The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

She didn’t look as if she’d ever had anything inside her chest, so smoothly did she speak.

“By the time you were three, you were a trap for my heart. Every word that came to me of you, every short visit your father grudgingly allowed, was like a wall closing in around me. The more adorable you became, the more certain your father was of my return—and the more he’d threaten me. I had to pretend not to care. After a while, I became so good at pretending that…that perhaps I stopped caring in truth. And yes, I resented you every time you made me feel anything.” She shrugged, nonchalantly. “But what was I to do? Stay with him? I tried it. But by that time, he was impossible. After that last time, when you were nine… I spent an evening barricaded in my room, with him bellowing and pounding on the door, threatening to…” She gave him another sidelong look. “I believe if he had not been quite so drunk, matters would have become exceedingly ugly. I couldn’t stay. And legally, you were his. What was I to do, except stop caring?”

Robert shook his head. “Every time you left, he used to tell me it was my fault. That I had failed to captivate you. That I should have been more—”

More lovable, although his father had never used that word.

She looked at him. “When your father died, I assumed he’d made you over in his image. By the time I realized it wasn’t so…” She shrugged again. “By then, it was too late to salvage anything of mother and child. Luckily, by then, I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything at all. So now, knowing I’m far too late to do anything, now…”

She looked up at him.

“Now,” she said, “I find I still don’t care.” Her eyes glistened momentarily, and she looked away, her jaw squaring as she clamped her lips together.

“I see,” he said in puzzlement.

“I really don’t care. I can’t. I don’t know how anymore.” So saying, she took out a lace-edged handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

“Are you…”

“No. I never cry.” She met his eyes fiercely.

“I see,” he repeated.

And he actually thought that he did. This trip—her visit out here, her ham-handed pronunciations, her foolish interference—maybe she didn’t care. Maybe, after all these years, she’d forgotten how to care about him. But she was trying to. She made him think of a foal just-born, struggling up onto spindly legs, attempting to stand and falling down flat.

She sniffed again. “By the time I figure it out,” she said, “you’ll have given up on me entirely. It seems a fitting punishment.”

She set down her handkerchief and glared at him, daring him to contradict her.

Once, when he was young, she’d come for a visit. He’d run out to meet her at the carriage. He didn’t know how old he had been at the time, but he remembered hugging her knees, as high as he could reach.

She hadn’t touched him back, hadn’t even bent to pat his head. She’d simply glanced at him, told him to show some decorum, and kept walking.

So he didn’t move to touch her now. He didn’t think she would like it, and he felt too raw to risk a rebuff.

“Well, then,” he said briskly. “Thank you for taking time from your indifference to meddle in my marriage prospects. I thought she was made of sterner stuff. Apparently.”

“Oh, no,” the duchess said. “I approve of her. Find another girl just like her, but a marquess’s daughter this time.”

“You know,” he said, “I have no idea who her people really are. Pursling isn’t even her real name.”

“No?”

“She was born Minerva Lane.”

At that, his mother gasped aloud. “Minerva Lane?”

“You know who she is?” He looked at her in surprise. “She told me it would be a scandal.”

“Scandal? Her? No.” She shook her head violently. “Scandal is what happens when girls are too easy with their favors—a simple matter to overcome, one that can be papered over, if not forgotten, by a good marriage and enough money. Miss Lane wasn’t ruined, Robert. She was destroyed. Utterly destroyed.”

Chapter Nineteen

MINNIE HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO SPEAK to her great-aunts on the prior evening.

But there was no putting off the conversation when the Duchess of Clermont sent over a draught from her bank. She brought them into the front room and sat them down.

“There is something you both should know,” she said. “Yesterday, when Lydia came to get me, it was because Stevens had gone to Manchester. He knows that there is no Miss Wilhelmina Pursling. That I’m an imposter. He knows I was born Minerva Lane.”

The two women gasped and then looked at each other. “Do they know what—”

Minnie shook her head. “They don’t know everything.”

“Don’t scare me like that,” Caro said, putting her hand over her heart. “But what are we to do? With Gardley gone…”

Minnie looked away. “As it turns out, I’ve come into some money. Five thousand pounds.”