Chapter Eight

Myfanwy ran like she’d never run before. But it was too dark. The boy was too fast. And he wasn’t chained down with three petticoats. But she couldn’t just stand there, like Samuel, staring at the poor little girl.

Nevertheless, she called her search off after three blocks, avoiding the odd stares of the well-to-do couples enjoying their nightly strolls. Retreating to the house, she only had one thing on her mind, and the anger and indignation of the words she planned to say to Samuel built and built until she thought they would explode out of her.

Myfanwy slammed the door closed as she entered Samuel’s house and found him in the drawing room, where he was pacing back and forth in front of the fire, his hand still clutching the note the boy had given him. The little girl was nowhere to be found.

Samuel didn’t look up when she planted herself in a hard stance in front of him. Coward. “I had Gertie take her upstairs,” he explained quietly. “Sit with her until she fell asleep.”

“What are you going to do?” Myfanwy asked, crossing her arms. She needed the extra barrier between them. Myfanwy felt so incredibly raw, like she’d slid across the grass with nothing but her shift on. She couldn’t believe that just minutes ago she’d opened up to this man, showed him places inside her that she hadn’t shown anyone. And this was how the universe rewarded her.

Eventually, Samuel’s somber gaze lifted. She was struck by how haggard and weary he seemed, as if he’d aged ten years in the time she’d spent searching in the streets. Deep bluish-green bags settled under his eyes, and his mouth was impossibly grim. Myfanwy had to stop the pity that was threatening to dampen her fury. The only person that deserved pity was the little girl who clearly needed her father.

Samuel’s jaw moved, almost like he was chewing his words into smaller, more palatable bits before he let them go free. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“You don’t know? How could you not know?” she said. Then her eyes alighted on the glass of amber liquor Samuel was holding in his other hand. Quickly, she snatched it away and dumped the contents unceremoniously into her mouth.

Fire!Incandescent flames scalded her throat.

“Holy hell!” she yelped as coughing spasms overwhelmed her. She clamped her hand over her mouth so she didn’t spit up. “Is that what you drink every night? That’s revolting!”

Samuel remained in place, the expression on his face signaling she’d gone mad. “Only on rare occasions do I drink that.”

“Because it’s rancid?”

Samuel huffed, took the tumbler out of her hand, and placed it on the table. “Because it’s expensive. Go to bed, Myfanwy.”

“No,” she said, bracing her legs. “Not until you tell me what you’re going to do with her.”

Emotion finally sprang from his countenance. “I told you, I don’t know!”

“But you said, ‘Not again.’ So, obviously, you have experience dealing with bastard children.”

Samuel winced at the word. Myfanwy did too. She hated the term and was ashamed that she’d used it. It wasn’t a child’s fault that it was born out of wedlock, and yet it seemed that Society was hellbent on making it pay for it for the rest of its life.

Samuel glanced at the note once more before balling it up in his fist and tossing it into the fireplace. Myfanwy lunged to reach for it, but he wrapped his hand around her upper arm, staying her action.

Myfanwy shrugged him off, though she had to acknowledge that Samuel had simply let her go. “I’ve dealt with it only once before, and it wasn’t pleasant,” he said. “This time is clearly different, but I will handle it.”

The calmness in his voice struck her like a blow to the stomach. How could he sound so cavalier? It was like they were discussing a lost puppy. It made her hate him, and Myfanwy never thought that would happen.

“Do you know who the mother is? Perhaps we can contact her.”

Again, with one of his curious looks, almost as if there was something she was missing. Myfanwy dashed that thought aside. She might not be as hardened and jaded as Samuel, but she wasn’t so na?ve that she didn’t know that men had natural children all the time. The aristocracy was full of stories and gossip about them. Silly her—she’d always assumed that Samuel was different. Not a gentleman…but better.

Myfanwy’s father had once told her that she should never be in a rush to meet people she admired. They were always bound to disappoint, since they were made from flesh and blood like her. She’d laughed him off at the time; however, she wasn’t laughing now.

Samuel rubbed his eyes and limped to a chair. His gait always got worse by the end of the night. “Why would I have any idea who the mother is?” he said, tilting his head back to ponder the ceiling.

Myfanwy planted her hands on her hips. Was he being obtuse on purpose? There was no time for games! “Are you trying to impress me with all your ladies? You have so many that you can’t remember whom you fathered a child with?”

Samuel’s brows came together, and slowly he leveled his gaze back on hers. “What did you say?”

He seemed mystified—and also frightening. Myfanwy struggled to maintain her composure. “You heard me.”

He came to his feet, even though she could see how much it cost him. “Are you trying to imply that the child is mine?”

Myfanwy’s confidence and ire shattered. “I…I,” she stammered. “You know I am.”

Samuel laughed then, a great, booming laugh that was completely devoid of joy. His legs unsteady, he knocked into her shoulder as he wobbled to the table, where he poured another drink into the empty crystal glass. Just as Myfanwy had, he knocked the drink back into his mouth, finishing it in one swallow. He handled its noxious taste much better.

Samuel blew out a long breath, tapping his fingers on the crystal as he contemplated her. “So, this is what you really think of me? I knew you didn’t have a high opinion, but I thought we were getting somewhere.”

“I’m sorry,” Myfanwy replied, growing cagey and uncomfortable under his scowl. “But a man must be judged by his actions—all of them.”

“Indeed,” Samuel said, placing the glass back on the table. “Did you happen to notice the child’s hair?”

It was an odd question, made even odder by the offhand way he asked it. “What of it?”

“Did it strike you as similar to anyone you know?”

