Chapter 31

CHAPTER31

“Slowly or quickly?” Luke asked, the blade glinting in his hand.

Duncan had been holding Silas back, urging him to hear more of what Luke had to say before they made their move, but after seeing the blade in his hand, Silas could no longer be restrained. The risk was too great.

He rammed his boot into the broken door, tearing it wholly off its hinges. It hit the ground with a creaking thud as he charged into the barn, both pistols raised. “Touch her and you will regret it,” he snapped, aiming one at the back of his brother’s head, the other at the young man by a campfire, who put up his hands in shaky surrender. “Set the blade down and turn slowly.”

“So much for patience, eh?” Duncan ran in behind him, and immediately took control of Luke’s accomplice. He bound the young man’s hands with discarded rope, the fellow offering no resistance.

Luke, on the other hand, did not turn and did not drop his weapon. “Always getting in the way.” He tutted, using the sharp point of the blade to pick at his fingernails. “Why is it that you are always showing up where you do not belong?”

“Why is it that you have had everything you have ever wanted, and still cannot be satisfied?” Silas retorted. “You had the love of our mother and father. You had them both wrapped around your little finger. You have always been their favorite, but that was not enough? I would have given up the dukedom entirely for our father to look me in the eyes the way he looked at you, to embrace me as he used to embrace you.”

“My father,” Luke barked, whirling around. “You are a bastard, born of a despicable affair. I do not know who the man was, but I know that you were the result. If you are confused as to why my father could not look you in the eyes, you need only ask our mother. He must have known. He must have looked at you, so different to him, and known! That is why he could not bear to look at you.”

“No,” a quiet voice said, the rustle of skirts heralding a new arrival, “that is not true.”

Both brothers stared at their mother in shock.

“Mother, what are you doing here?” Silas gasped. He had heard no horse approach, nor had he noticed anyone following. Then again, he supposed he had not been looking behind him, only forward.

Augusta stepped further into the barn, smoothing down the front of her dress. “When Mr. Goldsmith heard what had happened and where you had gone, he confessed everything. I suspect he thought his name would be revealed if you went after your brother,” she said calmly. “And I suspect he thinks he will receive a more lenient punishment for telling the truth, though he will not.”

“Mr. Goldsmith?” Silas frowned, shaking his head.

“It seems he preferred things when Luke was acting as duke in your absence, my darling,” Augusta explained. “So, when Luke asked him to help kidnap our dearest Emma, he obliged. At present, he is tied up in the drawing room, with Eliza and Marina guarding him.”

Luke had gone deathly pale, his hands falling to his sides. Behind him, Emma looked disoriented, hunched forward with her hands bound. It took every speck of willpower that Silas possessed not to run to her at once, but as their eyes met, she shook her head discreetly, as if to say, “Not yet. Not yet.”

“You would say anything to cover your wicked deeds, Mother,” Luke hissed, breaking the strained silence. Even so, he did not seem as confident as he had a moment ago.

Augusta sighed. “There were wicked deeds, Luke, but they were not mine.” She cleared her throat, her eyes shining. “I was young and foolish, and hopelessly in love with your father, though we were not yet married. I was attending a ball and heard someone mention that your father and his friends were outside in the gardens. I escaped my chaperone and went in search of him.

“I was cornered by a man whose face I did not see, and whose name I did not know, though I am certain I have heard his voice now and then over the years. He… well, I need not say what he did. I hope it is obvious.”

She gulped, and Silas’s heart broke.

“Mother, I—” He tried to reach for her hand, but she stepped away, grimacing as though she would not be able to continue if anyone offered her comfort.

“Your father found me,” she went on, “sobbing and injured. In my distress, I told him everything. He tended to me, spent every day at my bedside afterward, and some weeks later, confessed his unwavering love. We were married two months later, by which time I knew that I was with child. He knew before the wedding. I gave him every opportunity to cast me aside, but he swore to love me forever and to love that child as his own, and I like to think that he did so, to the best of his ability, until the day he died.”

“That cannot be true,” Luke croaked. “That is not what I overheard.”

Augusta smiled. “It is, but you have remembered it in a way that suited what you wanted to believe. Indeed, if I remember correctly, Mr. Bathurst asked if I thought Silas was so withdrawn because, deep down, he knew that he was not his father’s son. I told him that only made him seem more like his father’s son, for my darling husband was like that in his youth. But he was always your father, Silas. Your only father. He deemed himself to be from the moment he knew you existed to the moment he took his last breath.”

Tears stung at Silas’s eyes as he thought back through the years, to all the opportunities he had missed, all the times he had shunned his family in favor of amusements, all the times he thought his father did not care for him at all. But he had cared all along. If he had not, Silas would have been given to someone else and forgotten about, and he certainly would not have inherited the dukedom.

He just did not know how to show it, Silas realized, feeling unsteady. As I did not know how to show it in return.

Yet, he could ignore a darker truth—that his father might have struggled to look at him, knowing where he had come from, knowing the pain it had caused the woman he loved.

It was a curious conflict in Silas’s head, for even through all of that, his father had never raised his hand nor voice to him, never been unkind, never been cruel, never punished him for being a bastard, and had included him always.

“Why did you not tell me?” Silas asked thickly.

His mother exhaled slowly, shakily. “He made me promise I would not.” She gestured to Luke. “I suppose he knew, better than I did, what might happen if we told the truth. More than that, he wanted Silas to be his heir. He wanted Silas to always believe that he was his firstborn son, because that was how he thought of you, though I admit it was not always easy for him.”

