“I never meant to punish you, Cornelia. I hurt, and I did not understand why you and James could not have told me the truth before it was too late.” It seemed so simple now. So honest.

“I wish I had.” A tear escaped her eye and dripped over her knuckles pressed to her cheek. “Maybe then you would have forgiven me.”

“Sooner than I did, probably.” But then he might not have known Kitty. He would not have known love.

“Have you forgiven me, Leam?”

He nodded.

“Then why won’t you take me back?”

“Cornelia.” Tension gripped him. He must be off to Shropshire without further delay. But her gaze beckoned and he wanted this finished once and for all. “Why have you come back? I know you don’t care about your son. So then, what do you want of me?”

She drew the linen away and her lips quivered, a second tear escaping.

“I do care about Jamie, and I don’t want anything from you,” she whispered. “He does.”

Leam’s blood stilled. “Tell me now.”

Her eyes were round as saucers. “His business went horribly wrong in America. He needs money desperately and says he will hurt Jamie if I don’t get the funds from you and give them to him.” Her tone had risen.

“Who, Cornelia?”

“David! Don’t you see? He was so greedy. I did not understand it at first, but then he wanted so much. More than I could give him even with the generous allowance you provided me. Then the baby came so soon after our wedding and James died and I could not think straight. I was frightened of you and David, and so confused.”

“Cornelia,” Leam broke into her mounting agitation. “Why does David Cox need this cameo?”

“He lost it in Shropshire at that inn. He thought you took it, and he was wild with fear that you were playing him to frighten him. He searched your bedchambers on Christmas night when you were all playing cards, he said, but he could not find it. So he thought that if you were dead he would get the money anyway through me once I returned to society, so he tried to shoot you. But that went awry and he realized he was not a murderer after all, even though he is a horrid thief and extortionist.”

“Why would I have been playing him? About what?”

“He thought I had told you everything already and that you didn’t care because you were with Lady Katherine now.”

“What? ”

But she seemed not to hear him, her words tumbling forth swiftly. “When I would not go to Alvamoor to show you I was alive and seek money from you, he threatened her so that you would come to London and I would be forced to meet you. I told him I would not, even so, that I would return to Italy and you would never know. But he vowed he would go to Alvamoor and hurt my son. I could not allow that to happen, Leam. I have not seen little Jamie in five years but he is my flesh and blood and I always loved him. I pray you to believe me!”

“I do.” It was too fantastical to disbelieve, and her eyes rolled with the same manic distress as on that day she’d told him about her affair with James. “But I still do not understand, Cornelia. What is this cameo to him?”

“His insurance, but only until he needs it. I inscribed it before I gave it to him.”

“What is the inscription?”

“It says…” She released a whimper like an injured animal. “It says To my dear husband, David.”

Chapter 27

Leam’s breaths came in uneven chunks.

“Our…” An ocean seemed to wash through his head. “Our son is—?”

“Not his. For all the lies I have told you, I swear this upon my soul. He is James’s.”

It must be. The child looked exactly as his brother had at that age.

“But how long before—”

“I married David three weeks before you offered for me.” She seemed to shrink back against the wall. “Over the anvil in a village near the border.”

He shook his head, shaking space in it for the knowledge. The truth. The miraculous truth.

“Then why did you need me? You already had a husband. You would not have been ruined.”

“I told you. I could not bear being parted from your brother. I still cannot.” Her voice quavered.

“Sometimes I don’t believe he is dead. I dream of him at night and believe when I wake he will be there.”

“And Cox?”

She turned her face away. “Before meeting you, I was desperate, afraid to tell my parents I was increasing. Only James knew, and he had abandoned me. David said beautiful things to me, that he would protect me and care for me. I was heartbroken. I went with him, but he insisted we not tell anyone, though I begged. That same week you started courting me, admiring me so greatly. I think he saw opportunity. You had a fortune and are to be a duke—”

“Cornelia.”

