The truth? A sudden, fierce protectiveness came over Sophia. What would this man tell Vane, and how would it affect him from this day forward? She didn’t want him to be hurt any more.

“The truth,” Vane repeated, closing his eyes. “Yes, whatever that means, I would like to hear it.”

“You may wish for your wife to leave the room. Some details may be difficult to hear.”

Again, Sophia tensed. Leave the room? Why? But of course, she ought to if Vane wanted her to—

“I want her to stay,” Vane answered with firm conviction, though Sophia believed his color had paled a shade or perhaps two.

The words pleased her, in that they offered proof that the time they’d spent together here in Lacenfleet, and the intimacies they’d shared, had brought them closer together. Vane did not reach for her. He did not so much as glance at her. Still, Sophia felt compelled to move closer to him. To stand beside him while he heard whatever this kind-eyed stranger had to reveal.

“Very well.” Mr. Garswood nodded in assent and circled round to walk the length of the windows. “Your mother grew up not far from here. Very close, in fact, on her uncle’s property, which bordered this one.”

“I did not know that,” Vane answered, leading Sophia to the window where they joined their host in looking out over the winter landscape. “There is not much I do know about my mother’s bloodline. She did not often talk of her girlhood.”

Vane couldn’t explain it. Despite a certain trepidation over hearing what Mr. Garswood would say, he felt welcome, even comfortable here, in this man’s home. It was as if they were two old friends, reuniting after many long years for a warm and heartfelt reunion.

Mr. Garswood rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “Let me tell you our story, then. I knew your father when we were young boys. Our fathers before us had been friends, and we were friends as well. True friends as only young boys can be. But then your father, Follet as he was called then, was sent away to apprentice in the navy at only eight years old, a traumatic thing, as he was immediately thrust into the midst of the conflict with France and Spain in the siege on Havana. His ship, the HMS Stirling Castle, was one of those heavily damaged by the artillery from the fortress Morro and subsequently scuttled.”

“That’s too young,” interjected Sophia, her expression showing the same concern she would feel toward any child in the same circumstance. “I know it was done more often then, but eight years old. What horrors he must have witnessed. There must have been times when he felt so afraid.”

“During those years he visited rarely, but when he did, he would always come round and we would have the most marvelous time,” Mr. Garswood continued. “Only after the death of his father and brothers, from the same dreadful influenza that claimed so many lives that year, did he return to stay and to assume the title you, your Grace, now bear. By then, I must impress upon you, he was notably different. A man, of course, but darker somehow.”

“Darker, you say?” Vane inquired, his gaze intent. He’d borne witness to his father’s darker nature, but according to Mr. Garswood, that shadow hadn’t always been there.

Mr. Garswood nodded. The gray hair over his ears shone like silver in the winter light. “Another naval officer of my acquaintance told me that as a young officer Follet had sustained some sort of injury while serving. A blow to the head, and that he’d not been the same after, but prone to long periods of moodiness and fits of rage. Of course, none of that mattered. I welcomed his return as a friend. We hunted together. Attended the same parties and balls.”

“An injury,” Vane repeated. As a boy, he’d tried so desperately to find some trace of goodness in his father, only to be disappointed time and time again. But perhaps an injury had long ago altered the elder Lord Claxton’s mind and not evil as he’d always feared. The knowledge gave him at least a measure of the peace he’d craved for as long as he could remember. “This is the first I’ve heard of that.”

“People don’t talk of such things, of weaknesses in men from whom greatness is expected. What am I thinking? It is cold here by the windows.” He pointed to two chairs. “The both of you, please sit nearer to the fire, where it is warmer. This may take a little time.”

Vane complied, leading Sophia forward, where they took occupancy of two armchairs, while their host remained standing. He leaned toward them, speaking in the measured tones of a storyteller.

“Well, it wasn’t long before, unbeknownst to each other, Follet and I fell in love with the same young woman.” He turned to a small lacquered chest, and when he faced them again, he presented something small and round on his palm, a miniature portrait, encircled by a delicate gilt frame, which he urged Vane to take.

Vane’s breath staggered in his throat. For the first time in nearly twenty years, he viewed his mother’s likeness.

“There she is,” he whispered solemnly. “Just as I remember her.”

