“Perhaps, but someone needed to make him pay for what he’d done. I didn’t like it, Edgar. I hated the scandal. But the things he did... I should have fought harder. I should have been strong enough to protect my children. Sometimes I think I should have... I should have been the one to challenge him.” Her hands tightened into fists. “I fantasized so many times about putting a bullet through his heart. But I never did anything.”
Now Edgar was the one struggling not to cry. “It wasn’t your fault. He was stronger than you.”
“I should have taken you and India and left. But I stayed.”
Edgar sank to his knees in front of her chair and caught her thin blue-veined hand in his. “I don’t blame you. And I don’t blame myself anymore. I’ve decided to stop wallowing in the past. I’m moving forward. I’m seeking the light. And there is light to find, I know it. I’ve seen it.”
His mother laid her hand on top of his. “Miss Perkins, I presume?”
Edgar smiled. “Her name is Mari. It rhymes with starry.”
The dowager gave a small snort. “I can see there’s nothing to be done. You’d better marry the girl.”
Edgar gaped at his mother. Those were the last words he’d ever expected her to say. “What did you say?”
“Marry that girl. She’s got more spirit in her little finger than all the debutantes in London put together.”
“She does, doesn’t she?”
“Then what are you talking to me for? Go win your fiery Miss Perkins.”
“That’s just it. She’s not Miss Perkins.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was raised in an orphanage, and she just found out that she’s the legitimate offspring of Mr. Lumley, of Lumley’s Toy Shop.”
“Legitimate, you say?”
“And an heiress with a considerable fortune. Also, her mother was highborn, though Lumley won’t divulge the family name.”
“Well.” The dowager nodded. “That does change things. She may even pass muster.”
Edgar bristled. “She’s far superior to any other woman.”
His mother patted his arm. “Of course she is.”
“The only question is whether she’ll have me. Maybe she doesn’t need me anymore. She’s independent now, an heiress. It’s not too late for her to make some sort of debut in society. She’s only twenty. She would attract suitors, Lord knows.”
“Are you trying to tell me that my son, the Duke of Banksford, might lose out to some minor baronet or the like? Pure twaddle!”
“Mother, I have to let her make up her own mind, I can’t pressure her.”
“Have you been intimate with the girl?”
“Yes,” he admitted. It wasn’t exactly a topic one expected to discuss with one’s mother.
They’d consummated their relationship, but he didn’t want to trap her into marriage by using that, if she didn’t want to marry him.
He’d been careful. There was no reason to think she could be with child.
“Then it’s a special license,” his mother announced. “You’ll be married within the month. I’ll see to everything. Go now.”
“Mother, I can’t simply assume that she wants to marry me.”
“You’ll never know whether she wants to marry you or not unless you ask her. You’re a fool, Edgar. As stubborn as an ox.”
That sounded more like the mother he knew. “What if she only thinks she loves me? She’s so young. She has her whole life ahead of her. I might be a millstone around her neck.”