strong girl. She’d had her own child just three months earlier. Her husband was as proud as could be that she got a place at Adaire Hall. I didn’t even get to go to her funeral.”
She looked up at him, and he was startled by the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“It took the countess months after the fire to leave her sickbed. It took me weeks.”
She shocked him by pulling up her skirt to reveal her right leg. It was a web of scars, just like the countess’s face. She wasn’t done, however. She unbuttoned her cuff and rolled up her right sleeve. It, too, showed signs of being badly burned.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“There was no reason for you to. I don’t go around showing myself to other people.”
She buttoned her cuff again, taking so much time with the task that he almost bent forward to do it for her. She wouldn’t have welcomed that.
“To answer your question, Gordon McDonnell, I don’t know. By the time I was well enough to take up my duties again, two months had passed. Whatever I suspected, I kept to myself.”
He didn’t believe her. There was something in the way she refused to meet his eyes that told him she was lying.
She closed her eyes again, effectively shutting him out. He couldn’t pull words from her mouth or a confession from her soul.
“Would Betty have told anyone else?”
“Leave me, please. I am tired.”
He stood and looked down at her. “Betty might have given her son the life he would otherwise never have known. To do that, she stole mine.”
She finally met his look. “You’ve prospered all the same.”
“I have.”
“So who gets the credit for that, Gordon McDonnell? Betty, I’m thinking.”
“Does she get the blame, too, Miss McBride?”
“If she does, it’s too late to make amends.”
There was his answer, shining clear in her rheumy eyes.
He wasn’t Gordon McDonnell. He was the rightful heir to an earldom and to Adaire Hall.
And Jennifer was his sister.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The time had come to leave Adaire Hall. Gordon would never return, even if Harrison bankrupted the estate. Other people would wander through the buildings and appraise the furniture and belongings. He wouldn’t see it again.
He found himself walking toward what was left of the north wing. The countess—his mother—had told him that in addition to the nursery, there had been a gun room here, the portrait gallery, a spare larder, and a number of other rooms.
He remembered, when he was a boy, that a team of workers imported for the task had come to Adaire Hall. For weeks they’d pulled down the remaining bricks stained black by the fire. Sean had complained about them and Betty had told him that they were Irish workers.
“Starving, most like,” she said. “Be glad you’ve got a meal in your belly, boy.”
Even though they’d razed the black bricks, the foundation was still there, incised into the earth, a reminder of the tragedy that had happened all those years ago. When he’d been reborn as the gardener’s son.
Sean had planted hedges and flower beds over the stones, and Gordon walked the outline of the north wing now, imagining the chaos of that night. All of the servants had been able to escape the blaze, but none of them had thought to alert the nursery staff.
The countess had seen the fire as the alarm had gone out. Instead of staying safe, she’d climbed the steps, intent on reaching her infant son, only days old. She’d gotten to the nursery just as the fire had expanded, taking out half of the third floor. Three of them had tried to escape, but only the countess with her child—him—and Margaret had made it to the second floor. From there, he’d been told, they’d had to jump to safety. The countess had taken the time to rip her skirt into lengths. She’d tied them together before wrapping him securely in a bundle. Once she was certain he’d be safe she’d dropped him slowly to the rescuers below. Flames had surrounded her and only Margaret’s quick wit in pushing her to safety and jumping afterward had saved their lives.
He glanced back toward the main building and the terraced gardens leading up to the older part of the house. He could remember the day he’d felt drawn to the countess, had walked up to her wheeled chair and presented her with a bouquet of flowers he’d hastily plucked from Sean’s beds. He knew, at the time, that he’d probably be