offer. He showed no expression, but his movement betrayed his agitation.
He stopped and turned towards her. “She was not alone. I came through the door, eager to see her and found her in the arms of – of,” his voice caught, but he continued, “my gardener. I had never considered the man. I saw him frequently, he was always about, my mother professed a fondness for roses. I had even seen my father talk with him on many occasions. And there he stood, my mother tight in his embrace.”
“I am so sorry.”
“I have not finished. I stood in the doorway frozen, trying to understand what I saw. Then he turned and the light caught his eyes, they burned silver in the afternoon sun. I knew those eyes. I look at them every morning in the mirror. I had watched this man for years, seen him move about the outskirts of my home and never recognized him for who he was. I suddenly knew why I had no resemblance to my father.”
Torment shone clear in every unmoving muscle of his face. He might pretend not to feel, but the very lack of animation betrayed him. Marguerite longed to walk to him to offer him solace, but her own wound was too fresh, too raw.
“What did your mother say?” she asked.
“Do you think I waited for her explanation? She’d clearly told me lies my whole life, my father and me. Do you think I would listen to her now? It’s not like I was alone in my belief. I learned afterwards that there was gossip about them throughout society.” Tristan turned and faced her, his eyes turned deep and story like the swirl of the sea in the midst of a tempest.
“But, if you never let her explain –“
“Explain what? I know what I saw. I have avoided communication with her since that day. I have left balls because she arrived. The only time I wrote to her was after talking with my solicitor.”
“Why?”
“I had wanted to know if the estate and title could be turned over to Peter, no one looking at him could doubt his paternity – my own inquiries revealed there were plenty of rumors of branches in our family tree, even if none would speak of the details.” Tristan picked up an ornament of a shelf. He held it, turning it in his hand.
Marguerite could see the strain in his arm, sense his desire to throw it against wall. She walked over and took wrapping her fingers about the ornament, took it from him and placed it on the table.
He turned a bitter smile to her. “You are right. I destroyed enough when I first knew. It did not help then. It will not help now.” He ran a finger over the ornament. “The answer was ‘no.’ My father had recognized me, delighted in me, I was his son in the eyes of the law. The only way for the entail and title to pass on was through my death. I even considered it.” He lowered his head, and all she could see was the fall of his hair.
Marguerite moved to a chair and sat. Her mind spun with the images of this proud man, not as he was now, but as he must have been four years earlier. At twenty-five he would not have been young, but he must have been less cynical, more open to the world. Tristan had loved his father greatly, almost worshipped him. What would it have done to him to find this out? He must already have been in such pain from his death. She could not imagine. Her own father had died before she could remember, but she remembered clearly Rose’s reaction when her first husband died, the despair that had followed. And he had been sick, the death not unexpected. What must it be to lose a beloved parent so suddenly? And then to be confronted with this betrayal.
Tristan’s voice drew her from her thoughts. “All this should be Peter’s, by birth and by right.” He gestured with his arm, then picked up the ornament again. This time he held it with great care. “Yes, every small thing should be his.”
Marguerite’s mind careened, taking her back to the first time she had sat before him in this room. “That is why you said it was rumor not fact that paternity was the requirement in having an heir.”