The Rakehell of Roth (Everleigh Sisters #2) - Amalie Howard Page 0,85

out.

“I wasn’t the perfect father, but you were my children. All of you,” he added with a pointed glance at Oliver. “Your mother was jealous, inventing liaisons that did not exist whenever I left Kendrick Abbey for my duties in parliament. I loved her, gave her you, but it was not enough. It was never enough. Oliver was simply her way of punishing me.”

Winter was reeling at the bald admission from a man who always shied away from any squeak of scandal. “Who’s his father?”

“I am,” Kendrick said tiredly. “Who sired him doesn’t matter one whit. It never has.”

The look on Oliver’s face was so fleeting that if Winter hadn’t been looking at him, he would have missed it. But for a heartbeat, the man looked dazed.

“She said you cuckolded her.”

“I meant my vows.”

Winter could not fathom that Oliver wasn’t Kendrick’s biological son. After all this time, he’d never suspected. Oliver had modeled himself after the duke so thoroughly that he physically resembled the man. Though as Winter compared them as they’d stood there, the differences were clear. Despite their identical stances—hands clasped behind their backs, imperious chins tilted just so—Oliver was stockier than the duke, his shoulders broader. Their hair and eyes were similar shades, but while the duke’s mane leaned toward black, Oliver’s had reddish tints.

How had Winter not known?

No wonder Oliver hated him so much. Where had Prue fit in to all of this? Had she known? Hell and damnation, he’d been so caught up in his own life—his own stupid agenda of destroying the Vance name—that he hadn’t paid his little sister any mind. Until it had been much too late…until he’d lost her. Winter blamed himself for that, too.

“Did Prue know?” he muttered.

Kendrick nodded. “Your mother told her.” He scraped a palm over his face. “You have to understand that the laudanum twisted her thoughts. At first, she took it to calm her worries and then more and more. Prudence, God rest her soul, took the same tincture with your mother’s blessing and got her first taste of addiction. I blame myself for allowing that to happen.”

“No,” Winter said, backing away. “You’re wrong. She wouldn’t have done that.”

“I don’t know what she told you, Son, but I have no reason to deceive you.”

Winter’s emotions were an ugly, jumbled mess. The sorrow and sincerity on Kendrick’s face could not be faked. If anything of what the duke had said was true, his mother had manipulated Winter’s feelings so completely that her bitterness and resentment had become his. The duke had become the monster in the story…a poisonous narrative she had controlled.

God, he felt sick.

He didn’t have the time to play back every single time his father had reached out and Winter had rejected him out of hand because of what he thought the duke had done, when the truth was, the duchess had borne a child out of wedlock and had turned his own legitimate son against him.

Christ, his bloody head was spinning.

He needed to think. He needed to leave. But he forced himself to sit. Running in the past had not served him well. “Start from the beginning,” he said to the duke.

Kendrick did, and Winter listened while his father spoke. For the first time in his life, he considered a side of the story he’d never imagined—that his mother had been fabricating things all along, that his own innocent feelings might have been manipulated, that his father might have been the victim in this whole scene. What felt like ages later, Winter hung his head in his hands, his brain spinning with all he’d learned.

It was too much.

The door crashed open and they all stared at a wild-eyed Clarissa standing at the mouth of the study. “Isobel is gone.”

“Gone?” Winter asked dully.

A furious and worried gaze met his. “We can’t find her anywhere. She was already distraught after seeing the newssheets, so we had the maids prepare a bath to calm her down, but she didn’t take it because she overheard you saying that she’s the worst mistake of your life! How could you be so callous, Winter?” She jammed a finger at his chest, eyes brimming with tears. “She’s distraught and not thinking straight. Violet said she barely spoke before fleeing upstairs, mumbling that she never should have come to London,” she choked out. “She wouldn’t ride back to Chelmsford, would she?”

“She didn’t take her groom, Iz?” he asked.

“She is—oh God—” Clarissa cut off, bursting into tears. “She’s gone alone and it’s already