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 9

They sat together in companionable silence for a while, the boy poking at the dirt and occasionally exclaiming over some insect or stone that he found. Everly watched him with a hunger that he did his best to hide.

Up close, he could see the traces of Elizabeth in the boy’s features—the shape of his mouth, the arch of his brows, the way he tilted his head when he was thinking. But there was also something else. The boy had his nose, the same slightly aquiline curve that appeared in the family portraits at Everly Hall. And his hands—long-fingered and elegant, even at this young age—were the hands of the Everly line.

How had he not seen it before? How had he spent an entire conversation with this child and not recognized his own features staring back at him?

Because he had not wanted to see it. Because acknowledging the truth would have meant confronting everything he had lost.

“Tom,” he said, and his voice came out rougher than he intended. “May I ask you something?”

The boy looked up. “What is it?”

“What do you know about your father?”

Tom’s face grew solemn. “Mama says he was a soldier. She says he was very brave and very good, but he died before I was born. She says he’s in heaven now, watching over us.”

“Your mother told you that.”

Tom nodded. “She says I have his name. Thomas. She says it’s a good name, a strong name, and I should be proud of it.”

“She is right. It is a good name.”

Tom smiled, and the gap in his teeth made him look so young and so vulnerable that Everly had to look away for a moment to compose himself.

They talked for a while longer about the garden and the horses and the various small adventures of a boy’s life. By the time the shadows began to lengthen across the garden, Everly knew that his life had changed irrevocably. He was a father now—not in name, not yet, but in his heart. And he would spend the rest of his days trying to make up for the years he had missed.

When he finally rose to leave, Tom scrambled to his feet and stood looking up at him with an expression of barely suppressed hope.

“Will you come again? Tomorrow, I mean. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

Everly felt something crack inside him. He swallowed hard before he could answer.

“I would like that very much. If your mother permits it.”

Tom’s face fell slightly. “Mama is always working. She doesn’t have much time to talk to me. But she’s a good mama.”

“She is,” Everly agreed. “The best of women.”

That night, he found Elizabeth in the servants’ hall. She looked up when he entered, her expression guarded.

“He is a remarkable boy,” Everly said quietly. “You have raised him well.”

Her hands stilled over the bowl she was holding. “Thank you.”

“I would like to see him again tomorrow. With your permission.”

She was silent for a long moment. Then she nodded once.

“You have it. But remember your promise.”

“I remember.”

The next two weeks were the strangest and most wonderful of Everly’s life. Each day he spent an hour or more with Tom, listening to the boy’s endless questions and answering them as best he could. He learned that Tom was fascinated by horses and had a fondness for a small gray pony in Lord Harrington’s stables. He learned that Tom was quick with his letters and his sums, quicker than most boys twice his age, according to the stable hand who had been teaching him. He learned that Tom was brave and curious and occasionally mischievous, and that he laughed in exactly the same way his mother had laughed when she was young and carefree.

And as the days passed, he began to see changes in Elizabeth as well. She was still wary, still guarded. But the sharp edge of her hostility had softened. She no longer avoided him when their paths crossed. They spoke occasionally, always about Tom or practical matters.

On what he privately thought of as the last day he could reasonably justify his stay to his own steward, she came to him in the library.

“I have made another decision,” she said.

He waited, not daring to speak.

“I will come to London. Tom and I. If your offer still stands.”

He crossed the room in three strides and took her hands in his. “Of course it still stands. Of course it does.”

She looked down at their joined hands, then up at him. There were tears in her eyes.

“I am trusting you. I have spent a long time learning not to trust anyone. I am trusting you with the most precious thing in my life. If you betray that trust, I will take him and disappear, and you will never see either of us again.”

“I understand. And I will not betray you. I swear it on my honor as a duke—and on my love for you and for our son.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded, and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

He reached up and brushed it away with his thumb. The touch was so tender, so intimate, that it made both of them catch their breath.

“We have a long road ahead of us,” she said. “There will be difficulties. And scandals. And people who will try to tear us apart.”

“Let them try. They will not succeed. I have waited too long for this to let anyone take it away from me.”

She smiled then—a real smile, the first he had seen from her since the days of their courtship. The sight of it filled him with a joy so fierce that he felt he might burst.