“You have to listen to me,” she said, and he felt somewhat vindicated that her breathing was every bit as labored as his. “I know it was mad to come here so late.”
“By yourself,” he saw fit to add.
“By myself,” she granted him, her lips twisting peevishly. “But I swear to you, I wouldn’t have done something this foolish if I hadn’t needed to speak with you right away.”
His mouth tilted wryly. “A note wouldn’t have done?”
She shook her head. “Gareth,” she said, and her face was so serious it took his breath away, “I know who your father is.”
It was as if the floor were slipping away, and yet at the same time, he could not tear his eyes off of hers. H
e clutched her shoulders, his fingers surely digging too hard into her skin, but he couldn’t move. For years to come, if anyone had asked him about that moment, he would have said that she was the only thing holding him upright.
“Who is it?” he asked, almost dreading her reply. His entire adult life he’d wanted this answer, and now that it was here, he could feel nothing but terror.
“It was your father’s brother,” Hyacinth whispered.
It was as if something had slammed into his chest. “Uncle Edward?”
“Yes,” Hyacinth said, her eyes searching his face with a mix of love and concern. “It was in your grandmother’s diary. She didn’t know at first. No one did. They only knew it couldn’t be your fath—er, the baron. He was in London all spring and summer. And your mother…wasn’t.”
“How did she find out?” he whispered. “And was she certain?”
“Isabella figured it out after you were born,” Hyacinth said softly. “She said you looked too much like a St. Clair to be a bastard, and Edward had been in residence at Clair House. When your father was gone.”
Gareth shook his head, desperately trying to comprehend this. “Did he know?”
“Your father? Or your uncle?”
“My—” He turned, a strange, humorless sound emerging from his throat. “I don’t know what to call him. Either of them.”
“Your father—Lord St. Clair,” she corrected. “He didn’t know. Or at least, Isabella didn’t think he did. He didn’t know that Edward had been at Clair Hall that summer. He was just out of Oxford, and—well, I’m not exactly certain what transpired, but it sounded like he was supposed to go to Scotland with friends. But then he didn’t, and so he went to Clair Hall instead. Your grandmother said—” Hyacinth stopped, and her face took on a wide-eyed expression. “Your grandmother,” she murmured. “She really was your grandmother.”
He felt her hand on his shoulder, imploring him to turn, but somehow he couldn’t look at her just then. It was too much. It was all too much.
“Gareth, Isabella was your grandmother. She really was.”
He closed his eyes, trying to recall Isabella’s face. It was hard to do; the memory was so old.
But she had loved him. He remembered that. She had loved him.
And she had known the truth.
Would she have told him? If she had lived to see him an adult, to know the man he had become, would she have told him the truth?
He could never know, but maybe… If she had seen how the baron had treated him…what they had both become…
He liked to think yes.
“Your uncle—” came Hyacinth’s voice.
“He knew,” Gareth said with low certitude.
“He did? How do you know? Did he say something?”
Gareth shook his head. He didn’t know how he knew that Edward had been aware of the truth, but he was certain now that he had. Gareth had been eight when he’d last seen his uncle. Old enough to remember things. Old enough to realize what was important.
And Edward had loved him. Edward had loved him in a way that the baron never had. It was Edward who had taught him to ride, Edward who had given him the gift of a puppy on his seventh birthday.