Mrs. Wright looked behind him. “I suppose she read of my lady’s passing in the newspapers.”
Damon immediately swung around. Another carriage had just arrived, and a well-dressed middle-aged gentleman was stepping down from it. He was tall, black haired, and had an air of importance about him. The woman with him pulled the black veil down from her hat to cover her face before she took the hand he offered to assist her to the ground. But Damon saw her face in the moment before she covered it. She was still beautiful despite the years. He’d cherished that face his whole life.
He felt such a welling of emotion, he wasn’t sure he could move, but it shattered when he heard Mrs. Wright nastily say, “If she thinks she can get in the house now, she can’t. I know my lady’s wishes—”
“Shut up, Mrs. Wright. You’re fired.”
He approached the couple and stepped in front of them, blocking their way. But standing this close to his mother, words failed him. He thought he’d never see her again! And she was crying quietly. Did she still love the woman who wouldn’t even speak to her and had struck her from her will? She must. The bad feelings had apparently all been on Agatha’s side.
But his mother’s escort drew his own conclusions about Damon’s standing in their way and said sharply, “If you think you can stop her from attending the funeral—”
Damon threw up a hand to halt the diatribe. He didn’t even look at the man, couldn’t take his eyes off Sarah, his mother. But he realized she must have brought a solicitor with her, thinking she would be prevented from seeing her own mother buried. An understandable assumption when she hadn’t been let in the bloody house when she’d come here before.
He wanted to draw her close, give her a thousand missed hugs, but breathless, all he could do was say, “Mother.”
She said nothing, and through the veil he thought he saw an expression of curiosity on her face. Oh, God, she didn’t recognize him. Of course she wouldn’t! She hadn’t seen him since he was a child.
The solicitor hesitantly asked, “Damon Ross?”
His mother collapsed in a faint.
Damon leapt forward to catch her, but so did her escort. It was an awkward moment, but at least they kept her from falling to the ground.
Alarmed, Damon told the man, “Step aside,” as he picked his mother up in his arms.
“Put her back in the carriage,” the man suggested. His proprietary manner was beginning to annoy Damon.
“Is something wrong with her that I should know?”
“No—just shock, I would imagine. She was told you were dead.”
Chapter Fifty
WHO TOLD HER I was dead?”
Damon said the words instinctively since he had no intention of waiting for an answer he’d rather hear from his mother. He quickly carried her to the house. It was a long walk, but she was a willowy wisp of a woman and he barely felt her weight. The door was still open. He took her straight to the parlor and gently laid her on the gold brocade sofa. She still hadn’t awakened, and there wasn’t a damn servant in the house to fetch him some smelling salts.
“We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Brian Chandler of Essex.”
Damon glanced at the man who’d followed him and was standing beside him. Damon was a little more than annoyed at him now, and his tone reflected it. “Go away and close the door on your way out. This is a family matter.”
“I’m not leaving, and you don’t need to wait for your answer. Cyril told her you died after he threw divorce papers at her.”
Damon stiffened. “You’re lying! My father wouldn’t divorce her. He loved her.”
“I wouldn’t have thought he did considering the callous way he informed her, and yet that might explain the grief and rage he displayed the day we visited him. Fury might have impelled him to divorce her, but in his heart he knew he shouldn’t have. But he did, the papers were legal, and he blamed her for your death, for not being there to nurse you back to health when you had pneumonia. Your mother was devastated by the accusation and the horror of losing you. But obviously, since you are alive, Cyril just said those things to hurt her.”
Furious, Damon grabbed the man’s lapels. “Who the hell are you?!”
“You’re upset. Perhaps it would be better if your mother tells you.”
“By God, if you don’t say—”
“Don’t hurt him, Damon,” Sarah beseeched as she sat up. “He’s your father.”
Damon, as if he’d been burned, let go of the man and swung around to face the woman he hadn’t seen in nineteen years. “You’re lying!”
She was taken aback. “No, I’m not. Why would I?”
He didn’t know, but it couldn’t be true! This was too much all at once! Finding his mother. And a father he didn’t know? He gave the man a furious look and got a half smile in return. Bloody hell?!
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Brian offered. “But not for long.”
“Damon, come sit with me.” Sarah patted the sofa. “I am still shocked, but this joy is beyond containing. You’re here, alive, and good God, look at you! You’re even more handsome than your—”
“Don’t say ‘father,’ because I’ll need to ask which one you are referring to.”
“Don’t be bitter, please.”
“How can I not be when everything I know to be true isn’t?” Then in anguish: “Why did you leave me?!”
She shot to her feet and threw her arms around him. “I never would have left that island without you if Cyril hadn’t convinced me you were dead. He even said you were buried on the property. I was too destroyed to ask to see the grave. He must have realized that having divorced me, I could have taken you from him legally. The courts usually favor the father, unless the mother comes from nobility and the father doesn’t. Even if I didn’t have a marquis with me, he knew my family could sway the courts. He’d already lost me. He was obviously desperate not to lose you as well. He did love you, Damon, as if you were his own.”
“When did you come back for me? When did he tell you I died?”
She squeezed Damon harder. “Four months after I left. I will tell you all of it, just let me hold you for a few minutes and convince myself that you’re real, that I’m not dreaming. I come here to bury my mother and find you, my son, alive—and I almost didn’t come.” She leaned back with wide eyes. “Good God, I wouldn’t have found you if Mother didn’t die. What a sharp, sad twist of fate.”