Page 110 of The Formation of Us

God almighty. His mind spun with the horrifying reality of their situation. If the judge was Cora’s father, then he was entitled to take his child. Duke couldn’t do anything legally to get back the little girl who’d stolen his heart.

Worse yet, he himself had sent the letter that brought the man to their doorstep. He wouldn’t have sent the letter if Faith had told him about Stone. “How could you let me marry you without telling me this?”

“HowcouldI tell you something like this?”

“How could you not?” he countered, pierced by another betrayal, this one unforgivable. “You lied about everything, Faith.”

“What would you have done in my place?”

“I would have . . . hell, I don’t know.” He scraped his hair out of his eyes. “I wouldn’t have lied.”

“Of course not,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “It’s easy to be honorable when your belly is full, when you have a family to lean on, when you’re a man who can fight your own battles. But no one helps a whore or her children. My mother made me ring a damn bell to get her attention! And I could only ring it if I had an emergency!” He expected tears, but she faced him with cold resolve. “When you live in a brothel, nothing is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Right or wrong don’t exist. The only way I got through each day was to choose what was useful and ignore the rest. I’m asking for your compassion, not your approval.”

“I’m your husband. You should have trusted me.”

“I couldn’t! Did you hear a word of what I just said?”

“I heard you, Faith. You don’t trust me. Cora isn’t your daughter. And you aren’t a widow. So . . . why weren’t you a virgin?” he asked, his heart bleeding.

“Because I was a fool. I believed Jarvis loved me, and that he was going to marry me.”

“Who the hell is Jarvis?”

“He was a guest at the brothel. When he saw me and learned I didn’t work upstairs, he hired me to give him massages.”

Duke ground his teeth. He was going to stand in the foyer until he learned every sordid detail once and for all. “No more lies, Faith. No more secrets. Tell me all of it.”

She lifted bleak, swollen eyes. “Jarvis was the son of a wealthy planter from Kentucky. He stopped at the brothel each time he passed through Syracuse.”

So she’d never been married. Another lie. It hardly mattered at this point.

“Jarvis bought a small house for us and gave me money to furnish it while he was away. He said he would return in two weeks to move me in. I thought we were getting married, so I gave in and . . . but after . . . when my mother found us, she made Jarvis confess the truth. He wanted a mistress, not a wife.”

Duke could imagine how manipulated and hurt she felt, because he was experiencing that same painful betrayal. Everything he’d believed about Faith was in ashes. She wasn’t a grieving widow from Saratoga. She’d grown up in a brothel in Syracuse and massaged men’s bodies for money.

But the worst blow of all was still that Cora wasn’t legally Faith’s daughter. It made him sick and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this the night I found out about the brothel?”

“Because the truth was too unbearable for you to hear all at once. And I was trying to protect Cora.”

“Keeping secrets didn’t protect her! That judge has every legal right to keep our daughter!” In hopeless rage, he slammed his fist against the wall.

Her chin shot up and her eyes flashed with anger. “Well, he can’t have her, damn it! I’m going to Syracuse to get her. And I’ll bleed, beg, or kill to get her back.”

“How, Faith? He’s legally entitled to his child.”

“He doesn’t want her. He wants the brothel. He caused my mother’s death trying to get it.”

Duke’s blood ran cold knowing Cora was in that man’s hands. Maybe Duke had no legal right to the girl, but when he’d married Faith, he’d bound his heart to the precious, precocious youth and vowed to protect her. That vow had brought him joy, a sweetness and light that he had never known. Like Faith, he would go anywhere, and do anything to find Cora and bring her back.

“Where’s Adam?” he asked, his decision made completely and irrevocably.

“Next door with Dahlia.”

“I’ll take him to Boyd’s house where he’ll be safe. Pack a bag for us. When I get back, we’re going to Syracuse.”

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