A flash of lightning lit up the room with a throbbing blue glow chased by a rumble of thunder. She waited.
After a moment, he said, “What I didn’t know was that Hendon went behind my back and saw Kat. He told her that such a marriage would ruin my life and offered her twenty thousand pounds if she would leave me. She threw him out of her rooms. But his words had had their effect. She decided that he was right—that if she truly loved me, then she’d let me go—for my sake. So she told me she had no intention of marrying a pauper, and since my father was standing firm on his threat to cut me off, she wanted nothing more to do with me.”
“Oh, Sebastian,” Hero whispered. “How . . . fiercely noble of her.”
He sucked in a deep breath that flared his nostrils. “That’s when I bought my commission and left England. I wasn’t exactly trying to get myself killed, but I wouldn’t have minded terribly if it had happened. When I came back to London some six years later, I thought I’d managed to put it all behind me.”
“Until you saw her again,” said Hero softly, although what she really wanted to say was, Why? Why are you telling me this now?
He nodded. “Eventually I found out the truth about what had happened all those years ago—that she had lied to drive me away from her. I asked her again to marry me, but she still refused. She said nothing had really changed, that she loved me too much to allow me to ruin myself by marrying a woman off the stage. In my arrogance, I was convinced I could change her mind, eventually. Only . . .”
“Then you discovered she was Hendon’s daughter.”
She watched him reach for his drink and down half the glass in one long pull. The tension in the air was like an unnatural hum that had nothing to do with the storm.
He said, “I knew that in all fairness, I couldn’t blame Hendon for the blood relationship between them—after all, he was the one who’d been trying to drive Kat and me apart for years. But it took me a long time to forgive him for the undisguised satisfaction he showed at finally achieving what he had worked so hard to accomplish.”
She started to say, But if you have forgiven him, then why are you still estranged from him? Only, something in his face made her hold her peace.
He drained his glass and went to pour himself another brandy, as if he felt the need to put some distance between them. He said, “And then, last May, I discovered that in December of 1781, Hendon sailed for America on a secret mission for the King.”
Hero stared at him. Jarvis had sailed on that mission too. She tried to recall if she’d known the date of their sailing, if she knew when—
He said, “I will turn thirty next month. I assume you can do the sums?”
She watched him set aside the brandy decanter, watched him carefully replace the stopper, and understood finally what he was trying to tell her. “Are you certain Hendon’s not—”
“Yes. He tried to deny it at first, but in the end he was forced to admit the truth.”
“Do you know who—”
“No. My mother never said.” He stared at her from across the length of the room.
His mother, Hero knew, had disappeared at sea years ago, when Devlin was still a child.
Hero was suddenly aware of the fury of the storm, of the wind rattling the windowpanes in their frames and the rain pounding on the terrace paving. He said, “I would have told you before we married, had the circumstances been different. But as it was . . .”
She said, “Jarvis knew. He was on that ship with your father. So he’s always known.”
“Yes.”
Yet he hadn’t told her. Why? she wondered. Aloud, she said, “And the Bishopsgate tavern owner? Jamie Knox? Where does he fit in all this?”
“I honestly don’t know. He could conceivably be my half brother. Or a cousin, perhaps. I find it difficult to believe the resemblance between us is nothing more than a coincidence. Unfortunately, his own paternity is . . . cloudy.”
When she remained silent, he said, “I will understand if this knowledge alters your opinion of me.”
“It hasn’t lowered it, if that’s what you mean.” She drew a deep breath that shuddered her chest. “Why now? Why did you decide to tell me this now?”
“Because I realized I don’t want this secret between us anymore.”
She suddenly felt both humbled and oddly, buoyantly hopeful. “I’ve kept secrets from you,” she said quietly.
“You’ve kept your father’s secrets. There is a difference.”
Then the full implications of what he’d told her struck her. “So Kat Boleyn is not your half sister?”
“No. And Hendon knew it all along, damn his hide. He knew it, and he kept it to himself because he realized he’d finally hit upon the one sure thing that would keep us apart.”
And that, Hero now realized, was what had caused this new, intractable estrangement between the two men.