To take the child away." "Toby is mine," Duncan said. "No one is taking him anywhere." "Perhaps he /is/ yours, Sheringford," Stephen said. "I would not call you a liar, and I cannot think why you would want to keep the child if indeed he were not yours. Not now that the mother is dead, anyway." "Oh, Stephen," Vanessa cried, "you know nothing about parental feelings.

Just you wait." "That is all beside the point, Vanessa," Elliott said. "The point is that the child, whoever his father actually is, was born to Turner's wife – within nine months of her elopement with Sheringford. The boy is legally his. No court of law in England would rule against him." "No one," Duncan said again, "is taking Toby away from this house. I invite anyone to try." Margaret sat mute, her hands cupped in her lap.

It had happened, then. It was happening. She had no decision to make. It had been taken out of her hands. Toby was going to be taken away from them. As was only right.

She thought for a moment that she was going to faint. Or vomit.

She understood something suddenly – something that perhaps her mind had deliberately blocked during the past week. She understood those elusive flashes of recognition she had felt sometimes when looking at Toby. It had not been a likeness to Duncan she had been seeing, but a likeness to Randolph Turner. /His father/.

Her question was answered now. There could be no more doubt.

Toby was a legitimate child. He was the only son – and heir – of a wealthy, prominent member of the /ton/. Who had very possibly never beaten his wife in his life. Who had possibly loved her and been cruelly cuckolded.

Duncan had robbed a man of his son for almost five years.

He had robbed – or tried to rob – Toby of his birthright.

Why he had eloped with Laura Turner she did not know. Perhaps there /had/ been some abuse. But it all did not matter now. Toby was Randolph Turner's. "Excuse me," she said, and she got to her feet, pushing the tea tray back as she did so, and hurried from the room and down the stairs and out of the house. She was halfway along the avenue to the summer house before she slowed her steps. No one was coming after her.

Her family must know that for the moment there was no comfort they could offer.

And Duncan would not come.

She did not want him to come.

She never wanted to see him again.

That child. Oh, that poor child.

Duncan would have wasted considerable time going to the lake, but fortunately he had the presence of mind to ask a groom, who was in the stable yard rubbing down Merton's horse, if Lady Sheringford had passed that way.

She had not.

Duncan's second guess was the summer house, and he saw as he approached it along the avenue that he was right. She was sitting inside, not watching his approach, though she must have been aware of it.

He had not wanted to come. He wanted to be at the house, his arms tight about Toby. He had asked the three members of Maggie's family to protect him – should all the forces of the law arrive on his doorstep while he was gone, he supposed. "Of course we will," the duchess had said, tears swimming in her eyes. "Yes, of course," Merton and Moreland had said, almost in unison. "Go to Meg," the duchess had added.

He did not even want to be doing this, he thought as he neared the summer house. He had been angry with her all week – and more hurt than he had been willing to admit. He had thought she was coming to love him.

Yet she had not trusted him enough even to listen to what he had to say in answer to her questions, which she had answered herself.

Of course, the fault was at least half his. He ought not to have waited so long before telling her something she had every right to know.

He stepped inside the summer house and leaned back against the doorjamb.

She did not look up at him. "It makes me feel sick to be in the same room as you," she said, her voice toneless. "And it makes me angry to be in the same room as you," he said. "You always have all the questions, Maggie, do you not? And all the answers too. How comfortable for you!" She looked up at him then, with eyes that were very direct and very hostile. "You are right," she said. "I might have saved my breath on questions to which the answers were so glaringly obvious." He folded his arms across his chest. "I have been very guilty as far as you are concerned," he said, "believing perhaps that my solemn promise to a dead woman was more binding than my duty to my own wife. Or perhaps just procrastinating out of fear of where telling the truth would all lead. Everything I have told you in the past, Maggie, is the truth. Unfortunately, I told you only a part of it, and that was very wrong of me. You had a right to know it all before agreeing to marry me." "Yes, I did," she said. "I was a fool." She leaned further back in her chair and turned her head to look out through the window. "And so," she said, "Mrs. Turner was an abused wife – if indeed you told the truth. If you also knew when you took her away that she was with child, you did very wrong to take her. If you discovered the truth later, you did very wrong to keep her. And if you really felt her life or her sanity were at risk and kept her away anyway, you did very wrong to allow her to keep the existence of his son from Mr. Turner. And even if you did so to appease her, you were very wrong to keep Toby from his real father after her death." "Good God, Maggie," he said, angry again. "Toby is not Turner's son." She turned her cold gaze back on him. "Liar!" she said. "I have /seen/ the likeness. I refused to understand it until I heard what my family had to say this afternoon. But then I did. Toby looks like Mr. Turner." He laughed, though amusement was the very furthest emotion from his mind. "You see?" she said. "You cannot deny it when the truth is staring the world in the face. You are going to have to return Toby to his father – and it will damage that child immeasurably. May God have mercy on your soul, Duncan." "Still," he said, "you have all the answers, Maggie. I lived in a fool's paradise for almost two weeks after our wedding. I thought you were a loving person." Anger flared in her eyes, her cheeks, her thinned lips. "I cannot love someone," she said, "who would steal a child from his father and deny him his legitimacy and his birthright. I cannot love someone who has perhaps destroyed that child's life for all time even after he has been taken back where he belongs. He loves you. He thinks you perfect. He does not know you are the devil incarnate. He is just an innocent child." She was sobbing and not even trying to hide her tears.

