meantime I can fool this poor bumpkin of a lass? Who in the blazes do you think you are, Gordon McDonnell?”
“That’s the problem, Jennifer,” he said, the words slipping out of him. “I’m not Gordon McDonnell.” His voice was nearly as loud as hers.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I. Until Sean spelled it out for me. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not even who I thought I was.” He told her about what Betty had done. “Harrison is Sean’s son. I’m the rightful Earl of Burfield.”
He knew the second it occurred to her.
Her face turned ashen as her eyes widened. “Then . . .”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m your brother.”
She stared at him, unable to get beyond that one thought. It echoed in her brain the same way sound reverberated in the Clan Hall when it was empty.
“You’re my brother.” Even the words sounded wrong. “You can’t be.”
He didn’t say anything, and it was his silence that overwhelmed the echo.
“You have to be wrong,” she finally said.
He still didn’t speak, only looked at her with his beautiful blue eyes.
“You have to be wrong,” she repeated.
“Not according to Sean. He wanted to purge his conscience, tell me what Betty had done. I don’t think he would have said anything if I hadn’t told him we were going to marry.”
She stared up at him.
“Betty wanted a better life for her child and stole mine. I could almost understand the impulse, but she played God. The worst thing was that she knew how I felt about you. She knew, and she never said a word.”
“This can’t be real.”
His smile was soft and incredibly sad.
“We don’t look alike,” she said.
“You and Harrison don’t look alike, either.”
What if it was the truth? The horrible truth?
Her mind was beginning to wrap around the idea, even as she tried to repudiate it. This was why Gordon had been so different, why he’d avoided her. He, too, was coming to grips with Sean’s confession.
Something died inside her, and she felt it as it writhed and curled and twisted in its death throes.
This was the man she loved. This was the man against whom all other men had been compared. This was the man she’d kissed and with whom she’d planned a future. She’d thought about the children they would have, the life they’d create.
She was suddenly so cold that the trembling was almost anticlimactic. She wished she’d worn her gloves, but the day had seemed too temperate earlier. She wrapped her arms around her midriff and fought back the nausea.
He took one step toward her, then seemed to think better of it, stopping where he was.
“You might as well know something else. I hold Harrison’s markers. He’s a gambler, but not a good one. Adaire Hall is essentially mine now.”
A moment later he turned and walked away, leaving her standing there.
Life will give you lessons that seem too hard to bear, my darling girl. You must accept them anyway and become the stronger for it.
Her mother’s words. Mary Adaire had lived a shadowy existence ever since the night of the fire. Yet she’d never complained, either about her deep, life-altering scars and infirmities or the fact that she could barely see.
Her mother was wiser than she. Stronger, too. Yet the loss of her husband had changed her. Grief had worn her down just as it was eroding Jennifer.
The cold wrapped around her like a blanket made of ice. She thought that Sean might be warmer in his grave than she felt at this moment.
Somehow, she had to take a step and then another. She was standing in a mulched flower bed. If Sean were alive, he would fuss at her now. She had to get to the Hall and then upstairs to her rooms without speaking to anyone. Without anyone coming up to her with an endless request for information or permission. She would shatter if anyone talked to her. She would disintegrate if she was forced to answer any kind of question.
The Hall loomed before her. All those steps seemed impossible to navigate. She couldn’t do it. She fell to her knees in the flower bed. Better here than someplace private. There she might scream at God, demand to know what sick and horrid jest He had perpetrated on them.
She sat back on her heels, clutching her hands together. She was getting her cloak dirty and her best dress soiled as well. How very strange that it didn’t seem to matter.
In that moment she wasn’t Lady