The Defiant Wife (The Three Mrs #2) - Jess Michaels Page 0,20

around her like they had at the shore of the lake earlier in the day.

She wanted everything she couldn’t have and more.

Which was why she stepped away. “Thank you,” she whispered.

There was a long, heavy silence between them, and then Rhys asked, “How long after the boy was born did you know?”

“Well, at first he just looked like a baby,” she said. “I noted that he had blue eyes, but I told myself lots of people have blue eyes, not just Erasmus.”

“My eyes too,” Rhys said.

She wrinkled her brow and looked at him closer. “They’re the same color,” she said slowly, examining that remarkable sea blue. “But they aren’t the same as his. Yours are…warm. Kind. I never look at them and see him. Never.”

There was a palpable relief that washed over him with that statement. As if having the same eyes as his wicked brother was deeply troubling, or that her seeing them as the same was. But what she’d said was true. She’d never seen them as equal.

“It wasn’t the eyes, anyway,” she said. “It should have been, perhaps, but it was that as Kenley got older, he started to have his father’s nose. He started to turn his head like Erasmus…you know that little side tilt—”

Rhys nodded. “I know the one. When he was thinking of something, trying to find an answer…or a lie.”

“Well, Kenley does that too. And I just…knew.”

“You confronted my brother and Rosie,” he said.

“Erasmus was long gone by them, rushed off to the next wife and the stalking of the next after that.” She shivered. “I couldn’t confront him, so instead I went to Rosie. She didn’t even try to lie. She just laughed in my face. And the next day she disappeared, abandoning the child to, as we now know, join Erasmus in London and assist him in his ultimate plan to fake his own death, have Abigail blamed for it and let Rosie collect the payoff he thought you’d give Kenley.”

“But you didn’t know any of that.”

“Of course not.” She threw up her hands. “I thought he was a philanderer who had impregnated my maid and was now shirking his duties. I was incensed he could do that to a child I already cared deeply for. I wanted him to assure Kenley’s future, to admit that he owed the baby a debt as his father, even if he would never allow the boy to have his name. I started trying to find him, writing him, and that’s how I ended up going to London.”

Rhys was staring at her now, expression filled with a wonder that made her shift in discomfort. “What is that…why are you looking at me that way?” she asked.

“You put all your energy and time, all your emotion, into protecting a child who was living proof of a betrayal. Of the end of a marriage. That is…not everyone would do that, Phillipa.”

She shrugged. “I love Kenley. I couldn’t love him more if he were mine. I grew close to him when Rosie was still my maid, and when she left, I knew he was my responsibility. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.” She bent her head. “And Kenley wasn’t the end of my marriage.”

Rhys stepped a little closer. “No?”

She shrugged. “I had convinced myself I cared for Erasmus at the start. And I didn’t hate being his wife for a while. But I’d realized around the same time that he was impregnating his lover that I’d made a mistake. I’d realized he wasn’t the man I thought him to be, nor the one I wanted him to be. And he didn’t care enough to change.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “And now, of course, I see the full breadth of why. I was just a tool, a weapon that provided him with more money and more time in his schemes.”

“Again, his failing, not yours,” Rhys said.

“Isn’t it?” she whispered.

He was close enough to touch her, and she knew he would even before he did. His fingers traced her jawline, almost a feather-light stroke. As if he made it soft enough they could pretend it wasn’t happening. That the line wasn’t being crossed.

“You never failed,” he said. “He was a fool not to look at you and worship you and fight to keep you at his side. An utter and complete fool.”

His head dipped as he said the words, and she lifted into him even though she knew she shouldn’t. Their mouths met, this time gently