Page 90 of The Bridal Quest

The three of them looked at Owenby. Irene felt numbed by the man's matter-of-fact recital of Lady Selene's murder. She glanced at Gideon, who also seemed drained. His fury, she thought, had worn itself out, crashing into a kind of cold despair in the face of the valet's story.

"But it still does not make sense," Irene protested. "Why did he have you take Gideon away?" Irene asked. "Why would Lord Cecil get rid of his only son? His heir?"

"The boy saw him. He woke up, I guess at the sound of the voices. The nursery's just above her ladyship's room. And he walked in on them. He saw Lord Cecil hit his mother. And he started screaming, too. That's ... that's really when I decided to see what was happening. Lord Cecil knocked him away, trying to shut him up. He was afraid he would waken the household. It knocked him out. And when I came back, well, the boy was still asleep. I think—I think maybe Lord Cecil gave him some laudanum. You know, to keep him asleep. And he told me I would have to get rid of the boy, too, on account of he'd seen ... what he'd seen. He couldn't stay there, where he might decide any day to tell everybody what had happened."

"But his own son!" Irene exclaimed.

"What did it matter anyway?" the valet snarled. He looked at Gideon with something close to hate. "From the day he married her, she had never been faithful to him. His brother wasn't the first, just the last. She had a string of lovers, that one." He stared at Gideon, his loathing almost palpable. "You think you're something, don't you? Well, you're wrong. You're no one, you hear me? You're not the earl's son."

Chapter Twenty-One

"It makes sense," Gideon said calmly.

"What?" Irene looked over at him, startled.

His words were the first he had spoken since they had started the ride back to Radbourne Park. Rochford had tactfully ridden on ahead when they left the valet's cottage, giving Gideon and Irene an opportunity to be alone to discuss the revelations the valet had put before them. But for the first few minutes Gideon had said nothing as he rode, lost in a brown study, and Irene had not wanted to disturb him. He would talk to her when he was ready, she reasoned. However, she had not expected him to say what had just come out of his mouth.

"What makes sense?" she pursued. "I found little about his story that was sensible."

Gideon shrugged. "I am not Lord Cecil's son."

"You don't know that," Irene argued. "All you have is the word of Lord Cecil's valet, and he can have no way of knowing the truth. All he could possibly know is what his employer told him, and we have absolutely no proof that it is true. Even Lord Cecil could not have been sure. The picture Lord Jasper painted of Lady Selene is a far cry from the wanton whom Owenby claims she was. Lord Cecil was doubtless trying to justify his own wicked actions by saying that. He probably felt it made it less a sin to murder her."

"But it makes sense," Gideon said stubbornly, turning his head to look at her. "We have been stymied this whole time by the fact that a man got rid of his own child. We discounted the idea that my father murdered my mother, because we knew he would not get rid of his son and heir. But it would not be so hard, would it, if he knew that I was not really his son?"

"He got rid of you to save his own selfish hide," Irene retorted. "It was cowardice, that was all. After all, if he really thought that you were not his son, he could have repudiated you years ago. He could have charged your mother with adultery and obtained a divorce."

"But that would have entailed a messy scandal, something the family wouldn't have wanted. Moreover, he would have been holding himself up to public ridicule if he laid such charges at my mother's feet, so he went along with the pretense that I was his son. But then, when the opportunity arose for him to get rid of me, as well as wife, he seized it. Had I really been his son, I doubt he would have done so. I was only four. He could have kept me from telling my story, and eventually I would have forgotten it, just as I forgot my childhood. But he saw the chance to get rid of me, and he took it."

"But what about the way you look? And the mark on your back? Lady Odelia said you have the look of the Lilles."

He curved his lip. "Do I? My hair is dark, yes, but my eyes are green. I don't think anyone would mistake Rochford and me for brothers. He is taller, more slender."

"Well, you are not his brother," Irene retorted in some exasperation. "You are cousins, and only second cousins at that."

"Do you not recall how my mother's maid said that I looked like my mother. That I had her eyes? That everyone went on about how I looked like a Bankes. But she thought I resembled my mother more. Lady Selene's hair was black, as well. And as for that mark, it is a birthmark. Not something I inherited. All it did was prove that I was the boy they had thought was abducted. It does not prove that I am a Bankes."

"Well, there is nothing to prove you are not!" Irene snapped.

"Don't you see?" Gideon asked, sounding weary to the bone. "It explains why I feel so strongly that I do not belong here. I don't. I am not a nobleman. My blood is probably that of—of one of the footmen. Or the solicitor in the village—or God only knows who. I am not the Earl of Radbourne. And I cannot pretend to be."

"What are you saying?" Irene asked. "Are you going to—to give up your title?"

"Timothy should be the earl," Gideon said, setting his jaw. "I cannot deprive him of what is by rights his. Do you think I am that sort of person?"

"No. I think you are the sort of person who dislikes aristocrats so much that he wants to deny being one."

"I am not one," he insisted.

"You do not know that."

"I know," he said softly. "I have known, deep down, from the moment Rochford first contacted me."

"How? You could not possibly know?"

"I know because I feel it inside."

"That is not enough!" Irene cried. "That isn't knowledge."