How to Fool a Duke (The Husband Dilemma #1) - Lancaster, Mary Page 0,42

about his business. In fact, she would probably scream.

The door flew open, and Sarah stood there, her eyes widening in astonishment.

“Leo!” Without hesitation, she threw the door wide, even reached out to grasp his arm and draw his sopping person inside. “What is it?” she demanded as he stood still, dripping on her kitchen floor.

He swallowed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come, not like this.” He turned toward the door, but she caught his hand, drawing him further into the kitchen toward the fire.

A maid gawped at him from the table, which she was scrubbing clean.

“Leave that just now,” Sarah told her. “I’ll watch the cakes while you clean the parlor before Miss Hammy returns.”

Dragging her heels somewhat—no doubt from sheer curiosity—the maid left the kitchen.

Sarah was helping him out of his coat, which she hung on a hook near the fire, and gently pushed him onto the stool before it. She brought him a towel to dry his face and hair, and placed a cup of steaming tea on the hearth. Then she knelt, facing him and waited.

God, she was beautiful, never more so than with a smut of flour on her cheek, an apron over her fashionable morning gown, and her eyes full not of teasing or seduction or laughter, but of sheer concern.

He had never intended to come before her so vulnerable, emotionally naked. She could annihilate him with a word, ruin forever whatever advantage he had in this game which was so much more. If I lose her now…

She lifted the tea cup from the hearth, thrusting it into his hands. Obediently, he drank.

“I’m sorry,” he managed. “I got caught in the rain.”

A spark of humor lit her eyes, though it was kind. “Did you?”

He let out a breath of laughter. “I must look like a scarecrow after a storm.”

“Are you well?”

He nodded.

“Then has something happened?”

Her gaze held his so that he could not look away. He opened his mouth, unsure what would come out. Then he closed it again and swallowed. “Lady Whitmore is my mother.”

She waited, with so little reaction that he wondered if she had heard him, if he had spoken the words only in his head.

Then the truth hit him. “You knew!” A bitter laugh tore from him. “Even you!”

“What do you mean, even me?” she demanded.

He sprang up from the stool. “My father lied to me, telling me she was dead. Everyone else, family, friends, old servants, tenants, solicitors, have deliberately kept the truth from me. All my life! And now I discover you…”

“I accidentally overheard a private conversation of Lady Whitmore’s,” Sarah interrupted. “It led me to suspect, but I knew nothing. Here, privacy is respected, remember? Besides, I thought you knew. I thought that was why you were here.” She reached for his hand, tugging him back down onto the stool.

He let her, even clung to her hand.

After a moment, she said, “Are you not pleased? You told me once what you would give just to speak to your parents.”

Emotion surged, swamping him. “Of course I am pleased. She is a wonderful… I never dreamed… It’s the lies, the deceit that tear me apart. And the sordid scandal that surrounds it all!”

And then, of course, it came tumbling out, all that Jenkins had told him about his mother’s lover and her other child. “She left me,” he blurted at the end. “For him.”

Sarah reached up, tenderly brushing the damp hair from his forehead. “Sordid scandal,” she repeated. “Have you considered that is why she left you? To keep you from it? Besides, love is never sordid. You cannot know the circumstances that decided her to go, but I do know it broke her heart. It is not a decision she can have made lightly. And yet she still keeps you from the scandal.”

He stared at her, catching her hand against his cheek. “Why did she bring me here?”

Sarah smiled. “I thought it was for me. But perhaps it was always for her. Leo, imagine your hurt, and double it, triple it, multiply it by hundreds—that is what she is feeling. What she has felt for a quarter of a century. In a funny way, I believe this—Whitmore, all her charity—is for you. It’s more than atonement. It’s her gift to all of us, but chiefly to you.”

He searched her face, for some reason liking the words, though he would need to mull them. He released her hand and drank his tea thoughtfully. Gradually, the warmth from the fire seeped