back, silent for a moment, the clock ticking as she seemed to take it all in. “I trust it is a shock to discover all these years later that all this time, you had children… and four of them.”
A rusty laugh escaped him. “A shock indeed.” He dragged another hand through his hair, just as a knock sounded, and the door opened, and a young serving maid rushed over with a silver tray.
Geoffrey and Lydia didn’t speak while the girl fluttered about, setting the tray down and laying out plates before them. It was ironic that he, who’d been miserable with the lack of words from Lydia before, now found himself grateful for this interruption.
“That will be all, Magda,” Lydia said to the young maid, who dropped a curtsy for her and Geoffrey before rushing off, and he was alone once more with Lydia.
He fixed his gaze on those pretty, floral porcelain plates.
All the while, Geoffrey felt Lydia’s eyes on him, but her gaze now was unlike in their youth, when it had been an open book that he’d always been able to read so very easily. At some point, she’d mastered an opaque stare that concealed. And perhaps that was better for this moment.
He had disdain enough for himself in this moment. To have it from her, this woman who’d lived a respectable, honorable life, whereas he was a rogue whose mistress hadn’t even trusted him enough to believe he’d do right by their children… Which he would have.
Soft fingers touched his, and he startled. “Tea?” she offered.
He gave his head a slight shake.
“It wasn’t a question. Tea always helps.”
A panicky, pained laugh escaped him. “It will not help this, Lydia.”
“No, but tea in London is as familiar as rain and fog,” she said as she methodically prepared a cup in the manner he’d always preferred. “And in times such as these, one takes comfort where one can. Now, drink.” Lydia pressed the plate and cup into his hands, and he automatically took them.
Bemused, he returned the plate to the table, but retained the cup. “When did you become…?”
“Old?” she supplied dryly.
“No.” He slipped his gaze over her face. Her features were classically beautiful, revealing almost no hint of time’s passage. “I was going to say self-possessed.” She’d always been spirited and possessed of an indomitable spirit. “Somewhere along the way, you… matured.”
“Life does that,” she said, her eyes growing slightly sad.
He shifted, angling closer to her. “I… appreciate this new side of you, Lydia.” At some point, she’d become a woman who commanded with a breathtaking ease, and she carried herself with an even more glorious self-confidence.
Their eyes caught and held, and a charged awareness crackled to life, like the earth right before a lightning strike.
Lydia was the first to look away, breaking that connection. She turned her focus to making herself a cup of tea. When she’d finished, she straightened. “On the matter of your son…”
“Wesley,” he supplied, hearing the question there.
“On the matter of Wesley, it is honorable that you wish to do right by him and his siblings, your other children.”
“It isn’t honorable,” he muttered. “Honorable would have been had I known of their existence and cared for them long before this.”
“You are attempting to do so now. That won’t undo past hurts or wrongs, but it is a step towards bringing it to rights and finding healing for all of you.”
“But how can there be?” The question ripped from him. With trembling fingers, he sloshed tea over the rim of the cup and set it down hard. Restless, Geoffrey jumped to his feet. “But that is just it, Lydia. If he won’t allow me to help him, then how in hell am I to make”—he slashed a hand at the air—“any of this right?”
“Sit down, Geoffrey.” She spoke with a command that would have put even Wellington himself to pale, and Geoffrey immediately sat.
“You offered him wealth and security and safety,” she began.
He nodded. “And he turned me down flat.”
“And those are very important things,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken.
Something in her tone reached through his restiveness. “But?” For he heard in her unspoken words that there was more.
“But you didn’t speak to him about… affection? Did you? Or the desire to learn about him and his interests and about your other children. You spoke to him as though he was… is… a financial responsibility. Our children? They do not want to be seen in that light, Geoffrey. They want to know