Page 58 of The Bridal Quest

Gideon turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

"Oh, hush, Pansy!" Lady Odelia exclaimed in irritation, turning to her sister and mechanically patting her shoulder.

Only a foot away from her, Lady Teresa looked about to succumb to a similar bout of tears. Irene, ignoring them both, jumped to her feet and hurried out of the room.

"Gideon!"

He was already halfway down the hall, but he stopped and turned back to look at her. She hurried toward him.

"Wait! I will go with you," she said.

He shook his head. His face was dark with emotion, his eyes fierce. "No. I am not fit company right now."

He swung around and continued down the hall, not waiting for her. She ignored his words, trotting after him.

"I am sure you are not," she told him, catching up to him as he opened the door onto the terrace. "But neither are you fit to be alone."

Ungraciously he shrugged and strode off across the terrace. She walked with him, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. Wisely she did not try to talk to him, merely walked with him down through the garden.

Finally, as if he could hold it in no longer, he burst out, "Clearly he cared nothing for me! He let me go without even trying to get me back." Gideon cast a burning look at Irene. "How can that be? A father who has no interest in his son? Even my grandmother seemed to care nothing about me except for the fact that I was his heir!"

"Perhaps your father believed that you were best off with your mother. You were quite young, only four. And he did not know that you were on the streets of London, after all."

Gideon gave her a speaking look, and Irene did not try to continue her argument. Clearly it was weak, and, in truth, she could not even believe it herself.

After a few more minutes, Gideon came to a halt. They had reached a wide-spreading oak that stood at the far end of the garden, a large and solitary outpost of the woods that started not far past it. An iron bench stood beneath its shady branches, and during the day one could sit upon it and contemplate the countryside spread out before one.

Gideon clamped his hands around the back of the bench and looked out, as if he could see the vista before him. He shook his head and began to speak again, not looking at Irene out staring straight in front of him.

"My father's indifference to me does not really matter, I suppose, I have long suspected that he did not care enough to look for me. But to find out that my mother—" He bit off the words.

Irene reached out silently and laid her hand upon one of his. "I am so sorry."

"I always assumed that my mother was dead. Otherwise, I thought, she would not have let me go. Even as a child, I recall being certain that she must be dead or I would have been with her. After Rochford found me and I learned about the 'kidnapping', I was more certain than ever that she was dead. I knew, deep down, that she, at least, had loved me. Now ... to find out that she abandoned me, that she fled with a lover and left her child to whatever fate awaited him on the streets of London ...! What sort of woman could do that? What kind of a woman was she?"

"You do not know any of that is true!" Irene protested. "Perhaps your mother did die. You cannot remember what happened—you were too young. Just because the two of you were not abducted, it doesn't mean that she abandoned you. After all, why would she have taken you with her at all if she did not want you? It would have been far easier to have left you behind. It is quicker to travel without a child. Easier to pass unnoticed. And she must have realized that a man would be more likely to chase his wife down if she had taken his son and heir with her when she left him." She shook her head. "No, I cannot help but think that she took you only because she could not bear to leave you behind. She must have loved you very much. Whatever she might have felt about her husband or her marriage or this supposed lover, she must have loved you."

"Then how did I end up alone in London?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose we shall ever know," Irene replied honestly. "Any number of things could have happened. She might have fallen ill and died there, so the man she was traveling with left you. Or perhaps he abandoned her along with you, and then she grew ill and died, or was somehow taken from you."

"Or her lover could have grown tired of hauling a brat around with them and demanded that she leave the boy behind. She betrayed her husband. She besmirched her own name. Why would she balk at abandoning an inconvenient child?"

Irene's heart was heavy with pity for Gideon. She could not imagine how it must feel to have learned that his mother had abandoned him. Despite her troubles with her father through the years, she had at least always been certain of her mother's love. What, she wondered, must it be like to have had none of that sure, abiding love? Gideon had been on his own for as long as he could remember, with no one to depend upon or trust absolutely.

"I am so sorry," she murmured, aware of how weak her words must sound. She could think of no way to convey the depth of her sympathy, and of course, she could not fully understand how he felt.

Gideon shrugged, his face set and unemotional. "This news changes nothing in my life. After all, I have no real memory of my mother. It is not as if someone I knew betrayed me."

"Yes, but what you believed is as important as what you actually remembered. You were certain that your mother did not abandon you or else you would have been bound to feel betrayed by her."

"What I believed did not change the facts. I was alone then, just as I am alone now."

"No, you are not alone!" Irene cried, taking a step closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm. She drew a breath, ready to point out that she was with him, but she realized at the last moment that she was committing herself to a closeness that was not true. She might be literally with him right now, but that situation would not last long. She would not remain with him as a wife or even as a friend when these two weeks were gone.

Her hand fell from his arm, and she looked away from him. "That is ... I mean, you are about to get married. You will have the companionship and support of your wife, so you will no longer be alone."

He let out a short, unamused laugh. "A wife who is willing to marry such a disreputable sort as I in order to gain wealth and a title? Somehow I cannot feel that ours will be a close union."