Captain Jones's Temptation - Audrey Harrison Page 0,75

looked saddened at her reaction.

“I-I never thought … You never struck me as the marrying kind,” Esther finally managed to say.

“I never was until I met you. I need to be honest about something before you make a final decision, but from the looks of things it won’t make any difference. You haven’t exactly fallen into my arms screaming yes at my proposal.”

Esther laughed despite the seriousness of the conversation. “And have you running for the hills? Come, come, Captain Jones. I have inflicted enough hysterics on you these last weeks to last a lifetime. You would not like it if I had.”

“I promise you I would.” The rueful grin brought some of the usual humour back, but Esther could tell there was something troubling him.

“Tell me what it is that might change my mind,” she said.

Samuel stood straight and looked at Esther squarely in the eyes. “I am illegitimate.”

“What? No! You’ve told me about your family,” Esther said.

Samuel sat opposite her, needing some distance between them. He had to be honest. He had not been so with anyone else in his circle – until telling Matthew and Lydia, it was a closely guarded secret – but he could not marry her without her knowing the truth. Depending on how much she longed for respectability, he could have ruined his only chance of being happy with the woman he was in love with. And he was so in love with her it made him ache with longing.

“I said I was the youngest. I usually just say I am the younger son, which is true. I have four half-siblings. We all share the same father,” he said.

“You said you didn’t live with your family, but it isn’t so unusual to have children live with relations, especially with those who haven’t got children of their own.”

“That is what happened with me. My aunt and uncle were able to overlook my start in life, which was a good thing because my father’s wife refused to have me in the house. I suppose I should be grateful I wasn’t completely cast out from the family, but my father insisted I should still belong in some form.”

Esther ached for him. How he must have suffered. “Who was your mother?”

“The housekeeper.”

“Are you in communication with her? I am presuming she no longer works in your father’s establishment.”

“No, she doesn’t. She was given a reference, which was fortunate for her. The agreement was that she should move away. She works in Norwich. Apparently she has a sister not too far away, so it was natural she went there when everything came out.”

“Do you have anything to do with her?”

“Yes. We write. I have seen her a time or two since I came of age. I actually like her, which I did not think I would when this all came out within the family. I have never told anyone of my start in life, except I admitted it to Matthew and Mrs. Dunn when they saw me in London. My father insisted I never speak of it, but I had to explain to them my reasons for not asking you to marry me when we returned from Exeter.”

Moving off the sofa, Esther went and sat next to Samuel. She took his hands in hers. “Did you have a happy childhood?”

“I always felt on the edge of things. Perhaps I am being unfair to my aunt and uncle, for they did everything they could to give me a good home.”

“But it wasn’t your home?”

“No.”

“You poor thing.”

“If you give me sympathy I might turn into a wet goose,” he said.

“That, my dear, I shall not be able to stand.”

Samuel laughed. “For you I shall restrain myself, but only for you.”

Pausing, Esther sat considering Samuel’s actions. “You had nothing against Isabella at all, did you? It was her situation that affected you, rather than her as a child.”

“Her parents have no excuse. I was so angry when Dunn first told me of our assignment. It seemed so wrong to have pushed her so far away from her family. She is never going to know who her parents were. We weren’t to know then that she would find a family of her own. They have shed the responsibility of their actions, and it seems wrong. It is always the children who suffer.”

“Yes. She will be happier with Lydia and Matthew than she ever would have been with her own parents, whoever they are. Do you remember what I said when we were