She Vanished After the Duke Rejected Her—But When He Found Her Working as a Maid at Another Lord’s Estate, the Eight-Year-Old Boy Beside Her Revealed the Secret She Had Hidden for Nearly a Decade

PART 5

The sound of his voice seemed to break whatever spell had held her. She straightened, drawing herself up to her full height, and her expression hardened into something that was almost like anger.

“Your Grace,” she said, and the title was like a blade between them. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Elizabeth, please. I know this is unexpected. I know you have every right to refuse. But there are things I need to understand.”

“I have no wish to know anything from you.” Her voice was low but steady, and there was a finality in it that made his heart sink. “And I have nothing to explain. Now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.”

She moved to step around him, but he shifted to block her path. It was a desperate move, and he knew it, but he could not let her walk away. Not now.

“The boy,” he said. “The one I saw in the garden. Is he yours?”

Her face went still. Something flickered in her eyes that might have been fear.

“That is none of your concern.”

“I know it is not. I know I have no right to ask. But I need to know, Elizabeth. I need to know if he is—if there is any chance that he is mine.”

The fear in her eyes turned to fury. She took a step toward him, her hands clenched at her sides.

“How dare you. How dare you stand there and ask me that after what you did. You have no right to anything of mine, and you certainly have no right to my son.”

“So he is your son.”

“Yes,” she said. “He is my son. And his father is dead. And he has never known anything of you, and I would prefer to keep it that way.”

“His father is dead,” Everly repeated slowly. “And his name was Thomas.”

She flinched. He saw the confirmation in her eyes before she could hide it.

“You named him after me.”

“I gave him his father’s name.”

But the words came out too quickly, and he could see the panic rising in her.

“There was no soldier,” he said. “There was no Thomas Bailey, was there?”

She did not answer. Her face was white now, her hands trembling.

“Elizabeth. Please tell me the truth. Is he mine?”

For a long, terrible moment, she said nothing. Then she closed her eyes, and a single tear slipped down her cheek. And she nodded.

The world seemed to tilt beneath him. He took a step backward, reaching out to brace himself against the stone wall. For several seconds, he could not breathe.

A child. A son. His son.

The woman he had never stopped loving had borne his child. And he had not known. He had spent years living without them, years believing that she had gone to Scotland and made a new life for herself. All the while, she had been raising his son in secret. Hiding him from the world. Protecting him from the shame of his own birth.

“Why did you not tell me?” he asked, and his voice cracked on the words. “Why did you not write to me? I would have—I would have done something. I would have married you. I would have acknowledged him.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. The expression in her eyes was the saddest thing he had ever seen.

“Would you?” she said. “You made it very clear that you could not marry me. You told me that your family situation required you to marry a woman of fortune, and that I could not be that woman. What was I supposed to think? That you would set aside all your obligations because I was carrying your child? That you would risk your family’s future for a woman you had already rejected?”

“I did not reject you.”

But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. He had rejected her. He had sat across from her in that posting inn and told her that he could not marry her. He had watched her walk away, and he had not followed her.

“You did,” she said quietly. “And I understood. I knew what your duty required. But I could not stay in Yorkshire. Not when I was carrying your child and everyone in the county would have known it. So I told my parents I was going to visit relatives in Scotland, and I went to Lady Westmorland instead. She took me in, and she kept my secret. When Tom was born, she helped me find work. I have been in service ever since.”

She looked at him with weary eyes.

“It is not the life I would have chosen. But it has kept a roof over my son’s head.”