“Please.” Her father’s voice cracked. The gray in his face had turned white. “You gave your word. We had an agreement. If you would only?—”
Grentport shoved him.
It was not a blow, exactly. More of a push, a flat palm against Lord Langham’s chest. But her father was sixty years old with bad knees and worse balance. The force of it sent him stumbling backward, and he hit the stone floor.
Grentport did not look back. The vestibule doors swung shut behind him, and the sound of his boots faded down the church steps.
Mary dropped her bouquet and ran to her father. She kneeled beside him, heedless of the silk pooling on the cold stone, and gripped his arm. “Papa. Are you hurt?”
Lord Langham sat on the floor of the vestibule with his legs splayed and his cravat askew, and the look on his face was not pain.
It was ruin.
She had seen that look once before, the morning Charlotte’s bed was found empty and her trunks gone.
“This is the end,” he whispered. His hands shook as Mary helped him to his feet. “This is the end of us. Our name is finished. Your sister, that foolish, reckless girl?—”
“Papa.” Mary gripped both his arms and held him steady. “Listen to me. You must go inside and address the guests. Tell them whatever you need to tell them. The wedding is postponed. I am unwell. Anything.”
“And what will you do?”
“Find out whether what Grentport said is true.”
Her father stared at her. His mouth opened and closed. For a moment, Mary saw him as Grentport must have seen him: a man drowning in water he did not know how to swim in.
He nodded. His chin trembled, but he nodded, and he turned and pushed through the vestibule doors into the church. A wave of whispers rose to meet him.
Mary gathered her skirts in both fists and walked out the front entrance of the church.
The family carriage waited at the curb, the driver dozing on the box. She climbed in without help, hauling the ridiculous train of her gown in after her.
“Blackholm House,” she told the driver. “Now.”
“Heat the milk first. Not boiling. Warm. If you scald it, you will answer to me.”
Evander pointed at the cook, who bobbed a curtsy and rushed toward the kitchens.
He turned to the next servant in line. “You. Find me a nursery maid. Someone experienced with infants, not a girl fresh from the country. Go to the agency on Harley Street and do not return without one.”
The footman bowed and disappeared through the parlor door.
“You.” Evander fixed his gaze on the next. “A crib. Sturdy. None of the decorative nonsense from the shops on Bond Street. And blankets. Soft ones.”
The maid nodded and hurried off. Evander exhaled through his teeth and surveyed the wreckage of his morning.
On the sofa, nestled in a wicker basket lined with wool, a newborn baby slept with his fist curled against his cheek. An engagement ring glinted where it was tied to the basket’s handle with a strip of blue ribbon.
Evander would have recognized the ring anywhere; it had belonged to his grandmother, and his brother had given it to Lady Charlotte Gillies the day the betrothal to Richard was announced.
In Evander’s hand, crumpled and damp from the grip he could not seem to loosen, was a linen handkerchief embroidered with the initialsR.B.,Richard Brightshaw.
His brother’s handkerchief.
All these objects pointed to one devastating fact: this baby was his brother’s child.
The last of the servants filed out. Evander sank into the chair nearest the basket and pressed the handkerchief against his knee.
The baby stirred, made a sound like a kitten, and settled again.