If He's Tempted (Wherlocke #5)

“She?” Olympia prodded when he fell silent.

“I might as well tell you as I am certain the scandal will break soon if the whispers have not begun already. My wife. She took my boy away. Told me she sold him for ten quid and I would never see him again. I could not believe it, but the way she spoke of Henry . . .” He swallowed hard. “It was as if she had forgotten that he was her son, too. You would have thought she was speaking of some urchin I had taken in and was paying too much attention to. I fear I was too shocked to guard my words. I was harsh. Should not be harsh with a woman who has clearly lost her mind, should you. But I was.”

“M’lord, I doubt that mattered and no one would blame you for lashing her with words after what she had done.”

“She hanged herself,” he whispered. “That very night as I worked to start the hunt for my son, she hanged herself in our bedchamber. Well, the window of the bedchamber. Tied the rope to the bed, then around her own neck, and then leapt out the window. Doctor Martin said she would not have suffered as she broke her neck.”

“So she is gone?”

“Yes, buried her just outside the family plot as the church would not put her in consecrated ground and I was in no mood to argue for it. Then I came here to look for Henry but,” his voice broke, “I cannot find him. He is just a little boy. Only five. How can he survive whatever she sold him into?”

Olympia looked at Brant, who nodded and quietly went to the door to call Pawl. Knowing it would not take long for the boy to come, she turned all her attention to the marquis. “She sold him to Dobbin House.” The way the man paled told her that, at least once, he had clearly spent enough time in London to know of the place, and she wondered how so many could know yet not do anything about the place but shoved aside her anger over that as now was not the time to go on some crusade. “He was not harmed. There was a woman there who recognized that he could make her some money and kept him to herself. We suspect that she was waiting for news of a reward.”

“So he was not hurt?”

“Nay, but he was very scared. I fear he also wondered why you had not come to get him. I told him it was just because you did not know where he was and needed time to hunt for him. He also knows that his own mother sold him, for she made no secret of it. She told him that he took all of your love from her and she would not abide it anymore.”

“That is what she screamed at me,” he whispered. “What could I have done? I love my boy. Of course, I love my boy, but I still loved my wife despite how troubled she had become. I confess, that love had dimmed as she was such a trial at times, so angry, so jealous, so temperamental, that it wore on me. This, what she did to my son, well, I think that ended what was left of my love for her. Mayhap she saw that and that is why she killed herself.”

“One can never guess the reasons someone does such a thing. Do not carry the weight of it. It was the illness in her mind. If your son had not become the center of her delusions, something or someone else would have.” She heard someone approaching and smiled at him. “We have the boy, m’lord. In hunting for some missing boys of our own, we stumbled upon your Henry. I but hesitated to tell you straight out for I was not completely sure why your wife had sold him.”

“Of course. I would never have brought him back into a house with her in it. Not after what she had done.”

“I am sure of that now, m’lord. I but needed that assurance for I could not send a child back into danger.”

“I understand.”

The door opened and the marquis leapt to his feet. Little Henry walked in and stopped to stare at his father. Olympia could see the child’s unease, his gaze darting around the room as if to be certain his father was alone.

“You found me, Papa?” Henry asked as he slowly stepped toward the marquis. “Does Mother know you found me?”

“Your mother will never hurt you again, Henry.” The marquis walked over to his son and crouched down in front of the boy, touching Henry’s curls with a shaking hand. “Your mother had a sickness, son, and that made her do bad things. It took her from us in mind and then in body. It is just you and me now.”

“I was afraid, Papa,” Henry cried and threw himself into his father’s arms. “I was waiting for you to find me but you did not come.”

“I was hunting for you, son. I would have found you. We must be glad and thank God that Lady Wherlocke and Lord Fieldgate found you before you came to much harm.”

He set Henry back on his feet, stood up but kept a hand on the boy, and looked at Olympia. “I can never thank you enough. Not for finding him, saving him, and not for being ready to keep him safe even from me if necessary.”