he cared about her , say what she might.

She might not be the first woman he had hurt with his actions, but she was the first virgin he had deflowered.

That alone should ensure he was not indifferent to her fate.

She was also the first woman he had agreed to marry.

And, as unexpected as it might be, as he’d ridden closer to Kent and farther away from her, he had realized that he was actually looking forward to their union.

It was not just the pleasure he’d felt in her arms and her brazenness as a lover that appealed to him and made him see marriage in a new light.

It was everything else as well. He had been falling for the intriguing little lamb.

With such a woman by his side, he would never be bored.

And once he was married, he would have what he had never had, what he had always wanted—a family.

But he’d been forced to give up the dream as soon as it had formed.

He could no longer marry Sian, and judging from what he’d seen today, her supposed attraction to him had only been an act destined to make him overlook her Welsh origins and a spontaneous nature that would make most men balk.

As soon as the truth about his identity had been revealed, she’d lashed out, posing as the victim, conveniently forgetting that he was the injured party.

What would he do now? Where would he go?

By the time the fire had dwindled to embers, he still didn’t have the answer to those questions.

The door opened, and the light of a candle fluttered on the wall behind him.

Silent as a shadow, Sir Alexander Rathbone entered.

Upon his return from Kent, in the impossibility of returning to Throckmorton Castle, Christopher had turned to his oldest friend, who had welcomed him in, asking no questions and pretending not to notice anything was amiss.

Well, it seemed his patience had finally come to an end. Nevertheless, Christopher stayed silent. A confrontation was sure to come.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Alexander finally exploded. “I don’t mind having you here at Audley, you’re my friend, but I’d like to know what has turned you so glum. And I say glum for want of a better word. You’ve not been yourself since you came back from Kent.”

Christopher almost laughed out loud at the choice of words. His friend had expressed the situation better than he himself could have done. That was precisely the problem. He wasn’t himself anymore, or at least not who he’d thought he was his whole life.

“What’s wrong with me? Nothing, as far as I can tell,” he said with a sigh. That was the irony of it. He had done nothing wrong. And yet, he was being punished in the cruelest way. “I am the same man as I was last month. Except that I am not Lord Ashton now.”

A scoff. “Come, what nonsense is this?”

“I wish it were nonsense. Unfortunately, it’s the sad truth. When I went to Kent, I was told I had never had any right to the title and everything that goes with it. I am not Lord Ashton. Thomas Harrison is.”

His half brother.

On his deathbed, Christopher’s uncle had revealed the truth.

The man had not summoned him because he’d wanted to see him one last time and make his peace with a nephew he’d never bothered to get to know but because he’d wanted to inform him of the situation he was in.

Christopher was not, contrary to what he had believed all his life, his father’s eldest son and therefore heir.

The man had been married before, and his son by his first wife was the real Lord Ashton.

That son, Thomas, had been summoned to Kent to be informed of the fact and take his rightful place at last.

A fit of coughing had interrupted the shocking declaration before any questions could be asked.

In the morning, the old man had been unable to talk and could only point to the chest where Christopher had found a letter confirming what he’d been told.

Stunned, he had read about his father’s secret, and by noon, his uncle had been dead, having not uttered another word.

The following day, a blond man in his thirties had arrived from Norfolk with his wife and son and been welcomed as Lord Ashton.

From then on, it had been a whirlwind of actions.

Letters of proof had been produced, legal documents signed, deeds handed over, people made aware of the new situation, and Christopher had been left alone to deal with the change and loss on his own.

On his own as usual.

His friend stared at him. “What do you mean? Who is this Thomas?”

“As it turns out, my father had another son. Another, older son we never knew about. That was what my uncle wanted to tell me, why he called me to his deathbed.”

Alexander waved the words away and resumed his pacing. “So what? Plenty of men have sired illegitimate bastards, and I can’t say I’m surprised your father was one of them. It doesn’t mean you should?—”

“Thomas is not illegitimate.”

That stopped him in his tracks. “But he cannot— What ?”

Christopher sighed, seeing there would be no avoiding the telling of the whole sordid tale.

“My father had a first wife, a woman he had married for love as a young man and who died birthing a son a year after their wedding. Broken with grief, he sent the baby away to a distant cousin of his mother’s, not wanting to have anything to do with the person responsible for killing his beloved wife, or so he saw Thomas,” he started to explain in a flat voice.

“A few years later, he married a lady he’d gotten with child—my mother—when her father forced him into doing the honorable thing.

Neither of them knew this would not be his first marriage.

Unsurprisingly, my father quickly found out he couldn’t bear having us around any more than he could bear to think of Thomas, who grew up not knowing who or what he was.

My mother and I were soon sent away to Throckmorton, the crumbling family estate inhabited by the ailing Lord Ashton.

And that, as far as my father was concerned, was the end of the matter.

He was free to live his life as he wished, unencumbered by people he didn’t want, much less love, and wait for the title to be his. ”

“So then what happened? How did everyone find out the truth?”

“My father’s confessor, having heard the whole story during his last rites, urged him to make peace with his maker and call his real heir back.

He dictated a long letter to his mother’s cousin to explain everything and asked him to send his son to Kent so that he could be restored to the title that belonged to him by right. ”

Christopher did not feel any resentment toward the meddling priest, even if his zeal had ended up ruining his life.

The late Lord Ashton was the real culprit.

Had he been less vainglorious, more honorable, and honest from the start, none of this would have happened.

His two sons would have known about each other’s existence and who was to inherit everything.

There would have been no confusion.

“Too feeble to see to it himself, he asked his brother, my uncle, to send the letter to Norfolk, informing him of the contents. For a reason I’m ignorant of, the man didn’t do what he’d been instructed to do, and my father died without word of him having reached Thomas.”

Perhaps it was not so hard to guess what his uncle’s intent had been. An unscrupulous man himself, he’d thought to use the information to his advantage. With only a childless Christopher standing between him and the title, had he hoped to inherit it himself one day?

Whatever the reason, he’d kept the letter and the confession in it a secret for three years.

“On his death bed, like his brother, he was seized by fear for his immortal soul and called me to inform me of the situation. The original letter had been long burned, but he had enough proof to produce, having done his own research in the years since he’d been told the truth.

So you see, Thomas, not me, is the heir,” Christopher concluded, pouring himself another drink.

“Thomas, not me, was Lord Ashton all along. I am no one. I have nothing.”

“You don’t?—”

“I have nothing,” he repeated more forcefully.

“Because I have lost the woman I was to marry. She is a lord’s daughter and had thought, understandably, to marry according to her rank.

With no title, no fortune, nowhere to live, no family support, and a reputation in tatters, what kind of life can I offer her?

A pitiful one. It is better for both of us if she finds herself another man, a man who can give her the status she was after. ”

A man who would not be hurt by her scheming.