Scandalous Miss Brightwells [Book 1-4]

He held her tighter, and she shuddered within his embrace, sagging as she put her head on his shoulder. “But instead I found Freddy waiting for me,” she wept. “It was not too late to extricate myself, I thought. But then there were people at the tavern who recognised both Freddy and me. I knew I’d be ruined if I didn’t marry him after that.”

Jack shook his head as he gathered the rest of the story from the snippets that had been told to him. “And your aunt thought you were truly in love with Freddy. She could have helped you, otherwise. Pretended she was staying at the inn, she says. If she’d only known.” He breathed deeply, managed to smile, then raised one eyebrow as Katherine raised her head to look at him. “Your Aunt Antoinette claims she’s rather good at smoothing over potentially scandalous situations. Claims to have been doing it her whole lifetime. But…” Here was the question he could barely wait to return to. “Diana. You know she’s mine?”

“Oh Jack, you only have to look at her. She has the same coloured hair, the same dimple in her chin that you have—”

“The same hands, and the same cast to her nose that the three of us have, in fact.”

Jack swung round as his mother quietly entered the room, smiling as she took a seat in a rusle of checked skirts. He would have preferred to have continued this precious moment with Katherine but there was a strange urgency behind his mother’s smile as she asked, “I hope you don’t mind if I join you, Katherine.”

A look like fear flashed across Katherine’s face. Concerned, Jack squeezed her shoulders, even while his mind dwelled on the oddness of his mother’s last words.

“Where are we?” Katherine asked. “What are you doing here, Mrs Patmore? I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven when Jack…kissed me.” She blushed hotly. “For he’s—”

“No!” Jack said quickly. “Odette’s gone back to London with Lady Quamby and Lord Derry after she understood how matters were between us. There was really no hiding the truth after you were brought in from the river.”

“The river?”

“Why, after your fall, Katherine. Don’t you remember?”

She put her hand to her mouth. “Yes, of course! I was riding here to see you, Jack.” She struggled to sit up unaided, and Jack rearranged the pillows to help her. “Aunt Antoinette sent me a note to say you’d been injured most horribly,” she went on urgently. “Of course, I had to come as fast as I could.”

Emotion welled up in Jack’s gullet, stronger than ever. Strange how all his manly attributes seemed to have deserted him. All he wanted to do was crush Katherine against his chest and murmur to her how much he adored her. But his mother was here, with her cryp

tic words, and there was so much else to explain to Katherine.

“But I wasn’t injured, Katherine. It was a plan hatched by Lady Quamby and George. You see, George was doing his best to get you here, certain that we could mend matters between us—”

“George!”

“Darling, you really should modify your tone every time you utter his name. You’ll hurt his feelings most terribly, and he’s probably listening in the passage.”

Katherine tossed her head. “George is always eavesdropping, and what you’ve said can’t be true. George would never—”

“He would, and he did. And when you wouldn’t come, he suggested that his mother write a note to tell you I was injured, never imagining you would take such risks to be here. My precious girl, I can’t believe you’d take such risks to be with me.”

“I would cross raging seas to be with you, Jack.”

“But you wouldn’t tell me Diana was my daughter to bind me to you if you felt I was honour-bound to marry Odette?” The truth that had seemed so unreal before was now washing over him, filling him with a plethora of emotions—not all of them tender and loving. “How could you keep such a thing from me? My own child? Do you know what that means to me? To know I have a child? My own flesh and blood? When I’ve never known my own flesh and blood. Only the charity of good people.”

“Please don’t be angry, Jack.” Katherine reached out her arms, but this time he just took her hands. He would come to terms with this, of course, but he felt keenly the hurt of having been denied the knowledge.

“I did what I thought was right at the time,” whispered Katherine. “I couldn’t use Diana for my own ends—even though I longed to be with you. I had no choice but to marry Freddy when you were across the seas. I didn’t know what else to do. Besides, I married Freddy before I even knew I was with child. A letter would have taken months to reach you and what was the good of telling you something that would just torment you when there was nothing to be done about it?”

“And she was so young, Jack.”

He’d forgotten his mother was there, sitting silently to his right. He turned, surprised to see the tears coursing down her cheeks. Suddenly, he wanted her gone. This moment should be between Katherine and himself.

Until his mother said in a voice so soft and laden with shame, he had to put his head closer to hear her. “You think you were brought up not knowing your own flesh and blood, Jack. That Rufus and I took you in out of the goodness of our hearts. Did you not know how much we loved you?”

“Of course, I knew. And I made my own love and appreciation for you both very clear.” Yet all he could think about was Diana. He understood Katherine had no choice; that he’d put her in an impossible situation. It made him feel even more wretched.

“You did. And that’s why I thought it didn’t matter if I withheld from you the fact…”

She couldn’t go on. Jack had never seen his normally self-contained mother so overcome as she put her head in her arms and leaned forward.

“What fact, Mother? What fact did you withhold?”

She put her hands in her lap and looked at him. “That you were the son I was forced to give up when I was even younger than Katherine was when she had Diana.”