“Nothing.”
She half despised herself for not having left yet. She’d handed in her resignation letter but had put her last day as the thirty-first of December—as much time as he’d allowed her. She wanted to spend these last ten or so days she had with Michael. But that wasn’t the only reason: If she was no longer at Fairleigh Park, how could she stomp all over Stuart and heave him to the curb as he’d done to her, should he turn up begging for forgiveness?
“Nothing now, or nothing ever?” asked the boy. “I showed him a photograph of you and he turned the color of death.”
So that was what had happened. By the time Stuart came back to 26 Cambury Lane, he’d already known what he was going to do with her.
“Mr. Somerset and I met once before, ten years ago. I was set upon in London and he came to my rescue.”
“Really? I’d have thought, judging by his reaction, that there was more to it than that,” Michael said, coolly alleging scandalous behavior on her part.
“Well, one thing led to another and before I knew it, Mr. Somerset proposed to me.”
Michael choked on his tea. “He did what?”
Verity smiled a little and shook her head inwardly: Michael wasn’t surprised that she might have slept with yet another employer, but he was shocked that someone had offered her marriage.
“He asked me to marry him.”
“Then why in the name of all that’s sane and proper didn’t you marry him then?”
“He didn’t know that I was his brother’s cook,” she said. “I left without telling him. And when he found out—when you showed him my photograph—he was very displeased about it. He threw me out of his town house and discontinued my employment. I am to evacuate Fairleigh Park by the end of the year.”
Michael’s expression changed. “You are really leaving?”
“I should have left after Mr. Bertram’s funeral. But yes, I’m leaving.”
Michael poured himself another cup of tea. He drank it, sip by sip, until there was nothing left. “Is there any chance you would grace me with the truth before you left?” he said.
Between them, there was only one truth that mattered.
She looked down into her palms, a broken piece of tuile in each one. “Must we go through this again?”
“I remember you, you know, from when I was a baby. I remember you feeding me from a bottle. And you used to wear a white brooch on your bodice. I would always try to pull at it when I was drinking from the bottle. And one day the brooch was gone, and I was terribly upset about it. I wouldn’t drink from the bottle. I kept trying to find the brooch. You cried and cried.”
She stared at him. He had described a day several weeks before she took him to the zoo. The brooch had belonged to her mother, a cameo brooch which she’d had to sell, for far less than it was worth, because she had been frightened and witless and had not known the first thing about bargaining.
He couldn’t have been more than four months old at the time.
“Why did you never tell me this?” she whispered.
“There are things I do not tell you, just as there are things you do not tell me.” He looked at her. “Would you admit it now? Would you at least admit it?”
She shook her head, still in shock.
His face hardened. “Even Mr. Somerset’s story confirmed it. He said that you’d once taken me to the zoo, and there is that zoo ticket in Mum’s box that has never been accounted for. How can you still deny it?”
“I told you already, Michael, the last time you asked. There was nothing I could tell you about your birth mother then. There is nothing I can tell you about her now.”
His eyes simmered in anger. “Then at least have the decency to tell me why you won’t acknowledge me. It’s not as if I turned out ugly, or stupid, or disgusting.”
“Michael, please keep your voice down. You’ll wake up your parents.” She kept her own voice to a hoarse whisper.
“I don’t care. You owe me this. If Mr. Somerset won’t marry you, then why must you still keep me a secret?”
“Mr. Somerset has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Then tell me why!”
The cottage practically shook with his bellow. Verity stared at him, shocked at his vehemence, at the possibility, no matter how remote, of violence inside him.
“I can’t.”
He smashed the heel of his fist against the parlor door. And then took two startled steps back when a gentle, almost timid knock came at the door.
Mrs. Robbins entered the parlor and suddenly it was very crowded.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Michael immediately said. “Did I wake you up?”
Whenever she saw Michael with Mrs. Robbins, Verity was always filled with envy. He treated his adoptive mother with a care that was now almost entirely absent from his dealings with her. She rose to her feet. “Mrs. Robbins, I apologize for the ruckus we made. I’ll see myself out now.”