Beguiled by a Baron (The Heart of a Duke Book 14)(3)

Bridget forced herself to remain still through his deliberate show. Questions screamed around her mind and she quelled them. A woman of seven and twenty, she’d been the brutalized sibling of two monsters and then eventually cast out. Neither of them knew anything about her. She’d far more calm and control than Archibald or Marianne had ever credited.

Her brother stopped before her. Nearly four inches taller than her own five-feet seven-inches, he still towered over her enough to command a space. He stuck his face close to hers. “You know you want to ask me what I’m thinking. You want to know what is going on inside my head.”

“I know it can be nothing good,” she rejoined.

“And that is enough,” he continued as though she’d not spoken. “It is enough knowing that you care. Just as you care about the boy.”

Despite her bid for control, her entire body recoiled. Virgil. The one person who truly mattered. A person she loved so wholly and who she’d sacrificed her own life to protect. Heart hammering, she swung her gaze to the doorway, grateful her son was away from this monster.

“You and I both know the truth about him.” She’d wager every coin she’d earned evaluating antiquities that Archibald didn’t even know the child’s name.

“Don’t,” she whispered. Where did she find the steely strength to form that response? Where, when inside every nerve was stretched tight and she was poised for battle?

Archibald grinned a cold, unfeeling grin. He gripped her head tight in his hands and dragged her close. “He’s not your boy,” he taunted. “He’s all mine. His mother was a whore who’s dead at her own hand.”

On a hiss, Bridget wrenched away from him, drew her arm back, and slapped his cheek. The crack of flesh hitting flesh echoed around the room, as the force of her blow jerked his head back.

She braced for the roar of outrage. Instead, her brother ran a distracted palm over the imprint left by her palm. “I see you understand, then.”

Terror gripped her. Those dangerous words he’d uttered could shatter her and Virgil’s very existence and happiness. It would see Virgil stripped from her care and turned over to this monster, for no one would dare believe the word of a scarred spinster, deaf in one ear and without a husband or gainful employment. “You’d risk your…my son’s life.” She may have not given birth to Virgil, but he was hers in every way. She’d loved him, cared for him when he was ill, held him when he’d fallen.

Archibald plucked a speck of dust from his sleeve and flicked it to the floor. “Without hesitation…and yours? I’ll tell the world, a lonely, miserable, deaf spinster, you stole my child and passed it off as your own and invented a world for yourself. Why, I expect Society would even applaud me when I committed such a woman to Bedlam.” He laughed uproariously.

“What do you want?” she entreated, hating the desperate plea there. She’d given up everything for Virgil. The threat her brother made now against her only brought a fear for what that would mean for her son.

“You know,” he said coolly.

Bridget ran her hands over her face. When Virgil’s mother had arrived at one of her family’s country estates and abandoned her newborn babe in Bridget’s arms—only after she’d revealed the depth of Archibald’s treachery—Bridget had taken the babe to London. She’d demanded her brother do right by him. Doing right had involved him promising to turn the boy over to a foundling hospital.

And so, Bridget had taken on the babe as her own and disappeared into one of their family’s small, run-down properties where she’d been ever since. She knew what kind of ugliness Archibald was capable of. She had borne the sting of his hateful words and his ruthless blows. He would do this. Virgil meant nothing to him. He never had nor would he ever. “Please, do not ask me to do this,” she begged, hating that he’d reduced her to this. But she’d have laid herself down prone at his feet and offered her own life to protect Virgil.

“His name is Chilton,” her brother said, ignoring her entreaty. “Lord Chilton.”

Lord Chilton. Lord Chilton. She searched her mind. How did she recognize that—

“He has one of the vastest antiquities collections. Brings his items to auction and makes an obscene fortune.”

Of course. That was how she knew of him. Referred to as the Bastard Baron in the papers that found their way to the country, she’d cared less about those personal details and more focused on whichever collection he was purported to have acquired or sold. If life had turned out differently for her, and followed an altered path, she would have paid a visit to the halls where he kept those cherished treasures. Mayhap, she would have plied him with questions and begged for a look, even as she could never have afforded even a scrap of parchment in his establishment.

“He’s out a housekeeper. I’ve coordinated with the hiring agency responsible for staffing his London townhouse for you to fill the respective post.”

“A servant,” she repeated back.

He nodded.

Restless, Bridget wandered over to the small window that overlooked the overgrown front gardens. She stared blankly out, contemplating what her brother put to her. He’d have her serve on Lord Chilton’s staff. Granted, a housekeeper, alongside the butler, was the most respected of the household positions. Nor had she truly been born for more than that. Having been shunned by her family for the birthmark that covered her left cheek, and being deaf in one ear, she’d been an outcast among their kin. It had never even been expected that she’d have a Season or marry. As she’d once read her parents’ lips and heard them talking of the empty future awaiting her, she’d found her value deemed of little worth even by the people who’d sired her. She’d finally found a family, in Virgil and Miss Nettie…the one person who’d ever offered her kindness. And she’d do anything to protect them.