“You conspired to rob me of what is mine!” Luke seethed, his hand tightening around the handle of his dagger. “If this is true, then my father is as bad as the rest of you! I am his only heir, not this… this… imposter!”

Silas shot him a disgusted look.

“That is what you are choosing to concentrate upon, after all you have heard?” He sniffed. “I am ashamed to be related to you. Indeed, though it sounds like I have none of my father’s blood in my veins, he still raised me to be a better person than the son who came from love.”

“I understand that this is not the outcome you hoped for, my darling, but nothing is going to change,” Augusta said more softly, smiling at Luke. “Let us all return to the manor, and we can discuss this from every angle until there is satisfaction among us all. There is an old property of your father’s that could be yours, if you want it—a marquisate in the north. It has nobeen managed for many years, but it could easily be put to rights.”

Rage burned bright in Luke’s eyes. “Do you truly think me that desperate for a title that I would settle for less than I am owed?”

His voice was a boiling vat of spitting oil, his body trembling with fury.

“My sweet boy, there is nothing else to be done. The will cannot be contested, nor shall I help you contest it.” Augusta stood up straighter, squaring her shoulders. “If you attempt to disobey my and your father’s wishes, it will be your word against mine. You have no proof save a fleeting conversation with a dead man. No one else knows.”

Luke’s lip curled. “Then, I will find his true father, and use him to gain what is mine. I will destroy you, too, for this vile conspiracy. I hated you when I thought he was the child of an affair. Strangely, I hate you more now that I know the truth.”

A strangled gasp slipped from Augusta’s lips, her eyes wide with the most crushing kind of heartbreak. Before Silas knew it, he was running for his brother, his hand balling into a fist with every step he took. He thought he heard his mother cry out “No!” but he could not make out much beyond the rush of blood in his ears, as his fist collided with Luke’s nose.

“You go too far,” Silas hissed as Luke reeled.

With his brother dazed, Silas snatched for the dagger, freeing it from Luke’s loosened grip.

“Father would have disowned you for that remark alone,” Silas added.

Luke’s hands flew up to his nose, spluttering in pain.

“He loved nothing and no one more than our mother,” Silas continued, stalking past Luke to get to the person that he loved above all others. “He would be devastated to hear your bitter words. Indeed, I doubt he would have been able to look at you ever again, if he could see you now.”

Emma stared up at him with tears in her eyes, though her quivering lips managed a smile as he sank down in front of her. He wanted to fold her into his arms and hold her until she could not breathe, but their relieved reunion would have to wait. It was poor form to turn his back on an assailant, and he was not yet convinced that Luke was done.

“Are you hurt?” he said quietly, using the pilfered blade to cut her ties.

She laughed tightly. “Some chafing around the wrists and ankles, but I think I shall survive.”

“I am sorry.” Silas allowed himself to touch her dirt-streaked face, tracing his fingertips over her cheek.

She frowned. “For what?”

“Later,” he replied.

He made to stand up, but she grabbed his hand. “You thought I jilted you?”

“Later,” he repeated, taking a breath.

He did not have the faintest idea of what he was going to do with his brother. It seemed obvious that Luke needed to face punishment at the hands of the magistrates, but he could not bear the thought of what it would do to his mother, who had already been through so much. The scandal sheets would cast aspersions, their family would be dragged through the mud, and their mother would lose a still-beloved son.

He turned and froze.

Augusta had approached Luke while Silas was severing Emma’s restraints. She had her arms around her youngest, and he had sagged into them, sobbing against her shoulder as if he were a small boy again, with a scraped knee.

“I… did not… know,” Luke whispered raggedly. “I have hated you for… so long, believing you were… unfaithful. I… did not know.”

Augusta stroked Luke’s golden hair. “I am sorry you have hated me, my darling. I am sorry that you feel you have had something great taken from you.” Her breath hitched. “I know how that feels, and I know how… awful it is to know you will not get it back. But that does not mean you cannot be happy, that you cannot flourish and make something new from what has been broken.”

“It should be mine,” Luke mumbled, all of the bluster ripped out of him.

Augusta sighed. “No, my darling. It is not yours. It belongs to your brother, and he is a fine duke, and when he has children of his own, they will be no less your father’s grandchildren than any you might have.” She held his face and peered at him. “For the year you took your brother from us, can you truly say you felt like the dukedom was yours?”

“That was because he was still alive,” Luke protested. “And I had to worry over that as well as the estate.”

Augusta’s eyes hardened. “Be honest, my darling. Did it truly feel like a role you were born to have?”

Luke met her gaze and his face fell, his head shaking slowly. “No, it did not. I was… no good at it. I did not expect there to be so much arithmetic involved.”

“Now, what do you say we all return to the manor and have that discussion I mentioned?” Augusta took a breath. “I am sorry to say that you cannot escape punishment for your terrible deeds, my sweet boy, but perhaps we can think of something more lenient if we put our heads together. Of course, you will have to find a way to make a satisfactory apology to Emma and Silas, first and foremost, but we can talk of that in the comfort of our own home.”

Silas felt a great weight shift from his shoulders. For a moment, he had suspected that his mother might be about to let Luke get away with the cruel things he had done. He should have known better.

He turned to Emma and helped her to her feet, putting an arm around her waist to steady her. He dipped his head and kissed the top of her hair, whispering, “Let us go home, my wildling.”

“I can think of nowhere I would rather be,” she whispered back, leaning into him.