Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,107

expecting her to emerge from the wallpaper or step out from behind the draperies. “She’s here?”

“Nae. She wanted to come, but I didnae want her disappointed if you turned out not to be our boy.”

“You don’t know that I am. You’re just guessing.”

He gave a quick nod. “What are you hiding beneath all that hair? The same as me, I suspect. Your ma told me you’d taken after me for certain in that one regard.” With a smooth, efficient flick of his fingers, he brushed back the strands on the right side of his head. “’Tis the Campbell curse. Legend has it that one of our ancestors was always pressing his ear to the door, spying on witches. They cast a spell on him and his descendants. Some escape it. You and I weren’t so fortunate. Although there are worse things to befall a person.”

It was an unlikely tale, but what caught Beast’s attention more was the reference to our ancestors. He had his family, bastards Ettie Trewlove had cobbled together into a unit that loved each other fiercely and fought just as fiercely for each other. But that family came with no ancestors—none that could be claimed or acknowledged anyway. Yet, now he was learning he had ancestors, ones who would be proud to claim him, ones with whom he sometimes shared the anomaly with which he’d been born. A heritage. A birthright—although he’d always viewed it as something wrong, not right. A legacy. If he was this man’s son . . .

How could he doubt it when he was gazing into eyes as black as his own, when he possessed the same square cut of his jaw, the same sleek nose, the same high sharp cheekbones?

What had he inherited from his mum? No, Ettie Trewlove was his mum, would always be so. This other woman was his mother, his ma, the word pronounced with a brogue that he wasn’t certain would ever feel natural on his tongue. He wasn’t who—what—he’d always believed himself to be: a babe abandoned, forgotten, unwanted.

He’d been wanted, loved, protected. He wondered if that instinct to protect had been passed from his ma to him, if she was responsible for his nature more than his looks.

“Why didn’t you come for me after you found her?”

“She couldnae remember where she left you. Sometimes, I’d think she made herself forget so she wouldn’t be able to tell them where you were. I don’t know if it’s possible to do such a thing. To look at your ma, you might not realize how strong she is. I’ve never known anyone stronger, man or woman. So all these years, the one thing I did know was that wherever she left you, you were safe.”

He had been that, at least while he was under the care of Ettie Trewlove. His encounter with Three-Fingered Bill had been his doing. But even then, it had been his family who had sent for the surgeon, his family who had nursed him back to health.

“After all this time, all of a sudden, she just remembered?”

“Nae. It was your book. I bought it for her when I was in London a couple of weeks ago. She likes mysteries, and I thought she’d enjoy reading one written by an author who carried the same first name as our son—only it was the Trewlove that caught her attention. Her memory of that night was that the woman with whom she’d left you had promised to love you true. But seeing Benedict Trewlove on the book . . . it unlocked something within her. When she slept, unlike all the other times she’d dreamed of that night, this time it wasn’t so blurry, she saw the details of it. She thought maybe the woman’s name was Trewlove. She convinced me to come have a word with you. I went to your publisher to find out where you lived, and here I am. And glad of it.”

He was still struggling with it all, taking apart what he’d known of his life and reassembling it to include what he was now learning.

“Will you come with me to meet your ma?” Ewan Campbell—his father—asked.

Beast could do little more than nod.

Then the man whom he’d spent a good many years wondering about strode forward and held out his hand. A hand the size of ham hocks, a hand Beast could clearly see working the docks, lifting and hauling cargo. He knew if he placed his own against it, he’d be recognizing