Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 52

Hendon spent most of Saturday afternoon at Carlton House, dealing with a fretful Prince. He was leaving the palace and heading up the Mall when Kat Boleyn drew up her phaeton and pair beside him with a neat flourish.

“I’d like a word with you, my lord,” she said. “Drive with me a ways?”

Hendon looked at the woman before him. She wore a hunter green driving gown embellished with brass epaulets and set off by a cocky green chip hat with a curling ostrich feather. Hendon didn’t hold with females driving phaetons. He dropped his gaze to the restive horseflesh between the traces and was tempted to plead some excuse. But the fact that she had deliberately sought him out raised a glimmer of hope in his breast. Perhaps he might find some way to scotch Devlin’s marriage scheme after all.

He stepped up to the curb and said quizzically, “You wish me to ride with you in that rig?”

She let out a peal of musical laughter. “I promise not to overturn you, my lord. George,” she said to the groom seated beside her, “wait for me here.”

“Yes, miss.”

Hendon climbed up to settle in the space vacated by the groom. She gathered her reins, but before she gave the horses the office to start, she handed Hendon a small painted porcelain oval—a miniature of a dark-haired woman with flashing green eyes and a smile that had once stolen Hendon’s heart.

“Do you recognize this?” Kat Boleyn asked.

Hendon’s fist closed around the filigree-framed porcelain so hard the metal bit into his flesh. “No.”

She cast him a swift glance. “You lie, my lord. The truth is writ plain on your face. Her name was Arabella Noland, and she was your mistress, was she not?”

“What if she was? You think that showing me her portrait now will somehow soften my attitude toward your plans to marry my son? Well, let me tell you something, girl: you’re fair and far out!”

She said nothing, her attention all for the task of guiding her horses through the heavy Saturday-afternoon traffic.

“Where did you get this?” he asked at last.

“It was given to me by Arabella’s sister, Emma Stone.”

“That hateful woman,” said Hendon. “Why should she do such a thing?”

“Mrs. Stone also gave me this portrait of you.” She held out another miniature, and after a moment, Hendon took it from her.

“They are a matched set. Did you give them to Arabella? I wonder. Were they part of your farewell gift to her when you discovered she was with child?”

“No,” he said gruffly, unable to grasp her point. “They were a birthday gift. Why?”

She cast him a look he couldn’t begin to comprehend. “But you knew she had a child by you.”

Hendon worked his jaw back and forth. He saw no point in denying it. “Have you told Devlin of this?”

“No.” She feathered the turning onto Whitehall. “Did you know of the child?

“I knew. It’s why she left me.”

“She left you?”

Hendon grunted. “I assumed you must know the whole story. It was my intention to take the child away after it was born. Give it to a good family, to be raised in the country.”

“You would have taken her child away?”

The edge in her voice caught him by surprise. He shrugged. “It’s the usual practice. Arabella was distraught at the suggestion, but I thought she’d come around. Instead, she left without even telling me she was going.”

Wordlessly, Kat Boleyn eased her pair around a brewer’s wagon obstructing the road. Hendon let his gaze rove over her high cheekbones, the impish line of her nose, the sensuous curve of her lips. He’d always thought she had something of the look of Arabella. And then, from somewhere unbidden came a powerful sense of disquiet.

“Why did Emma Stone give you these miniatures?” he asked again.

“Emma Stone is my aunt.”

Hendon opened his mouth to deny it, to deny everything she was suggesting. Then he shut it again. If any other young woman had come to him with such a claim, he would never have accepted her statements at face value. But this woman of all others had no reason to claim him as her father and every reason not to.

“My God,” he whispered. “I always thought you resembled her, but I never imagined…” His voice trailed off. He stared across the tops of the elms in the park, their leaves suddenly so brutally green against the blue of the sky that he had to blink several times.

“What are you going to do?” he asked at last.

“Tell Devlin. What else can I do?”

He studied the beautiful, hauntingly familiar face beside him. He had always thought of her as his adversary, the woman he had to fight to prevent her from ruining Devlin’s life. He found that he still thought of her that way. He had to think of her that way. He could allow himself nothing else. Not now. “You could simply go away,” he suggested.

“No,” she said fiercely. “I won’t hurt him like that again. Not a second time.”

“Then let me be the one to tell him.”

He thought at first she meant to refuse him. She drew in a quick breath, then another. And it was only then that he realized she was fighting back tears.

“Very well,” she said, drawing up before the palace. “But you had best tell him right away, because the next time I see him, I will tell him if you have not.”