“What?” Myfanwy jerked back. She tried to picture the child in her mind. It had all happened so fast; nothing stood out to her. She was a girl. Small. Tiny, really. What was there to notice?

Samuel’s gaze flickered to the top of her head. On impulse, Myfanwy clutched a hank of hair running down her side. “What are you implying?”

Samuel let out a mirthless sound and dropped into his seat once more, crossing one leg over the other. “You’re a smart one. And since you’re so ready to branch out by yourself, own a home and club, I suppose you don’t need to be shielded anymore by life’s indelicate matters. What do you think I’m saying?”

Myfanwy clamped her eyes shut and took a steadying breath, but it was no use. Her heart felt like it was in between her ears. It couldn’t be. Could it? She would have known. He would have told her. They spent all their time together. Surely she would have suspected…?

Samuel studied her silently, no doubt reading all the erratic thoughts fighting for purchase in her mind.

Tears came, and Myfanwy rubbed her arm over her face to catch them before they fell, but it was too late, and there were too many. Samuel didn’t play the empathetic hero this time, as he had in the garden. In fact, he became increasingly uncomfortable as recognition slapped her across the face.

Myfanwy began to shiver like Samuel had dunked her in one of his tortuous ice baths. “He couldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t. He was better than that.”

Now, Samuel’s smile was sad, wilting with pity. “He was a man. Just a man.”

“No,” Myfanwy whispered plaintively. “He wasn’t a man. He was my father.”

*

Hours later, Myfanwywas still tossing and turning in her bed. Her mind was too restless; the betrayal cut too close to the bone. How could her father do this to her? More importantly, how could he do it to her mother’s memory? The viscount and his viscountess had been soulmates, the darlings of the ton. To this day, Myfanwy was still stopped by old friends of theirs who recounted stories of her parents’ great love affair.

Looking back, she understood that her relationship with her father had only truly blossomed after the death of her mother. They were all each other had in the world, and clung to one another like shipwrecked men left behind on a remote island.

Only now, Myfanwy knew it was all a lie. Her father had been a man—a needy, lonely man who had sought the company of other women to take the place of his dead wife. And he had done it in the most irresponsible fashion. Like the other fine men of the ton who boasted loudly of honor but acted with very little of it.

Myfanwy had forced Samuel to tell her everything. He’d hated every minute of it. Samuel had loved her father too. The viscount had believed in the young cricketer, been a patron and father figure when he’d had no one. And Samuel still loved him despite his failings. Myfanwy was unsure if or when she would be able to do the same.

Because it hadn’t just been one baby—one accident. There had been another. Samuel explained that after the funeral, he’d been confronted by an opera singer who found herself with child. She insisted the viscount was the father. She said she would go to the papers if he didn’t give her the funds to raise it. Naturally, Samuel had complied. He saw no other choice. The idea of anyone ruining the old man’s good name made him sick to his stomach. Everyone had ghosts in their pasts, he’d told himself, some more flesh and bone than others.

Samuel had paid for that child for an entire year before he learned that it had died hours after its birth. The opera singer fled to the Continent after Samuel exposed her perfidy, never truly knowing if she’d been telling the truth about the father or not.

He’d thought it was over. He’d assumed if there were any more children, they would have come into the light. But he’d been wrong.

Slamming her head down into her pillow, Myfanwy stifled a cry. Never meet those you admire… Yes, and never grow up with them either. Did everyone disappoint in the end? Was that what growing up was all about? Learning to cope with everyone’s failures?

How cynical she could become if she let herself.

Well, Myfanwy wouldn’t become cynical. She couldn’t.

She crawled out of her bed and left her room, creeping down the chilly corridor to the guest room at the far end. She’d never been in it before, for the simple fact that Samuel never had visitors. It was only ever them in the house, along with the servants who knew better than to be noticed.

Myfanwy opened the door as quietly as she could, tensing at the squeak in the hinge as if it were a firecracker. Peeking her head inside, she relaxed as she spied the little girl asleep in the giant bed, swallowed in the covers that the maid had piled on.

She was going to let it end there. However, she couldn’t hear the child breathing. Surely she was, but Myfanwy just needed to be extra sure. Tiptoeing closer, she leaned over the bed and found the girl’s head at the top end of her toasty cocoon. Myfanwy placed her hand near the girl’s mouth and waited for the telltale signs of life. When a warm puff of air caressed her skin, she released a breath of her own. It was so loud that the girl shifted in the covers, but thankfully didn’t wake up.

Myfanwy didn’t know how long she stayed there, staring at the little one. She yearned to touch the girl’s hair and see if it felt the same as hers. A profound, overwhelming feeling gripped her, and suddenly, without a doubt, she knew they were half-sisters. As Samuel had pointed out, the red color was too similar to discount. And her father was there in the little girl’s features. It was faint, but evident in the elegant thickness of her lips, the line of her eyebrows, which slashed above her eyes instead of curving like rainbows.

If Myfanwy was going to be honest with herself, she might acknowledge that she’d known the instant the front door opened. Maybe that was why she’d run after the boy like her life depended on it. Because it had.

Myfanwy exited the room, this time closing the door without making any noise. She’d begun the journey back to her bed, hoping sleep might finally take hold, when she heard a click. A doorknob twisted, and then Samuel appeared in front of her, wearing a navy-blue robe and a surprised expression.

Then he nodded, and Myfanwy understood that he was checking on the girl, just as she was. Like two ships in the night, they passed each other. Silently. Slowly. As if this was just a secret.

Later, when Myfanwy was dozing off to sleep, she would wonder if Samuel had truly taken her hand and squeezed it as he’d passed, or if it had all been a dream.