He stood against the doorjamb, his arms crossed, his eyes also filling with tears.

Punishment, it seemed, was indeed never ending when one had transgressed society's laws. He had thought there was peace to be had at last. And even happiness. But no, he had not. He had known Pandora's box to be open. He had known this would all happen.

She was swiping at her eyes with the heels of her hands and glaring at him – and then looking closer at him, perhaps seeing his tears. "Last week," she said, "I refused to listen to you when you wanted to explain. It seemed to me that there /was/ no explanation except lies.

But perhaps I ought to have listened anyway. Tell me now what you were going to say then. But tell me the truth. All of it. Don't try to cover it up or make it look pretty. I already know the worst. Pardon me, I already believe the worst. Tell me the truth." "Randolph Turner has a brother," he said. "Oh, please," she cried sharply. "Don't insult my intelligence, Duncan.

Tell me the truth!" He stared dully at her until she folded her arms. "I will not say another word," she said. "Tell your story." "Turner," he said, "has no title, but he is enormously wealthy, probably one of the wealthiest men in England. The family money was made, it is rumored, in the slave trade and has been converted into property and rock-solid investments. Like many men, he wishes to pass on his inheritance to a son of his own. It was his reason for marrying Laura." She was looking at the hands in her lap. But he believed she was listening to him. He inhaled slowly. "I think," he said, "it is altogether possible Turner prefers men to women." She looked up sharply and then down again. "Or perhaps," he said, "the problem is something else. However it is, he was … impotent with Laura. Whenever he tried, for the first year or so of their marriage, he would leave her bed in frustration and not go near her for some time. But after that first year or so, his frustrations were acted out far more violently. He blamed her for his impotence. He started to beat her." Her hands, he noticed, were clenched tightly in her lap. They were white-knuckled. "And then," he said, "after a couple of years he got rid of his valet and employed another – a man who looked so much like him that they might have been twins. I know – I saw him once, an insolent fellow with a knowing smile. He was an illegitimate brother of Turner's and caused considerable amusement in the household, though Turner did not display him a great deal to public view." Maggie's hands had crept up to cover her mouth and she was looking at him with horrified eyes. "You are not going to tell me," she said, "that Mrs. Turner had an affair with him?" "It was far more ghastly than that," he said. "The man had been brought to the house to impregnate Laura. I suppose he was being paid a small fortune. It went on for almost six months altogether. Turner supervised – he watched. And he always beat her afterward and called her a slut and accused her of enjoying it. And every time her monthly cycle came to an end and she was not with child, he beat her even more viciously. The man is insane, Maggie." Her hands covered her mouth and her eyes now. "And then, finally, she /was/ with child," he said, "and hid it for the first month, taking the beating rather than confess the truth. At the end of the second month she came to me – it was the night before my wedding to Caroline. She had confessed to the beatings before then. She did not tell me the rest until that night. I did not doubt for a moment – I had /seen/ the fellow. I took her away and hid both her and the child – Toby – after he was born. I hid them until after her death. I would have hidden him and passed him off as the Harrises' orphaned grandson for the rest of his boyhood if you had not insisted otherwise. Though I concurred with you on that. A child cannot be hidden forever. I am Toby's papa, Maggie – and he is my boy. That is the way it is and the way it will remain. There, you have it now – the whole sordid, nasty truth." She was rocking back and forth in the chair, her hands still spread over her face. "Toby," she whispered at last. "Oh, poor Toby. But Stephen was right.