“You’re very judgmental.”
“You don’t know my mother.”
“No. But if she has a son as wonderful as you, she can’t be all bad.”
If he hadn’t been so tangled up in misery, her praise might mollify him. “The world calls my mother a whore.”
“The world can be wrong,” Genevieve said coldly. Although only inches away, she folded into her body, closing off the warm, loving openness.
Old insecurities stabbed. Was he wrong about Genevieve? Of all people, she struck him as someone who might be capable of looking beyond illegitimacy and scandal. Not for the first time, he wished he was Christopher Evans, with Christopher Evans’s clean name. He’d long ago discovered the futility of wishing. Alone in his bed at Eton and at last able to stop pretending that the endless abuse didn’t distress him, he’d prayed night after night for some twist of heredity to prove him Sir Lester’s son.
“Genevieve, does it matter to you that I’m baseborn?” His voice shook, damn it.
She looked appalled. “Surely you know me better than that.”
Even as he wanted to believe her, years of insult whispered doubt in his ear. “It’s mattered to everyone I’ve ever known.”
Rage flashed in her eyes. “Sedgemoor and the Hillbrooks don’t treat you with the contempt you appear to consider your lot.”
“They’re my friends.” And Jonas, Sidonie and Cam were no strangers to scandal.
“So what am I?”
“The woman I love.”
His declaration didn’t thaw her anger. “Yet you think I’ll blame you for something that’s not your fault and that has no bearing on the man you are.”
He spoke the bitter truth. “I’m the man I am because I’m a bastard.”
“Then heaven send us more bastards.” Her lips tightened with impatience. “You need to show some forgiveness. Both to yourself and your mother. You talk as though she never said a kind word.”
Richard dearly wanted to claim that was the case. But while he’d been vaguely aware of whispers, on the whole, his early years had been a haven of affection and luxury. Then at eight, he went to school and discovered how the wider world despised the offspring of illicit affairs. Especially offspring with the temerity to claim equality with their legitimate schoolfellows. Thank God Richard had found Cam and Jonas, although their friendship, as much mutual protection as meeting of minds, had earned the cruel label “bunch of bastards.”
“At Eton, my inferiority became blatantly clear.”
He’d suffered his share of beatings, until learning that sharp-tongued indifference discouraged violence. If bullying provoked no visible effect, his peers transferred their attentions to more responsive prey. Richard Harmsworth, arbiter of style, was born from blood and pain and mockery. But he never forgot that his elegance shielded a man inadequate to the role he was born to.
Genevieve’s eyes softened with compassion, although her tone remained implacable. “You’re no longer that schoolboy. Do you see your mother?”
This inquisition was beyond enough. He slid off the tomb and strode into the darkness. He wanted Genevieve to understand his resentment of his mother, but he had a nasty feeling that explanations would make him sound like that sulky schoolboy she decried. “Not if I can help it.”
She rushed after him and caught his arm. “I’m sorry.”
However he tried, he couldn’t keep Genevieve at a distance. He slumped where he stood, his weariness stemming from childhood. “I’d do something about my bastardy if I could. But it’s a wound that never heals.”
She stiffened, although he couldn’t see her expression. “I don’t care about your birth.”
“Really?” Sarcasm drenched the word. “Then why are you angry?”
He found himself cradled in warm, soft Genevieve. Her arms curled around his back, her face lay against his bare throat. “I can’t stand that the world doesn’t recognize how remarkable you are. I can’t stand that you’re estranged from those closest to you.”
Groaning, he pulled her into him. To his astonishment, the wound that never healed didn’t feel nearly so agonizing with Genevieve in his arms. “I’m a damned self-pitying fool. I never wanted for anything.”
“You never wanted for anything but kindness and love. I had no right to criticize. But I can’t imagine your mother doesn’t love you.”
“That’s because you’re a paragon and an angel.”
Her laugh was choked and he felt hot moisture against his skin. He’d made her cry. He really was a bastard in all senses of the word.