Where Vane and his father possessed dark coloring, Elizabeth had radiated light, not only in her golden hair, but in the sparkle in her eyes and humor on her lips.

“She was lovely,” Sophia whispered, smiling at him through tears.

Mr. Garswood presented his hand for the return of the miniature, and Vane reluctantly complied. Of course, Mr. Garswood could not know he possessed no other likenesses of his mother.

The elder gentleman glanced at the miniature briefly but with clear affection before returning the memento to the chest. “When I made my interest in Elizabeth known and began to court her, it became very clear to me that he cared for her too. Elizabeth had no idea, and at the time, I did not tell her, not wishing to shame him by her declared preference for me. I attempted to speak to him about it, but by then he was the Duke of Claxton. He did not share his thoughts or feelings. He only made it clear our friendship had ended.”

Mr. Garswood sank into the chair beside Vane’s, holding one leg rigidly straight. “To my great honor, your mother and I became betrothed. Yet shortly after, my regiment was called up, I at the time being a proud and brash young captain of the dragoons. But your mother wanted a summer wedding, you see, and I indulged her, believing as all young men do that I’d return in a few months’ time so that we could be married.”

“Obviously that did not happen,” Vane concluded.

Mr. Garswood crossed his hands over the pommel of his cane. “I sustained wounds. For months, I lay insensible in a German hospital, my family believing me dead.” The elder man’s gaze faded. “Pardon your Graces for my being so forward as to speak so familiarly, but unbeknownst to me, I’d left your mother in a…a delicate condition.”

“Oh my God,” Vane uttered. “It’s true, what the duke said. You are my father.”

“What?” Sophia gasped, her face gone pale with shock. Her hand found his arm, and she squeezed.

Mr. Garswood’s expression softened, and he chuckled. “No, your Grace. I am not. Though I have often wondered what might have been if the story would have gone that way.”

Abruptly, Vane left Sophia’s side to stand alone near the fire, where he stared at the ducal ring on his finger, almost afraid to relinquish the doubt that had eaten away at him since the age of ten. He had lived with that doubt for twenty years. It had become a part of him.

“Are you certain?” A rush of emotion moved through him so fast it left him dizzied. He’d harbored that festering kernel of doubt inside him for so long. “He always told me I was another man’s bastard, not his son. That he’d been forced to acknowledge me as his own because of what my whore of a mother had done.”

Mr. Garswood’s eyes flashed with outrage. “It’s simply not true. Follet married Elizabeth, of course, to spare her the scandal, but she lost our child soon after. Lord Claxton, whether you like it or not, you are his spirit and image. When you walked into this room, the resemblance took the air from my lungs.”

Claxton nodded. “I suppose, in some way, I wanted what he said to be true. I did not want to be his son, only hers. And yet the idea that I’ve been living the life of an impostor, pretending to be someone I wasn’t—” He cast a deliberate glance at Sophia, to find her eyes glittering with tears. “That did not rest well with me either.”

“He was wrong to have said it.”

“You and my mother—” Vane couldn’t bring himself to say the rest.

Mr. Garswood’s cheeks pinked, but he shook his head. “We never resumed our affair. Her ladyship was too honorable a woman to betray her vows, no matter how badly your father tormented her.”

“That woman in the portrait over there,” inquired Sophia. “Is that your wife?”

His gaze joined hers on a richly painted portrait of a smiling, auburn-haired woman holding a bouquet of wild roses.

“Indeed. Viola was a wonderful woman and very understanding about a young man’s first love. She actually sought out your mother, and they became friends.”

Claxton leaned forward in his chair and shifted toward Mr. Garswood. “I thought she looked familiar. I remember her. She visited the house from time to time and always brought my mother flowers and a book to read.”

Mr. Garswood nodded, a wistful smile on his lips. “She grieved Elizabeth’s death as if she’d lost a sister.” His voice softened. “I lost her in May of last year.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” Claxton murmured.

“I count myself among the luckiest of men to have known them both.”

“Thank you also for telling me all this.”

Mr. Garswood nodded. “It ate away at his soul. The jealousy. His love for your mother, however sincere in the beginning, eventually bordered along obsession. He could not abide the fact that she had once loved another, and the knowledge that it was me, a man he came to believe was a rival rather than a friend, tormented him.”