The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(68)

Robert shook his head. “Every time you left, he used to tell me it was my fault. That I had failed to captivate you. That I should have been more—”

More lovable, although his father had never used that word.

She looked at him. “When your father died, I assumed he’d made you over in his image. By the time I realized it wasn’t so…” She shrugged again. “By then, it was too late to salvage anything of mother and child. Luckily, by then, I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anything at all. So now, knowing I’m far too late to do anything, now…”

She looked up at him.

“Now,” she said, “I find I still don’t care.” Her eyes glistened momentarily, and she looked away, her jaw squaring as she clamped her lips together.

“I see,” he said in puzzlement.

“I really don’t care. I can’t. I don’t know how anymore.” So saying, she took out a lace-edged handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

“Are you…”

“No. I never cry.” She met his eyes fiercely.

“I see,” he repeated.

And he actually thought that he did. This trip—her visit out here, her ham-handed pronunciations, her foolish interference—maybe she didn’t care. Maybe, after all these years, she’d forgotten how to care about him. But she was trying to. She made him think of a foal just-born, struggling up onto spindly legs, attempting to stand and falling down flat.

She sniffed again. “By the time I figure it out,” she said, “you’ll have given up on me entirely. It seems a fitting punishment.”

She set down her handkerchief and glared at him, daring him to contradict her.

Once, when he was young, she’d come for a visit. He’d run out to meet her at the carriage. He didn’t know how old he had been at the time, but he remembered hugging her knees, as high as he could reach.

She hadn’t touched him back, hadn’t even bent to pat his head. She’d simply glanced at him, told him to show some decorum, and kept walking.

So he didn’t move to touch her now. He didn’t think she would like it, and he felt too raw to risk a rebuff.

“Well, then,” he said briskly. “Thank you for taking time from your indifference to meddle in my marriage prospects. I thought she was made of sterner stuff. Apparently.”

“Oh, no,” the duchess said. “I approve of her. Find another girl just like her, but a marquess’s daughter this time.”

“You know,” he said, “I have no idea who her people really are. Pursling isn’t even her real name.”

“No?”

“She was born Minerva Lane.”

At that, his mother gasped aloud. “Minerva Lane?”

“You know who she is?” He looked at her in surprise. “She told me it would be a scandal.”

“Scandal? Her? No.” She shook her head violently. “Scandal is what happens when girls are too easy with their favors—a simple matter to overcome, one that can be papered over, if not forgotten, by a good marriage and enough money. Miss Lane wasn’t ruined, Robert. She was destroyed. Utterly destroyed.”

Chapter Nineteen

MINNIE HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO SPEAK to her great-aunts on the prior evening.

But there was no putting off the conversation when the Duchess of Clermont sent over a draught from her bank. She brought them into the front room and sat them down.

“There is something you both should know,” she said. “Yesterday, when Lydia came to get me, it was because Stevens had gone to Manchester. He knows that there is no Miss Wilhelmina Pursling. That I’m an imposter. He knows I was born Minerva Lane.”

The two women gasped and then looked at each other. “Do they know what—”

Minnie shook her head. “They don’t know everything.”

“Don’t scare me like that,” Caro said, putting her hand over her heart. “But what are we to do? With Gardley gone…”

Minnie looked away. “As it turns out, I’ve come into some money. Five thousand pounds.”

Her great-aunts stared at her. The women looked so different, and yet the shocked expressions on their faces were mirrors for each other.

“Dear,” Eliza finally said. “We know that this is a difficult time. But five thousand pounds is a great deal of money, and we would hate it if, ah, if…”

They really thought she might have come into it by unsavory means. If they thought that, they might wonder…

“No,” Minnie said bitterly. “I earned this, fair and square.” Well, maybe it hadn’t been fair. And maybe it hadn’t been precisely square. Still, she’d earned it legally. Legally and…rectangularly. That would have to do.

“How?”

“I had an offer of marriage. His mother didn’t want me to accept.” Minnie looked away. “I didn’t.” Two words, and still they broke her heart.

But she’d long since given up any desire to wish that things were different. Wishes were stupid, foolish things.

“An offer of marriage?” Caro echoed. “But from whom? I cannot imagine—” She cut herself off as the downstairs maid entered.

“Miss,” she said, nodding to Minnie. “Misses. There’s someone here to speak with Miss Pursling.”