She fell silent, staring at him with wide eyes. He passed his hand across his face. It could not be.

But it was.

“Have you proof of your wedding other than the inscription on the cameo?”

“I kept the receipt of payment from the blacksmith who performed the ceremony. And it has not been very long since then, after all. I think I would recognize the witnesses if they were before me.

David has never had any money, so I don’t believe he could have bribed them to maintain their silence, even now. He wanted to blackmail you, but I don’t know that he thought he would be able to do so for long. I don’t think he thought it out clearly at all. He is very impetuous, and always believing that others seek to harm him.”

He crossed the chamber and as gently as his racing pulse allowed, grasped her arms and looked down at her.

“We are not married. We are not married ,” he repeated for good measure and because his life had abruptly begun again.

She shook her head. “We never were.” Then she whispered, “What will you do with Jamie?”

Amid the euphoria expanding in him, regret sliced.

“Keep him, if you will allow me. Even if you will not. He is my blood. It cannot be helped that he must learn of your marriage, but he needn’t know he is not mine. And I will treat him as my son, Cornelia. I could not do otherwise.”

Her head bobbed. She reached up and set a small hand atop his. “Leam, I beg your forgiveness for what I have done to you. What I did. It is as though an enormous weight has lifted from me now, having told you all.”

He released her. “Where is Cox now?”

“I don’t know. This morning he came and was very agitated. He said something about returning to Shropshire, but—”

“I am going after him now. He has committed crimes and must be punished for them. The truth will have to be revealed publicly.”

She nodded. Then she looked away, pressing the linen to her lips once more.

“Cornelia, do your parents know of your real marriage?”

She shook her head.

“I can help you.”

“After all I have done to you? No. I deserve whatever I will suffer now.” She lifted her gaze again.

“You needn’t worry about me. After all, you have another lady to worry about now, I think.”

He could only hope. And pray. And wish upon every star in the heavens.

“Good-bye, Cornelia.”

“Good-bye, Leam. Write to me of my son, if you will, occasionally. I should like to hear of him.”

He departed.

The day had advanced, and his quick breaths turned to smoke in the cold. But the sky without was pale and low, the glow of the lowering sun fighting early spring clouds laden with uncertain rain.

Leam mounted his horse and set off. For Shropshire. To chase down a man bent on harm. And to seek out a lady worth more than the stars and sky combined.

He found Cox just shy of Bridgnorth in the taproom of a farmers’ tavern. It had not been difficult tracking him. At each stop for food and bed, Cox had left his bills unpaid.

Leam crossed the room.

Cox caught sight of him, and his face turned ashen.

It was certainly an exaggeration to claim—as some did later to others not present at the event—

that just as the late-winter sun was setting on the Severn nearby, a barbarian of a Scot that none in the place could understand stormed in, threw about chairs until at least five were ruined and another three badly splintered, then proceeded to do more or less the same to a smartly dressed gentleman from Londontown who hadn’t been bothering a soul.

That the Scotsman, while standing over his bleeding, broken prey, had the effrontery to demand a magistrate be summoned also received poor press from the locals. But, after the magistrate arrived, heard all, and departed with both strangers, then returned alone some hours later to explain that the brute was in fact heir to a duke, and the pretty fellow a low character by any standards, some were willing to reconsider their opinion on the matter. When in due course it became known that the duke’s heir was already an earl, and not only paid the tavern keep for the destruction to his property but also left a pile of guineas to be spent on ale for everyone he had bothered in the dust-up, forgiveness flowed like said ale throughout the pub.

What was the good in being a grand lord, after all, if a fellow couldn’t have a right rowdy knock-

around with a scoundrel every now and again?

“The ass made the noises all the night yesterday. I am—how do you say?—exhausted! Et toi, belle Katrine?” The Frenchwoman laid her hand gloved in fingerless black lace on Kitty’s knee and tut-

tutted. “You must go up to the sleep tout de suite.”