Nausea hit Pippa in waves, and she wished she hadn’t wolfed down half a tart and an entire tumbler of whisky in rapid succession. She had never spoken about any of this to any other person. Mr. and Mrs. Barton had pieced it together themselves and were too polite to mention it. Too kind.
Once she arrived in London and met Abigail and Celeste, she’d thought of sharing the truth then. The two women had become her confidantes in a great many things. But up until the bitter end, she hadn’t shared Kenley’s existence with the other two Mrs. Montgomerys. They had only found out when they’d all nearly been killed by Erasmus and Rosie.
She’d told herself that was to protect the child. But in truth, this was her private pain. Her private humiliation.
Yet when Rhys asked, she’d handed it over to him, tied with an ugly ribbon. Now he held it, watching her as he digested it. She wished she could read his expression. Wished she understood the workings of his mind.
She cleared her throat and continued, “When Rosie told me she was with child and that the man responsible had vanished from her life, I felt terrible for her.”
She broke off because it felt like her throat was closing. Now Rhys’s expression softened and he shifted in his chair as if he wanted to reach for her. “Phillipa.”
She lifted a hand. If he touched her right now, she feared she’d shatter. “I can do this. I can say it.” She drew a few breaths and then carried on as best she could. “A mistake of that magnitude could destroy a woman, and I didn’t want to see Rosie damaged. How the two of them must have laughed when I insisted we allow her to stay on. Erasmus even made a show of disagreeing, of making me fight for it before he relented.”
“Manipulative prick,” Rhys muttered, and his cheeks flamed with anger.
She shrugged. “In hindsight I can see that. I can understand that it was all part of their wicked plan.”
“And was he still outwardly disagreeable to her as her confinement continued?”
She pushed to her feet and worried her hands as she paced the small room. “Oh no. On the contrary, the moment I walked into their trap, he changed his tune. He told me she ought not to do her maid duties while she was increasing.”
“He hired another maid?”
“No.” She choked on a laugh. “Nor would he allow me to. It was fine, I knew how to take care of myself. He also insisted we make Rosie comfortable. Suddenly her room was filled with fine things, only the best. I was so blind that I thought he was merely a decent man acting decently.”
“Did you ever confront him on his sudden attentiveness?” he asked.
“Once. A few months in, he began pondering names for her child. He’d do it out loud at the supper table. I asked him why he was so involved in her life, with her confinement. And he laughed. He laughed and told me I had insisted she stay. That this was my fault.”
Rhys’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing. She sighed. “After that, I ignored it when I caught them with their heads together, when I saw the little looks between them. I even pretended it away when she touched her belly and asked me if I’d ever wanted a child. She was…mocking me. I lay in my bed and stared at my ceiling and knew it, but I did nothing and I said nothing. What you must think of me.”
He did get up now and crossed to her in two long strides. Now it was he who caught her hands, just as she had done to him when she followed him here. Rhys’s gaze bore into hers, filled with fire and understanding all at once.
“I think you are a good woman who was taken advantage of by two wicked people bent on only their own desires,” he said. “You weren’t foolish, you were manipulated by my brother and his lover. And having been at the sharp end of his manipulations in the past, I can tell you there was no one better at them. He could confuse your own memory, convince you that your name wasn’t what you thought. When he wanted something, he was ruthless. He was ruthless with you, Phillipa. He was cruel and thoughtless and that isn’t your fault.”
He said that with such certainty, such conviction, that for a brief moment she believed him. After months of torturing herself, it was freeing to believe she hadn’t been at fault for her blindness. And oh, how she wanted to step closer to him. To let his arms come around her like they had at the shore of the lake earlier in the day.
She wanted everything she couldn’t have and more.
Which was why she stepped away. “Thank you,” she whispered.
There was a long, heavy silence between them, and then Rhys asked, “How long after the boy was born did you know?”
“Well, at first he just looked like a baby,” she said. “I noted that he had blue eyes, but I told myself lots of people have blue eyes, not just Erasmus.”
“My eyes too,” Rhys said.
She wrinkled her brow and looked at him closer. “They’re the same color,” she said slowly, examining that remarkable sea blue. “But they aren’t the same as his. Yours are…warm. Kind. I never look at them and see him. Never.”
There was a palpable relief that washed over him with that statement. As if having the same eyes as his wicked brother was deeply troubling, or that her seeing them as the same was. But what she’d said was true. She’d never seen them as equal.
“It wasn’t the eyes, anyway,” she said. “It should have been, perhaps, but it was that as Kenley got older, he started to have his father’s nose. He started to turn his head like Erasmus…you know that little side tilt—”
Rhys nodded. “I know the one. When he was thinking of something, trying to find an answer…or a lie.”
“Well, Kenley does that too. And I just…knew.”
“You confronted my brother and Rosie,” he said.
“Erasmus was long gone by them, rushed off to the next wife and the stalking of the next after that.” She shivered. “I couldn’t confront him, so instead I went to Rosie. She didn’t even try to lie. She just laughed in my face. And the next day she disappeared, abandoning the child to, as we now know, join Erasmus in London and assist him in his ultimate plan to fake his own death, have Abigail blamed for it and let Rosie collect the payoff he thought you’d give Kenley.”
“But you didn’t know any of that.”
“Of course not.” She threw up her hands. “I thought he was a philanderer who had impregnated my maid and was now shirking his duties. I was incensed he could do that to a child I already cared deeply for. I wanted him to assure Kenley’s future, to admit that he owed the baby a debt as his father, even if he would never allow the boy to have his name. I started trying to find him, writing him, and that’s how I ended up going to London.”
Rhys was staring at her now, expression filled with a wonder that made her shift in discomfort. “What is that…why are you looking at me that way?” she asked.
“You put all your energy and time, all your emotion, into protecting a child who was living proof of a betrayal. Of the end of a marriage. That is…not everyone would do that, Phillipa.”
She shrugged. “I love Kenley. I couldn’t love him more if he were mine. I grew close to him when Rosie was still my maid, and when she left, I knew he was my responsibility. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.” She bent her head. “And Kenley wasn’t the end of my marriage.”