What Remains of Heaven

Chapter 35

In his memories, Sebastian’s mother was always laughing. A beautiful woman with silken gold hair and sparkling green eyes, she had set out for a few hours’ sailing one brilliant summer’s day the year Sebastian was eleven. She’d kissed him good-bye and teased him gently, the way she so often did. When her friends’ yacht pulled away from the dock, he’d stood and watched her, smiling as the sunlight gleamed for one last moment on the strange blue stone-and-silver necklace she wore so often around her neck.

He had never seen her again.

Drowned, they said. But Sebastian hadn’t believed them. Day after day he’d climbed to the cliffs south of town to stare out over the churning waves of the Channel and watch, waiting for her to come back. Not until seventeen years later did he learn he’d been right that summer. Sophia, the Countess of Hendon, hadn’t drowned. She’d simply sailed away, leaving a husband, a married daughter, the graves of her two dead sons . . . and Sebastian.

For seventeen years he’d lived with the lie of her death. Now he found himself wondering, How many lies can there be? How many lies could obscure the fundamental truths of one man’s existence?

After Lovejoy left, Sebastian stood for a time fingering the Albatross’s passenger list. He poured himself a drink, raised the glass to his lips. Only, rather than taste it, he turned and hurled the glass at the cold hearth in a savage shattering of crystal and pungent, spilled brandy.

Then he went in search of his mother’s husband.

He found the Earl of Hendon in the chambers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Downing Street. He was standing beside a bookcase, head bowed, a heavy tome open in his hands as if he were looking something up.

“We need to talk,” said Sebastian.

Hendon raised his head, jaw set with annoyance at the interruption. “Really, Devlin; if you—”

Sebastian sent the Albatross’s passenger list spinning through the air to land with a soft thump on the open pages of Hendon’s book. “Now.”

Setting aside the volume he held, Hendon unfolded the packet, the aged pages crackling in his hands. He studied it for a moment, then carefully folded the papers again with a hand that was no longer steady. “I’ll get my hat,” he said, and turned away.

Sebastian barely waited until they’d reached the deserted paths and flower beds of the old Privy Garden before demanding explosively, “Why? Why did you do it?”

He’d been afraid the Earl meant to persist in his lies. But even Hendon must have realized the time for denials was past. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his chin sunk low between his shoulders. He looked suddenly older than Sebastian remembered him being, and very tired. “You mean, why didn’t I repudiate you when you were born? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Yes.”

“And proclaim myself a cuckold to the world? Not bloody likely.” Hendon squinted up at the spreading branches of the ash trees lining the avenue, pale green leaves trembling against a clear blue sky. His jaw hardened. “I was enraged; I won’t deny it. What man would not be? But I agreed to raise you as my own. I had two strong, healthy sons. No one ever expected you to be in a position to inherit.”

No one ever expected you to inherit.

Sebastian knew a bitter welling of disbelief, fed by rage and a disconcerting sense of being a stranger to himself. “And my real father . . . Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

Sebastian stared at the Earl’s familiar, craggy profile and wondered if it was a lie. One more lie, piled atop so many others. “What about Amanda? Does she know who he was?”

Hendon threw him a quick, sideways glance. “She may. I don’t know. We’ve never spoken of it. Although it’s always been my suspicion she knew far more than a girl her age should of her mother’s activities.”

“She does know I’m not your son?”

“Yes.”

“So the two of you . . . You both knew Kat and I were not sister and brother. Yet you let us think—” Sebastian choked, and it was a moment before he could continue. “In the name of God, how could you?”

Hendon swiped the air with one big hand, his features hardening into a mask of stubborn determination. “I’ve spent the last twenty-nine years of my life hiding the truth from you. Do you seriously think I would suddenly give it all away? So that you could ruin yourself by contracting a disastrous marriage with a woman of the stage?”

Sebastian threw back his head, his harsh laugh startling a nearby pigeon that rose up with a cry of alarm, wings beating the air in a frantic whirl. “My God, that’s rich. Kat is your daughter , while I . . . I’m just the illegitimate son of God only knows who. One would think you’d actually encourage the match. Then my sons really would be your grandsons—only through Kat, rather than me.”

A muscle jumped along Hendon’s clenched jaw. “You are my son in the eyes of the world and before the law. I named you that nearly thirty years ago. Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant. Nothing has changed.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Sebastian, the shells of the walk crunching beneath his boots as he drew up abruptly. “Everything has changed. Everything.”

And he turned and walked off into the trees.

Sebastian sat in one of the high-backed pews that crowded the round nave of the Temple, his eyes half closed as he studied the mail-clad effigy of a medieval knight on the pavement before him. Once, when he was twenty-one and Kat but sixteen, they had come here, to the ancient church of the Knights Templar and pledged their love to each other forever.

He heard the whisper of the door quietly opening and closing, heard her footsteps cross the pavement toward him, breathed in the sweet scent of her as Kat slipped into the seat beside him.

He said, “How did you know where to find me?”

A soft smile touched her lips. “I’ll admit this isn’t the first place I looked.”

The urge to take her into his arms was so overwhelming he had to clench his fists around the back of the pew before him. He said, “You talked to Hendon?”

“He came to see me.” She rested her own hand atop one of his. “I’m so sorry, Sebastian.”

He let his head fall back, his throat stretching tight as he looked up at the whitewashed plaster ceiling. “I’ll not deny it’s a bit of a shock, learning I’m not exactly who I’ve always thought I was, but—”

“Sebastian . . . No.” She shifted so that she could grip his right hand between both of hers. “You’re still the same man you have always been. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. And one day you will be the Earl of Hendon.”

“I don’t think so,” he said evenly.

Her lips parted as she drew in a quick breath. “What are you saying? You wouldn’t—Oh, God, Sebastian . . . You wouldn’t go away?”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“You couldn’t do that to Hendon.”

He brought his gaze to her face. “Oh, really?”

“He loves you—”

Sebastian made a deprecating gesture with his free hand.

“No,” she said. “You know it’s true. I don’t think he wanted to love you. But how many of us can will our affections?”

When he simply continued to stare at her, she said, “You know it’s true, Sebastian. Hendon could have told you the truth at any time these last eighteen years. But he didn’t, for your sake. He knew what it would do to you.”

“What it would do to me?” Sebastian repeated. “How about what his lies did to me—did to us both? If he had told the truth ten months ago, you would never have married Yates and I would never have—” He broke off abruptly.

Her brows drew together in a frown and she shook her head, not understanding. “Never . . . what, Sebastian?”

Freeing his hand from her grip, he brought it up to touch her face, his fingertips sliding across her wet cheek. He hadn’t realized she was crying, the silent teardrops falling one after another down her face.

He wanted to say, Come away with me, Kat. I love you and need you like I have never needed you before. Come away with me to a new land, a land where our pasts do not define us, where we can both be whoever we make ourselves. Except . . .

Except that nine months ago she had made a promise to Russell Yates, a promise she would not go back on now, simply to grasp at her own happiness. While he had obligations of his own, to Hero Jarvis, and to the child they may have conceived in those moments of terror and impending death beneath the ruined gardens of Somerset House.

He felt it again, that gut-churning surge of despair and rage. “I will never forgive him. Never.”

“You must, Sebastian.” She brought his hand to her mouth, pressed a kiss against his palm. “Not just for his sake, but for your own.”

He drew her to him, her tears wetting his neck, his fingers tangling in the dark, familiar fall of her hair. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”