Once and Always (Sequels 1)

Unable to endure her tears or his own anguish, Charles had gruffly told her that her ideas were foolish, that she could never survive a life in America. She had looked at him as if he was afraid to work for a living, and then she had brokenly accused him of wanting her dowry, not her— exactly as her grandmother had told her he did.

To Charles, who was unselfishly sacrificing his own happiness for her, her accusation had cut like a knife. “Believe that if you wish,” he had snapped, forcing himself to turn away from her before he lost his resolve and eloped with her that very day. He started for the door, but he could not bear to have her think he had only wanted her money. “Katherine,” he said, pausing without turning. “I beg you not to believe that of me.”

“I don’t,” she whispered brokenly. Neither did she believe he would put an end to their hopeless, tormented longing for each other by marrying Amelia the following week. But that was exactly what Charles did. It was the first entirely unselfish act of his life.

Katherine attended his wedding with her grandmother, and for as long as he lived, Charles would never forget the look of betrayal in Katherine’s eyes when he finished pledging his life to another woman.

Two months later, she married an Irish physician and left with him for America. She did it, Charles knew, because she was furious with her grandmother and because she could not bear to remain in England near Charles and his new wife. And she did it to prove to him, in the only way she knew how, that her love for him could have survived anything— including a life in America.

That same year, Charles’s older brother was killed in a stupid drunken duel and Charles inherited the dukedom. He did not inherit a great deal of money with the title, but it would have been enough to keep Katherine in modest luxury. But Katherine was gone; he had not believed that her love was strong enough to withstand a few discomforts. Charles didn’t care about the money he inherited; Charles didn’t care about anything anymore.

Not long afterward, Charles’s missionary brother died in India, and sixteen years later, Charles’s wife Amelia died.

The night of Amelia’s funeral, Charles got thoroughly blindly inebriated, as he often did in those days, but on that particular night, as he sat in the gloomy solitude of his house, a new thought occurred to him: someday soon he, too, was going to die. And when he did, the ducal holdings would pass out of the hands of the Fieldings forever. Because Charles had no heir.

For sixteen years, Charles had lived in an odd, empty limbo, but on that fateful night as he contemplated his meaningless life, something began to grow within him. At first it was only a vague restlessness, then it became disgust; it grew into resentment, and then slowly, very slowly, it built into fury. He had lost Katherine; he had lost sixteen years of his life. He had endured a vapid wife, a loveless marriage, and now he was going to die without an heir. For the first time in 400 years, the ducal title was in danger of passing entirely out of the Fielding family, and Charles was suddenly determined not to throw it away, as he had thrown away the rest of his life.

True, the Fieldings had not been a particularly honorable or worthy family, but, by God, the title belonged to them and Charles was determined to keep it there.

In order to do that he needed an heir, which meant he would have to marry again. After all his youthful sexual exploits, the thought of climbing atop a woman now and fathering an heir seemed more tiresome than exciting. He thought wryly of all the pretty wenches he had bedded long ago—of the beautiful French ballerina who had been his mistress and had presented him with a bastard. . . .

Joy brought him surging to his feet. He didn’t need to marry again, because he already had an heir! He had Jason. Charles wasn’t certain if the laws of succession would allow the ducal title to pass to a bastard son, but it made no difference to him. Jason was a Fielding, and those very few people who had known of Jason’s existence in India believed he was the very legitimate son of Charles’s younger brother. Besides, old King Charles had bestowed a dukedom on three of his bastards, and now he, Charles Fielding, Duke of Atherton. was about to follow suit.

The next day, Charles hired investigators to make inquiries, but it was two long years before one of the investigators finally sent a report to Charles with specific information. No trace could be found of Charles’s sister-in-law, but Jason had been discovered in Delhi, where he had apparently amassed a fortune in the shipping and trading business. The report began with Jason’s current direction; it ended with all the information the investigator had discovered about Jason’s past.

Charles’s proud exultation at Jason’s financial successes promptly dissolved into horror and then sick fury as he read of his sister-in-law’s depraved abuse of the innocent child he had handed into her care. When he was finished, he vomited.

More determined now than ever to make Jason his rightful heir, Charles sent him a letter, asking him to return to England so that he could formally acknowledge him as such.

When Jason didn’t reply, Charles, with a determination that had long been dormant in his character, set off for Delhi himself. Filled with inexpressible remorse and absolute resolve, he went to Jason’s magnificent home. In their first meeting, he saw firsthand what the investigator’s report had already told him: Jason had married and fathered a son and was living like a king. He also made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with Charles, or with the legacy Charles was trying to offer him. In the ensuing months, while Charles stubbornly remained in India, he slowly succeeded in convincing his cold, reticent son that he had never condoned or imagined the unspeakable abuses Jason had suffered as a child. But he could not convince him to return to England as his heir.

Jason’s beautiful wife, Melissa, was enthralled with the idea of going to London as the Marchioness of Wakefield, but neither her tantrums nor Charles’s pleadings had the slightest effect on Jason. Jason didn’t give a damn for titles, nor did he possess an ounce of sympathy for the Fieldings’ impending loss of a duchy.

Charles had nearly given up when he hit upon the perfect argument. One night, while he was watching Jason play with his little son, it dawned on him there was one person Jason would do anything for: Jamie. Jason positively doted on the little boy. And so Charles immediately changed his tack. Instead of trying to convince Jason of the benefits to be had for himself by returning to England, he pointed out that by refusing to permit Charles to make him his heir, Jason was denying little Jamie his birthright. The title, and all that went with it, would eventually be Jamie’s.